Boy attends school away from home as he awaits hearing

A TRAVELLER boy who took an indirect discrimination case against a local secondary school is attending school away from his home town, a court heard yesterday.

John Stokes, aged 13, of Clonmel, Co Tipperary, successfully brought the CBS High School in Clonmel to the Equality Tribunal last year over the school’s admissions policy.

However, an appeal by the school against the tribunal’s ruling is now before the circuit court and will not be heard until near the end of the school year.

The school refused enrolment to John Stokes on the grounds he didn’t fulfil one of its priority criteria in the event of over-subscription — that either his father or an older brother was a past-pupil. He did meet the school’s other admission conditions as he is a Roman Catholic and did attend a local feeder primary school.

However, as first year numbers at the school were over-subscribed last year, the school turned away some applicants, including John Stokes, after enrolling 140 new pupils.

Through his mother, Mary Stokes and supported by the Irish Traveller Movement, the teenager took a case of indirect discrimination to the Equality Tribunal on the grounds that, as he was from the Travelling community, his father was statistically much less likely than people from the settled community to have had a secondary education.

As John was the eldest in the family, an older brother couldn’t have been a past-pupil.

The Equality Tribunal ruled in John Stokes’s favour, ordering the High School to offer him a place and to review its admissions policy to prevent indirect discrimination against pupils on any of the nine grounds covered by the Equality Status Act — gender, marital status, sexual orientation, age, family status, membership of the Travelling community, religion, disability and race.

Yesterday at Clonmel Circuit Court, Vivian Meacham BL, for Mrs Stokes, asked for as early a hearing date as possible.

Judge Olive Buttimer said May 31 was the earliest date possible.

“We have some concerns that, if this drags on, the appeal will become a moot point,” Ms Meacham said.