The Office of the Schools Adjudicator has upheld a complaint against a state-aided Jewish primary school in Barnet for asking applying parents to provide a copy of their ketubah (marriage certificate).
It said the requirement of Pardes House Primary School in Barnet was in breach of the national Admissions Code which did not allow requests for marriage certificates.
The OSA also found problems with other aspects of the entry policy at Pardes House.
According to the code for school admissions, entry policy should be “fair, clear and objective”.
The OSA found Pardes’s requirements that parents should study Torah and observe the commandments were too general and unclear because they could be interpreted in different ways.
But it did not agree with the objection from an anonymous complainant that expecting parents to comply with the Shulchan Aruch, Code of Jewish Law, was unreasonable because of its length and complexity.
However, the OSA said that asking that families to provide confirmation from a rabbi that they were committed to “Orthodox Jewish (Charedi) practice” failed the test of objectivity because it was not specific enough.
Attending a synagogue or shiurim (religious classes) could be used as a standard, the OSA suggested.
The admissions regulator also upheld a complaint against some of the entry rules for another strictly Orthodox boys primary school, Avigdor Hirsch Torah Temimah in Brent.
The OSA upheld part of an anonymous complaint against Torah Temimah for giving priority to the children of fathers who studied in kollel (yeshivah for married men) or of a rabbi.
This breached the Admissions Code for allocating places on the basis of a parent’s occupation.
The school had agreed to remove these criteria, as well as another giving priority to parents who were “significantly active” in organisations recognised by the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, because the OSA regarded this as too imprecise.
The OSA agreed with the school’s broad right to ask parents to abide by the Shulchan Aruch and the standards of modesty set out in a book by Rabbi Eliyahu Falk of Gateshead - but it said arrangements for certifying parents’ compliance were not sufficiently clear.
It also said that some of Rabbi Falk’s descriptions of cosmetics to avoid as “eye-catching” or “highly attractive” were too vague to comply with the Admissions Code’s requirement for objectivity.
But it did not uphold a complaint that the school’s dress requirements failed the Equalities Act in placing more restrictions on women.
The law allows a measure of discrimination for “religious activities”, it noted.
