Melton Christian School in Melbourne prohibits non-Christian head coverings for boys as part of its uniform policy.<\/p>\n
The tribunal found that Sidhak Singh Arora was discriminated against when it refused to accept him as a student if he wore his traditional headwear.<\/p>\n
Having uncut hair, known as kesh, is a Sikh belief and wearing a patka is an essential practice of the religion.<\/p>\n
The Christian school, however, chose not to make an exception for the boy, Sidhak, after an enrolment meeting with the family last year.<\/p>\n
Sagardeep Singh Arora, the boy\u2019s father, said he had been stunned by the rejection.<\/p>\n
“In such an advanced country like Australia, it was just shocking,” he said.<\/p>\n
“You have Sikh people wearing turbans in the police force and army in Australia, but my son can’t go to school.”<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal\u00a0said Sidhak had been disadvantaged because he wasn’t able to attend the school which was close to home and where his cousins were also students.<\/p>\n
In its defence, Melton school had relied on the state’s discrimination laws, which has an exemption that allows schools to enforce reasonable dress codes for students following consultation with the community.<\/p>\n
The tribunal rejected this, however, saying the uniform policy was not reasonable because when they were updated in 2014, they did not reflect the school community’s views.<\/p>\n
It also added that while the school was a Christian school, it had an open enrolment policy – more than 50% of the school community does not explicitly identify as Christian.<\/p>\n
“It is not reasonable to accept enrolment applications from students from non-Christian faiths only on the condition that they do not look like they practice a non-Christian religion,” VCAT member Julie Grainger found.<\/p>\n
Mr Arora said he and his family were very happy with the findings.<\/p>\n
“We believe this is very good decision on behalf of the Sikh community in Australia,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Arora and his wife have a meeting scheduled with the school, with the hope that Sidhak will be able to start attending next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A tribunal has found an Australian school discriminated against a five-year-old Sikh boy when it prevented his enrolment because he wore a turban. Melton Christian School in Melbourne prohibits non-Christian head coverings for boys as part of its uniform policy. The tribunal found that Sidhak Singh Arora was discriminated against when it refused to accept […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":24160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,39,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-international-news","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}