Memorandum submitted by the Parental Alliance
for Choice in Education (PACE) (SA 29)
ADMISSIONS TO STATE SCHOOLS
Admissions to state schools involve two factors:
the wishes and preferences of parents; and the policies of those
legally responsible for providing the school places. As far as
the wishes and preferences of parents are concerned a clear distinction
must be made between preferences which relate to their human rights
under the European Convention (reinforced by their incorporation
into the 1998 Human Rights Act) and those which relate to less
substantial themes, such as the temporary popularity of schools
and their teachers, examination successes and convenience of access
etc.
Most of the present day appeals by parents over
admissions are based on individual preferences of the minor kind.
The procedures of the local authorities, drawn up to deal with
them, contain a set of rules to ensure that the parents who are
finally unsuccessful in gaining admission of their children into
schools of their choice are treated as fairly as possible. Proximity
to the school, the presence of older siblings in the school and
other prescribed conditions form the basis of this procedure.
Legal decisions, such as the South Glamorgan judgment, have also
played a part in the process.
A much more important issue is the need to fulfil
the Human Rights of parents. This is best tackled "before
the event" rather than "after the event". Article
2 of Protocol No 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights
guarantees parents the right to have their children educated "in
conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions".
Of the 30 or so members of the Council of Europe the UK is the
only nation to attach a reservation to this right. The right is
supported "only so far it is compatible with the provision
of efficient instruction and training, and the avoidance of unreasonable
public expenditure."
For the Government to fulfil its legal requirements
in relation to this parental right it is necessary for it to plan
the provision of school places to match the religious and philosophical
convictions of parents as closely as possible. This requirement
has been largely ignored by governments over the last few decades,
and the omission is largely responsible for the problems surrounding
school admissions today. The recent incorporation of the parental
right into UK legislation makes the task of the Government more
urgent.
The most important philosophical distinction
between school types occurs in the secondary sector—between
the comprehensive and the differentiated or "selective"
sector. The political notion that schools must engage in compulsory
social mixing (matching the social mix of the population at large)
is anathema to a large section of the nation's parents. It is
forcing parents to change their places of residence or to send
their children to independent schools. It is also beginning to
play havoc in admission procedures to Church of England Voluntary
Aided schools. Many that are oversubscribed give first priority
to the children of practising Anglicans and other Christians,
but some are deliberately turning away children of committed Christian
families in the interests of compulsory mixing by social class.
This is a clear denial of parents' rights under the Human Rights
Act, although recent statements by its bishops show a failure
on the part of the Church to recognise it.
Under the present system it sometimes happens
that aggrieved parents group together to challenge the deliberate
refusal of local education authorities to provide education for
their children, which conforms with their human rights. The best
example of this was provided by the Dewsbury case. Kirklees Metropolitan
Council in 1987 refused children admission to the schools of their
parents' choice, allocating them instead to a school where the
pupil population was overwhelmingly Asian. The 26 sets of parents
kept their children out of school for a whole year, educating
them in a room above a pub with the aid of volunteers. Although
the Kirklees policy of "countering a Eurocentric syllabus"
(on the grounds that it was racist) applied to all schools, it
was clear that the schools that had formed the parents' first
choice did not follow that policy. In particular they did not
adopt a common form of worship. The parents won their case in
court. It was shown that the schools, which had excluded the children,
had places available. They were forced to allow the children to
take them up. The parents' Counsel summed it up as follows: "They
have, and continue to have a natural desire that their children
should be educated in a traditional English and Christian environment.
They believe that parents from other cultural backgrounds and
with other faiths should have similar rights and have been much
heartened by the very full support that they have at all times
been given by the leading members of the Muslim community, many
of whom have children at Headfield School."
This demonstrates how the Human Rights Act should
apply in a multicultural society and how it should control admission
procedures. There are three recognised options in multicultural
education. The Cultural Diversity Option recognises the rights
of those from different faiths or cultures. The Assimilation Option
is aimed against those from ethnic minorities, whilst the Equality
Option is aimed at using the schools to merge all the cultures
into something new, against the religious and philosophical convictions
of the majority of the population.
Fred Naylor, MA, MSc (Cantab)
Hon Secretary, The Parental Alliance for Choice in
Education (PACE)
5 November 2003
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