‘Baptism barrier’ must go in reform of school admissions system

Over the coming few weeks Minister for Education Richard Bruton will make a decision that will define school admissions in this country for decades. He can decide either to scrap the “Baptism barrier” that allows schools to discriminate against children in its admissions process or to keep it, or a version of it, in our primary legislation.

After a decade of missed opportunities, we now have a Minister prepared to grasp this nettle and set out his plan for the future.

Equate, along with other equality and children's rights groups including the Children's Rights Alliance, the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland, BeLonG To, Epic, the ISPCC and Pavee Point made a submission to the department's recent open consultation on religion in school admissions.

Our education system has not kept pace with the changing make-up of Irish society

In this invited submission Equate proposed that only one of the six suggestions is a true and equality-based solution: the removal of the Baptism barrier from State-funded schools.

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Recent reports in The Irish Times have suggested that in this consultation process some political parties and larger patron bodies have favoured a catchment-area rule.

Equate believes that a catchment area rule is not a resolution to the Baptism barrier issue for the following reasons: it would still allow State-funded schools to preference children of a particular religion over others; it is clearly a form of discrimination that has no place in a modern democracy; it again prioritises the protection of a patron’s ethos over a child’s right to equal access to education; and it would potentially be an administrative nightmare for the department and has the real possibility of taking years to finalise.

As the department itself noted in a 2011 discussion paper on school enrolment: “Defining and reviewing geographical areas for schools or groups of schools is a complex and difficult task. Indeed, there have been criticisms of some of the planning undertaken by the department on the basis of catchment areas.”

Our education system has not kept pace with the changing make-up of Irish society.

Ireland is unusual in Europe and around the world in that 96 per cent of our schools are faith schools, with almost 90 per cent under the patronage of the Catholic Church. Parents are helpless in the face of an education system that makes it legally permissible to discriminate in order for a school to protect its own ethos.

This is a situation that shames us as a nation. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the European Commissioner for Human Rights, Ireland’s Rapporteur on Child Protection, the Ombudsman for Children and the Irish Human Rights Commission have called for reform of this system.

Equate has recently published independent research which showed that 72 per cent of parents of children of school-going age agree the law should be changed so that Baptism can no longer be a requirement for school admission in State-funded schools.

Recently published census figures show that those selecting “no religion” is by far the largest growing segment of Irish society. The figure has risen from 269,800 in 2011 to 468,400 in 2016, a growth of 74 per cent.

As citizens of this State they are as entitled as religious families to send their children to schools that are welcoming and inclusive and can encompass their viewpoint.

However, in large parts of the country they have no option but to send their children to local State-funded faith schools as there is no real alternative for them. And those faith schools can legally turn their children away.

Five years after the last government first considered tackling this issue we have made very little progress. The rate of transfer of church-run schools to other patron bodies has been painstakingly slow and we are faced with the prospect of the Baptism barrier remaining in some form or other.

In this era of new politics legislators across all political parties have a chance to come together to deliver the change parents so desperately want. It must be acknowledged that the Minister for Education has to date shown courage in his willingness to put equality as a central plank of his legislative agenda in education.

At Equate, we are hopeful the Minister and Oireachtas will make the right decision and simply amend the Equal Status Act so a child’s religion can no longer be used in any respect as a criterion for admission to State-funded schools.

Michael Barron is executive director of Equate, a children and family rights organisation