Rule favoured boys whose fathers were past pupils

YESTERDAY’S circuit court ruling hinged on the school’s “parental rule”, which favoured boys who had a parent who previously attended the school.

John Stokes, 13, and his mother Mary Stokes argued that, because of the historic unlikelihood of Travellers attending any secondary school, this indirectly discriminated against the Travelling community.

While neither John’s father or any of his siblings went beyond primary education, his mother did. “Unusually, within the Travelling community,” Judge Tom Teehan said in his judgement, “she and all of her sisters and some of her brothers received secondary education.”

Ms Stokes gave evidence when the case was heard in May and “made a very favourable impression”, said the judge.

“She is the mother of seven children, is very properly ambitious for John and for her other children, and was spoken of very highly by other witnesses on both sides of the case.”

John attended primary school at St Peter and Paul’s in Clonmel — one of the designated “feeder” schools for the Christian Brothers High School — and applied for one of the 140 first-year places for the academic year starting last September.

When he missed out on a place in the lottery held for boys who didn’t meet all three of the High School’s admissions criteria, the family initially appealed the move to the board of management. That and an appeal to the Department of Education were unsuccessful, but they won a subsequent appeal to the Equality Authority, which found the school had indirectly discriminated against him and that he should be admitted.

High School principal Shay Bannon said in May that, of eight applications from the Travelling community during his 20 years in Clonmel, John’s was the first not to succeed. He said he was “very hurt” by allegations of discrimination.

“The perception is out there that we’re an elitist school that takes the best and brightest — we take all students.”