Catholic Private Schools and Grade one Admissions

Leslie Peiris WETTASINHA

SCHOOLS: Following the educational reforms of the sixties there are broadly speaking two types of Catholic schools-Catholic government schools and Catholic private schools. The private schools are those that decided to opt out of the national system and go private in order to preserve their individuality, traditions and standards.

While the Catholic government schools welcome official supervision and control and avenues for making complaints, and consequently a transparent atmosphere, in which both Catholic and non Catholic children can realise their full potential, in the Catholic private schools reports of widespread bribery, favouritism and nepotism are floating about but largely hushed up.

In addition arbitrary and totalitarian tendencies have crept into the decision making process as a result of "square pegs" with no respect for tradition or the rules, being appointed as sole heads of these institutions.

In Anglican schools the evils of this one-man show have been mitigated to some extent by appointing loyal old boys as principals aided by a Board of Governors.

Coming to the case in point, the subject child is my daughter's only son, and the school a leading boys' school within the Colombo Archdiocese. I myself had my education at this College between 1935 and 1945 and was a life member of the old boys union (now inactive due to age).

Having scoured the college notice boards day in and day out to obtain a form, my daughter and her husband finally made their application and were called for an interview on 24.6.2006.

Subsequently the letter rejecting their application (dated 1.8.2006) was received on 8.8.2006 one and a half months after the interviews were over.

Contrast this with clause 16 of the instructions issued by the then General Manager of Catholic schools that the decision should be communicated at the "earliest possible opportunity" to enable parents to make alternative arrangements.

Another peculiarity of this letter was the unwarranted directive to treat the decision as final (that is, nothing further). Contrast this with clause 18 of the affor-mentioned instructions making provision for appeals within two weeks.

As a result of this misrepresentation several parents who would have liked to appeal and probably succeeded, were prevented from doing so. On my advice my daughter and her husband made an appeal. They along with me personally handed it over to the Rector on 8.8.2006 itself.

The Rector was seated behind a computer, announced that the reason for the rejection was that the child has failed in the test. Now just imagine that - a child emerging from the Montessori being put to the test and his fate decided on that basis, when all that was required was to ascertain that he had basic skills and had no physical disabilities. In fact Grade I is where the learning begins.

At this meeting with the Rector it also transpired that out of about 750 interviewed, 245 were selected, and out of this number 65 were non-old boy cases. My daughter's husband was not an old boy having studied at St. Aloysius College and Richmond College.

We were aware that preference was given to children of old boys, but that a small percentage was reserved for non-old boy cases. What baffled us was how we did not come within the quota of non-old boy cases admitted, given our credentials.

The child is a Catholic baptized in and attached to a reputed Catholic church in the city and resident within the two mile radius of the college, and whose immediate ancestors resided with in that radius for almost three quarters of a century. This was the closest Catholic boys' school to them.

Nor we were lacking in loyalty to church and school, although to the Rector this was of no consequence. All the male members of our family and extended families studies at this college, starting with myself, my two brothers, and my only son.

Also all the female members on my maternal side studied at a leading Catholic institution. There were four generations of them in the convent, which fact was highlighted with my mother's photograph in the centenary Souvenir.

Our family circle has four Catholic priests in its fold. The Catholic tradition began in our family when my maternal great grandfather Don Johannes Gabriel Ratnayake of Talangama who was born to the Dutch Reformed faith, (being the son of Don Abraham appointed by the Dutch government as "Proponentu" to spread their religion) was converted and baptized on his death bed by Archbishop Bonjean on May 12, 1888 with Fr. J. Vistarini acting as godfather.

All these facts could not be stated in the application form there being no provision for this in the formal. When we tried to verbally communicate them at the interview, the Rector was not amenable at all and summarily brushed them aside.

Therefore we made it a point to have them recorded in the appeal petition, and buoyed up by the Rectors' acceptance of our appeal and his undertaking to review the matter, we were eagerly awaiting a favourable outcome.

This was not to be, and the result made us to wonder how many, if at all out of the 65 children whose fathers were not old boys could have surpassed our credentials.

When the failed test was given as the reason for the child's rejection it was shocking news to us for reasons already stated. As far as our recollection goes passing a test was not one of the criteria mentioned in the notice exhibited on the board when application forms were handed over, and found removed from the board soon thereafter when we came to re-check.

Our attempts to get a copy from the college authorities proved futile with the two secretaries, to the Rector and to the Bursar desisting from obliging. As a last resort I personally interviewed the incumbent General Manager of Catholic schools who denied knowledge of any such criteria lying in his office. He in keeping with his priestly calling will not deny this fact.

Contrast this with clause I of Fr. Ivan Perera's instructions which states that Catholic private schools should formulate their own criteria for admissions, display them on the notice board and send a copy to the General Manager.

At about this time, in the absence of his Grace The Archbishop, we even complained to the Right Reverend Auxiliary Bishop about the child's rejection and asked him to look into the "injustice caused" and to obtain relief for us. His response conveyed after a few days was that his hands are tied up, as sole authority has been granted to the Rector in these matters.

In other words there is no mechanism whatsoever in the set-up to air grievances and have them remedied after inquiry where necessary. In the case of Government schools parents have access to fundamental rights remedies, in addition to relief at administrative level.

Between 8.8.2006 when the appeal was handed over and November 2006 a period of almost three months nothing was heard from the school authorities, once again mocking at Fr. Ivan's instructions to expedite the process.

At last an undated letter was received fixing an interview for 2.11.2006. At this interview too the Rector (who did not even have a copy of our appeal petition before him), after consulting the computer once again referred to the weak test performance, indicating that this constitutes the determining factor.

Everything else seemed irrelevant to him and not discussed at all. At this point it must be mentioned that the Rector who presided over the initial rejection was also the person who sat in appeal.

When asked by the parents what weightage is given to the test, the reply was 75 per cent or three fourths. It was bad enough to base the selection on a test which was not one of the criteria.

Raising the weightage to 75 per cent shows the dizzy heights which this unreasonable and arbitrary exercise of power has reached, and sounds the death knell for a host of innocent pre-school children, except the lucky ones who could successfully cope with a test, conducted as it was, not to assess intelligence but items of knowledge as determined by the examiners and not even exhibited syllabus-wise in the criteria.

Although the Rector may be satisfied with the ensuing result, brought about purely by arbitrarily imposing non-existent criteria, we have to respect the ideals set by the founding fathers who pioneered the cause of going private and ensure that the standards of the College will not suffer.

Clause 9 of Fr. Ivan's instructions advises parents to carefully consider the criteria laid down (and displayed on the notice board) when collecting the application forms.

If passing a test was one of the criteria, not only would parents have taken extra care to prepare their children, even institutions for the purpose would have sprung up in this fiercely competitive field, on the lines of tutories catering for the Law College entrance.

In these circumstances utilizing a test that it not one of the criteria for the selection, taints the entire selection process affecting all the candidates selected for admission. In fact clause 15 of Fr. Ivan's instructions specifically states that "applications shall be processed and selections made according to the criteria for admission laid down."

Clamping down a 75 per cent weightage for the text aggravates this arbitrary action. Even if the published criteria would have stated that the children would be tested (we were denied the opportunity of checking on this), there definitely was no reference to a 75 per cent weightage.

Such a weightage would not only hugely prejudice the chances of the majority of the children but also result in a loss to the college in the long run.

Based on this faulty evaluation and elimination process the decision on our appeal was at last communicated on 25.11.2006, that is after three months and seventeen days of its filing, rejecting for good the application for admission, and creating for us a fresh problem of finding an alternative place for the child so late in the year. In the alternatives available this cannot be done without loosing one academic year.

This then is the reward we get for implicitly trusting in the goodness and rectitude of our church authorities, and for being faithful to their exhortation that a catholic child should be given a catholic education.

Although only yards away from D. S. Senanayake College and within the two mile radius of Ananda College, we did not apply to these two non Catholic schools for this very reason. We are not so unreasonable as not to realise that no catholic school can take in all the Catholic children who apply.

But the weeding out process should have been on an objective basis (within the criteria laid down) and not by trying to look for an order of merit so to speak, after targeting these unstable little minds.

For instance if as is normally done a quota is reserved for area residents (two mile radius), and if the numbers exceed the quota, the well accepted principle of first to come (ie, in to residence) last to go (ie, to be eliminated) would have solved the problem.

As a matter of fact the letters summoning for interview called for documents to be produced to prove residence for the past five years (probably the minimum qualifying period for area residents), but these were not put to any use.

Had that been done and the ill-conceived test rejected as being outside the criteria and contrary to instructions to base selections on the criteria, this child had an undisputed right to be selected, the college in question being the closest catholic school to him, and he being within the qualifying radius.

The Catholic authorities were under a duty (pastoral and otherwise) to accommodate him in preference to applicants hailing from places such as Wattala, Enderamulla, Kandana, Jaela, Negombo and beyond, where there is a surfeit of Catholic schools.