FOUR MUSLIM families have alleged their sons are being discriminated against at two leading Catholic boys secondary schools in south Co Dublin.
In two instances, the Department of Education has overturned decisions by each school – St Benildus and Oatlands Colleges – not to enrol Muslim boys when parents appealed under section 29 of the 1998 Education Act.
However, of the four Muslim families who have daughters, they said they have encountered no difficulty in enrolling them in girls’ secondary schools in the same Stillorgan area.
Azzedine Medbou and his wife are from Algeria and have been in Ireland since 1999. Their five daughters and one son attended Our Lady’s Grove primary school on Goatstown Road, with the older girls progressing to the nearby Jesus Mary College.
As it says on Our Lady’s Grove website: “From the primary school the girls may transfer to Jesus Mary College, and the boys to Oatlands College and St Benildus College.” Their son, Ilyes, applied to enrol at St Benildus for the year 2012/2013, in October 2010. His application was rejected.
A letter to his parents, dated November 8th, 2010, from college principal Seán Mulvihill, advised: “Because of the unlikely event of a vacancy arising we strongly advise that you investigate other secondary schools.” He advised the family they could appeal the decision under section 29 of the Education Act.
Mr Medbou said: “This is a big problem for us. We don’t know what to do.”
Salem Swal-Akari is originally from Libya. His son, Muhir, graduated from St Benildus in 2004 and is now in UCD. Another son, Muhammed, graduated from the college in 2005 and is at DCU. A third son, Marwan, was until recently a sixth-year student at St Benildus. All three had attended the Muslim school in Clonskeagh. Mr Swal-Akari’s younger son, Muhand, however, is at St Mary’s primary school in Sandyford and applied to enrol at St Benildus. His application was rejected in June.
At a meeting at the school on September 19th, Mr Swal-Akari was told that, according to its policy, Muhand belonged to category seven of those favoured for enrolment.
In first place, he says he was told, were Catholic boys whose parents were Catholic; next were boys where one parent was Catholic; in third place were boys where both parents were converted Catholics; in fourth place were boys where one parent was a converted Catholic; in fifth place were boys whose parents were Christian; and in seventh place were boys whose parents were non-Christian.
Mr Swal-Akari has since moved his sixth-year son Marwan from St Benildus to a city centre school and is investigating where he can enrol Muhand.
Beloufa Ouadria is from Algeria and his wife is Polish. He has been in Ireland since 1997. In 2007, he applied to enrol his three older sons – Abdulrahman (now 13), Abdullah (now 12) and Ibrahim (now 11) – at St Benildus.
In 2009, Abdulrahman was the only boy in his class at St Laurence’s, Kilmacud, a feeder school for the college, not to be offered a place at St Benildus, he said. The boy was “very upset”, not least as an eastern European Catholic classmate, who had arrived in Ireland earlier in 2009, was accepted.
Andulrahman was “the only non-Catholic in his class and the only one refused”, Mr Ouadria said.
Mr Ouadria appealed the decision under section 29 to the Department of Education and lost.
However, he succeeded in having Abdulrahman enrolled in Oatlands College, where he began in September 2010.
In May 2010, his son Abdullah was offered a place for September this year.
Mr Ouadria soon had conscience difficulties with Abdulrahman’s attendance at religion classes and participation in religious services at Oatlands, as well as the boy’s attendance at music and dance classes which were “contrary to our conscience and belief”.
It presented supervision difficulties for the college and Mr Ouadria took his son out of the school at relevant times but this soon proved impractical for him.
Meanwhile, hotly disputed discipline issues arose involving Abdulrahman which brought Mr Ouadria into conflict with some teachers and management at the college, as he felt his son was being singled out unfairly. He withdrew Abdulrahman from Oatlands in March this year.
In the meantime, Oatlands updated its enrolment policy, emphasising that Catholic students would get priority. This policy came into effect in March of this year. In March/April, Mr Ouadria received notice that Ibrahim’s application to enrol at Oatlands for 2012 had been rejected. He appealed this under section 29 to the department.
The appeal was upheld in June of this year as “the legitimate expectation of all parents of applicants in category one – applicants who have a brother presently in the college – were not met”.
It concluded that the board of management at Oatlands “did not treat Mr Beloufa Ouadria’s application in a fair and reasonable manner”, It recommended “that Ibrahim Ouadria be enrolled in Oatland’s College for September 2012”.
However Mr Ouadria’s second son, Abdullah, then refused to accept his place at Oatlands earlier this month and Ibrahim insisted he would not attend there next year when he was due to start, both in protest at their older brother’s experiences there.
All three sons now commute daily to a boys’ secondary school 10 miles away, where they are “happy”.
In April 2004, St Benildus rejected the application of Jamel Boumazouna to enrol there. Then a pupil at St Laurence’s primary school in Kilmacud, Jamel’s father, Ben Jousef, is Algerian and his mother, Sandra Flanagan, is Irish. She said she believed Jamel and another boy, who she described as having “a not so Irish name”, were the only two in their class not to be accepted into St Benildus.
The family appealed under section 29. Their appeal was upheld by the department in June 2004, which instructed that Jamel be enrolled at St Benildus from September 2004. He was enrolled.
