Richard Bruton to tackle ‘baptism barrier’ in schools

Education Minister Richard Bruton will announce plans today to resolve problems for parents who can not get their children into schools because they are of a different faith or non-religious.

He faced criticism last year when his bill on school admissions did not deal with the ‘baptism barrier’ under which parents in some communities can not enrol their children in local primary schools unless they have been baptised in the Catholic church.

Ahead of announcing a consultation on how to deal with the problem, he said this pressure to baptise their children is unfair. He wants members of the public and groups which might be affected to submit their views on a number of options before deciding how to proceed.

While the desire of religious parents to educate their children in their faith should be respected, he said, non-religious parents or those of minority religions should not be unfairly disadvantaged when trying to get their children into local schools.

More than 95% of the 3,300 primary schools are under control of a religious patron, but almost 90% are Catholic.

“Over a third of couples who are getting married are choosing to do so in a non-religious ceremony, and all the evidence points to a population in which very significantly fewer than 90% of young families are religious,” Mr Bruton said.

At a seminar on the issue, he will single out the practice of some religious schools giving preference to children of their own faith who live a distance away over those of a different faith, or none, living close to the school.

Mr Bruton will set out four possible approaches in relation to primary schools:

- Banning religious schools from giving preference to children of their own religion from outside the catchment area, ahead of non-religious children who live inside the catchment.

- Allowing religious schools give preference to a child of their own religion only where it is the child’s nearest school of that faith.

- Allowing preference be given to a child of the school’s religion for a set proportion of places, with remaining places allocated using other admissions criteria like distance from school.

- The fourth option he will set out is to introduce an outright ban on religion being used as a factor in admissions. Within such an approach, he will say, religious schools could have capacity to require parents or students indicate support or respect for the school ethos.

Mr Bruton highlights pitfalls and unintended consequences, particularly the ability of Islamic, Jewish, Protestant or other minority faiths to run schools in accordance with their ethos and admit children from their communities.