A TEACHER is to take Glasgow City Council to court, claiming that her son is suffering sex discrimination because of its refusal to allow boys to attend Notre Dame High School for Girls.
The move by Anne Fitzpatrick is the latest in a long-running campaign by families who want boys as well as girls to be able to attend Notre Dame High in the Dowanhill area of the city.
Mrs Fitzpatrick, a teacher at Cleveden Secondary School, also believes the council's refusal is in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.
At present, Mrs Fitzpatrick's seven-year-old son Neil attends the co-educational Catholic Notre Dame Primary School.
Mrs Fitzpatrick said: ''It would be very much in Neil's interests to go to Notre Dame Secondary School. He would be with his peers. Under the present rule, his peers will go all over the place. Accordingly he will lose touch with the very boys whom he has been friends with for some seven years.''
Mrs Fitzpatrick added: ''All we want is equality. I am someone who goes bananas at inequality.
''There are a lot of parents concerned about it. I'm the front person for them. A group of 20 are prepared to do what I'm doing, so it's not a personal crusade.''
Cameron Fyfe, of Ross Harper, who is Mrs Fitzpatrick's solicitor, said: ''It seems clear to me and our QC that the council is in breach of the Sex Discrimination Act as well as the European Convention on Human Rights. To manage to breach two at the same time takes some doing.''
In 1999, Notre Dame Parents Action Group, with sons at Notre Dame Primary School, was refused legal aid to seek a judicial review of the council's position. An opinion written for the group by Lord Mackay of Drumadoon suggested that by operating Notre Dame High as the only single-sex school within the authority, the council is acting in a manner that amounts to sex discrimination.
The counsel's opinion added: ''. . . when an education authority provides single-sex education for girls, but not for boys, that education authority is acting prima facie in a manner which constitutes sex discrimination.''
In 1998, the education department asked the council to open consultations on a proposal to make the school co-educational. The council, however, rejected the proposal, despite the Labour group executive's support for the change - a move widely interpreted as avoiding a potentially damaging confrontation with the Catholic Church and the Muslim community in Glasgow, both of which support Notre Dame's girls-only status.
A council spokesman said last night: ''We believe we are not in breach of the Sex Discrimination Act and we await the outcome of this action with interest.''
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