PARENTS are being asked for their views on Catholic education in East Renfrewshire.

Places at schools in the local authority are highly sought and now education bosses are having to develop strategies to deal with space issues.

One proposal is that parents seeking a Catholic education for their child must produce a baptismal certificate for them.

A public consultation into proposed changes to admissions arrangements for primary and secondary schools opens on Friday and runs until October 10.

East Renfrewshire Council Leader Jim Fletcher said: “East Renfrewshire Council has a reputation as Scotland’s leading local authority for the provision of consistently high quality education for children and young people.

“Because of this success there is a high demand for places in our schools and in recent years this has increased significantly – particularly so in our Roman Catholic schools.

“We are very proactive in ensuring that our residents can get into the schools of their choice wherever possible and have already taken a range of steps to increase capacity.

"However demand for Roman Catholic school places is continuing to grow at a rate that requires us to now take further measures to ensure we can meet demand from our resident population."

Only if a Catholic school is oversubscribed would the new admission policy be called into use.

In cases of oversubscription children not of the Roman Catholic faith would be offered a place in their local non-denominational catchment school.

The practice of requesting a baptismal certificate is already a practice adopted by a number of other Local Authorities.

Director of Education, Mhairi Shaw, said: “Over recent years the number of East Renfrewshire families choosing a Roman Catholic education for their children has increased by around one fifth and many of these schools are in fact either at or approaching full capacity.

“We have already taken action to address increased demand at our schools by creating additional accommodation, increasing teacher numbers and classes where necessary and are also in the process of investing £77.6 million over the next three years to provide even more new and extended education facilities.

“However despite these significant measures, the rate at which demand is now increasing means these actions will still not provide the capacity needed to meet the appetite for Roman Catholic school places in future years.

“We also know that we have space in our very high performing non-denominational schools in the council area and as such we must seek to use all available capacity across our full school estate to achieve a fair and equitable solution and best value for the public purse.

“As more families want a place at a Roman Catholic school for their children it is essential that we either create more capacity for Roman Catholic education or change admissions arrangements for our existing schools.”

Proposed arrangements will see no changes to existing school catchment areas or re-zoning.

The proposed arrangements would also mean changes for pupils seeking a place at an ERC school if they live outwith the council area because placing request priority will be given to East Renfrewshire residents in all cases other than siblings.

The current order of placing request criteria would change to give greater priority to children already at an associated primary when applying for a S1 place.

This is as opposed to the current arrangement which prioritises children who already have a sibling at the secondary school being applied for.