The positive decision of the supreme court will encourage mixed-faith couples who wish to send their children to a Jewish school (Jewish school racially discriminated against boy, judges rule, 17 December). There are rabbis who accept a child as Jewish providing it has one Jewish parent, not necessarily the mother. In Judaism questions about a person's religious status are usually limited to marriages, funerals and joining a community. It has not been a question that has applied to getting into a school. Educationists should concentrate on developing a child's knowledge and abilities, and not be involved in any process of deciding who is a Jew, or who is a member of any other religion, and creating ghettos within ghettos.
Rabbi Guy Hall
• Jonathan Romain (Comment, 17 December) says M's "father was born Jewish, his mother had converted to Judaism and the family led a Jewish life", but later states "the child's mother had converted through a non-Orthodox Jewish authority". His assertion that "British Jewry has several different denominations – Orthodox, Reform, Liberal, Masorti – as does the church – Anglicans, Catholics, Baptists, Methodists and others", is his opinion and not accepted by the Orthodox Jewish authorities. But he is a Reform clergyman opposed in principle to faith schools. From our point of view, the non-Orthodox deviate so much in ideology and practice from classical Judaism that they are, in essence, separate religions. A more apt analogy would have been the Unitarians, whom not all churches consider to be Christian at all.
• If the supreme court ruling were to mean that children applying to Jewish schools might have "to sit religious tests" to ensure that schools were not discriminating against them on ethnic grounds, it would be a huge and damaging step backwards. In the 1944 Education Act, parliament had the good sense to introduce – in section 25 (3) – what was known as the conscience clause: "a pupil must not be required, as a condition of attending a school, either to attend or abstain from attending a Sunday school or a place of worship". So inquiring into a parent's religious practices was allowed, but quizzing a child on his was not. Nor should it be.
As soon as it can, parliament should ensure that a conscience clause of this kind should take priority over the interpretation now placed on "direct discrimination" in the Race Relations Act.
Chairman, Commission for Racial Equality, 1982-87; first chief schools adjudicator, 1998-2002