Deirdre Cronin argues that the current dominance of the church over 88% of primary education in the state has to be challenged. Making the case for a movement that offers a genuine public, secular and inclusive curriculum guided by the overwhelming wish to separate the church instruction from education.
North and South of the border we have education systems that remain under the control of the dominant Churches. It stands in stark contrast to the norm across Europe where schools tend to be publicly owned and controlled.
In the face of plummeting numbers of practising Catholics and Protestants, control of the education system makes it the one area where the Churches continue to punch well above their weight.
In the South, 88.4% of primary schools are run by the Catholic Church which requires that teachers employed in them have obtained the Certificate in Catholic Religious Education during their initial teacher training. Just 8.1% of children enrolled in primary school at the moment are in schools not run by faith groups. It means many families who are not practising any religion have no choice but to educate their children in denominational schools funded by the taxation system.
While Constitutional guarantees in the South about parental rights, reinforced in the 1998 Education Act, protect the right to opt out of religion in school, there has been little or no political will to address the obvious need to modernise and secularise the education system as a whole.
In fact, as Áine Hyland, a well-known academic in the education sector and pioneer of the multi denominational movement, has pointed out, the 1831 Stanley Letter, which formed the basis of primary schooling, envisaged religiously mixed schools with religious education provided separately by the individual churches. This was a considerably more progressive vision than the actual situation that exists today, almost 200 years later. The fact that the vision was never realised was due mainly to the power that the Church gained from providing school sites. It wasn’t until the 1960s however that the rules for national schools were changed to formally dictate that religion must permeate the whole of the school day and that religious and secular education be integrated.
Church teaching
The legacy of this remains today in Irish classrooms where prayers occur in many schools throughout the school day, “sacred spaces” are a permanent feature, and Catholic diocesan examiners inspect the teaching of religion in schools. This control is not insignificant as demonstrated for example in the current review and updating of the Social Personal and Health Education curriculum, which includes Relationship and Sexuality Education (RSE). Controversy was whipped up last year by the transphobic Far Right about the inclusive nature of the new curriculum at Junior Cert level. The response of the Catholic school authorities was quieter but no less disturbing.
In advance of the review at primary level the Catholic Bishops moved very quickly to produce their own RSE programme, Flourish, for use in Catholic primary schools. Lessons begin and end with a prayer or religious reflection, and an introduction to the programme states that while children in the senior classes “will be aware the existence of LGBTQI and some may question their own identity in this regard”, it affirms that the “Church’s teaching in relation to marriage between a man and a woman cannot be omitted”.
Almost 48% of post primary students attend Catholic schools where their RSE will take place within the context of this Catholic ethos. It is a source of concern that parents and students find themselves in a situation where they have no choice in the type of education offered by their local school.
Catholicism is not alone amongst religions that hold views on gender and sexuality that are at variance with those of the state and the majority of the population. This comes to the heart of the issue around denominational education. No state funded system should endow any religion. Education at both primary and post primary level needs to be secular and genuinely free to all students.
Lack of political will
The need for structural change has long been on the agenda. In 2011 the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in the Primary Sector was established in the South. A major report was published and followed by surveys on divestment in 43 areas around the country. Divestment was the process by which it was envisaged a school would move from the patronage of the Church to a multi-denominational ethos in response to parent/community wishes. This was replaced by a reconfiguration process that has resulted in just 3 schools transferring under the auspices of the Education and Training Board (ETB, the state run local education bodies) to what is called a multi-denominational Community National School model.
The current Programme for Government commits to expand and prioritise the transfer of “viable” schools to multi-denominational patronage and sets a target of 400 multi-denominational primary schools by 2030 which has absolutely no chance of being met. A sense of Groundhog Day now surrounds the issue with a recent announcement from the Minister Norma Foley that a national survey of primary and pre-school parents will be conducted by the Department of Education in the 2024/25 school year. All national polling continually shows a clear majority want a move away from a religiously run system.
The fact that it has not happened points to a lack of political will. Transferring patronage is a long and arduous process with a lot of the work falling onto already overburdened school principals, while misinformation around retention of cultural traditions and access to religious sacraments has at times gone unchallenged. The potential spoiling role of the Catholic Church here cannot be underestimated. It continues to oppose School Admissions legislation from 2018 which no longer allows Catholic primary schools to select pupils on the basis of their religion. A spokesperson for the Catholic Schools Partnership told the Irish Times last year that “The issue the law created, in not permitting Catholic schools to prioritise the enrolment of local children from Catholic families, is now emerging as a stumbling block to the reconfiguration of school patronage.”
The removal of the “Baptism barrier” has not occurred at post primary level where the greater level of choice is used to justify its retention. However, while 48.3% of secondary school students are considered to attend multi-denominational schools, this figure includes Community schools, many of which have a joint form of patronage between the relevant Education and Training Board (ETB) and a local diocese or religious congregation. Equally it has emerged that a number of colleges run solely by the ETBs are in fact denominational.
The situation in the South is mirrored in the North. There, too, a move towards integrated education has stalled, despite considerable support in the community for it. A poll taken as recently as 2021 found that 71 per cent believed children from different community backgrounds should be educated together. The Integrated Education Act was introduced in 2022, and limited funding provided. However, there are only 70 integrated schools in Northern Ireland, comprising just 6% of schools and 7% of pupils.
Fully state run
Church control of our publicly funded education systems needs to be ended. Historically, handing education over to voluntary organisations like the Church suited the state – it meant the physical infrastructure was provided and the ethos within those classrooms discouraged challenging the status quo. A literate and skilled workforce could be produced relatively cheaply as the Churches also made a local financial contribution which reduced the level of state support required. We live with that legacy today, where education spending lags seriously behind our European counterparts and parents struggle to “voluntarily” contribute to the basic running costs of schools.
The denominational system, north and south of the border, means that only a very small minority of teachers and students who return to classrooms in the 2024/25 school year will be able to access anything other than a religious-run, denominational education. It is completely at odds with the population’s evolving belief systems. It forces teachers to falsely subscribe to a religion many have only a passing relationship with and requires children and families to fit.
All primary and secondary schools should be publicly owned by the state, and education should be about helping each individual to develop their full potential, not imposing religious beliefs on them during their school day. Respecting and supporting the right of people to worship freely is an important demand. The right to profess and practice religion must be protected, but religion is a private matter that does not belong in schools.
At its last Congress the primary teachers union the INTO, which organises across the 32 counties, agreed to survey members on the issue of religious versus secular patronage and instructed the union leadership to engage with the relevant patron and management bodies in order to remove the requirement for a religious certificate to teach in schools. In the course of that debate ordinary teachers from all around the country described promotion being denied, lack of job offers and pressures to teach beliefs they did not subscribe to. Given that failure to share the ethos of the school remains the sole area not covered by Equality legislation, and therefore leaves a teacher in theory open to dismissal, the willingness of people to speak up shows a growing mood for change.
It is time that our public funding of education was reflected in the emergence of an actual publicly run system that is diverse and inclusive for all. That will be won when teachers, families and students themselves stand together and demand that change.
