MELBOURNE: A Sikh family in Australia has won a legal battle against a Christian school that refused to enrol their five-year-old son because of his turban. Sidhak Singh Arora was on his way to start preparatory at Melton Christian College in Melbourne, until his 'patka' (turban) clashed with the school's uniform policy that prohibits students from wearing any type of religious head covering.
Parents Sagardeep Singh Arora and Anureet claimed that the institution breached the Equal Opportunity Act by not allowing their son to wear his patka when they tried to enrol him in 2016. The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) ruled that the school had discriminated against the kind. Member Julie Grainger said, “Whilst MCC is a Christian school, it has an open enrolment policy which means that it accepts enrolments of students from other faiths. A little over 50 per cent of the school community does not identify explicitly as Christian and many families at the school have no religious beliefs.”
“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,” it said. The VCAT finding added that the school could have amended its uniform policy to allow Sidhak to wear a turban in school colours.
