Schools admissions row may go to court

The Catholic Education Service (CES) has said it is willing to defend in court its requirement for parents applying to oversubscribed Catholic schools to seek certification from a priest to prove that they practise their faith.  

The service has come under fire over the requirement from the Office of the Schools Adjudicator which ruled this month that a new national system whereby parish priests determine on a pupil-by-pupil basis whether they were from a practising Catholic family was unfair. The ruling followed a complaint from a parent hoping to secure a place at St Richard Reynolds College in Twickenham who said it was unclear what “form or frequency of religious practice” was required in order for a priest to award the new Certificate of Catholic Practice (CCP).

The CES said it would challenge the ruling in order to protect the rights of priests to continue to make this decision. The service, which introduced the policy in September, said the primary purpose of its challenge was to bring clarity to the new admissions policy. A spokesman said parish priests are best placed to award the certificate because they can bear in mind the personal circumstances of families who by all means and purposes are practising Catholics yet for particular reasons – they might work weekends for example – can’t attend Mass every week.

He added that the certificate applied only in the parts of the country where there are insufficient places for Catholic children.

“In the vast majority of Catholic schools there are sufficient places for all Catholic children and so a criterion of practising Catholic is not required,” said the spokesman.

The Office of the Schools Adjudicator has said that the way priests made decisions was not clear. “No parent will know for certain whether they will be given a CCP,” said the admissions watchdog last week. “Such a parent may have attended Mass every week for many years, or they may be a recent convert, but on reading the school’s admission arrangements they would be in the same position of not knowing whether they would be given priority on the grounds of being Catholic.”