Altar servers process through St Eunan’s Cathedral, Derry, during a Mass celebrated by Bishop Donal McKeown to celebrate the start of Catholic Schools Week. Photo: Stephen Latimer. To abolish the right of parents to choose the kind of education for their children is the very contradiction of pluralism, writes Fr Pádraig McCarthy
Fr Pádraig McCarthy
Imagine for a moment that you are a parent, and you have a child ready to start school. You are Catholic, and there are two Catholic schools – one in your parish, the other a little further away, outside your parish. The school in your parish has places available. You have a strong preference for the other school, for whatever reason, but it is over-subscribed, with no place available for your child this year. What would you do?
Now imagine a similar situation, but you are a member of another faith, or do not subscribe to any faith. The nearby school is Catholic, where your child’s friends go to school. There is a non-denominational or multi-denominational school also nearby.
The Catholic school has a place, but has not sufficient staff or space to provide an alternative activity when Religious Education class takes place, so your child would just have to stay at the back of the class during that period. The other school is over-subscribed, and has no place for your child this year. What would you do?
Situations
We hear of such situations. The Irish Catholic recently published the results of a survey, showing that just 1.6% of Catholic schools are over-subscribed. In Dublin, the figure is 5%. These are far lower than the usual statistic reported of 20%. The problem is real, even if not as frequent as charged.
Ireland has a much more diverse population than 50 years ago. This enriches our country as we learn to live in a pluralist society. It is important that there be a diversity of schools provided. Article 42 of the Constitution states: “The State acknowledges that the primary and natural educator of the child is the Family and guarantees to respect the inalienable right and duty of parents to provide, according to their means, for the religious and moral, intellectual, physical and social education of their children… Parents shall be free to provide this education in their homes or in private schools or in schools recognised or established by the State.”
Various solutions have been proposed or demanded. In order to promote the welfare of all in our pluralist Ireland, some demand that religious education should not take place in our National Schools during regular school time. This is a very strange demand. To abolish the rights of parents to have their chosen kind of education for their children, and this in the name of pluralism, is the very contradiction of pluralism.
Another solution has been suggested. “Minister for Education Jan O’Sullivan has called for new laws to ensure denominational schools set aside places for local children who are not baptised … these rules would apply in the one-in-five cases where schools are oversubscribed.” (The Irish Times interview, 28 Dec 2015)
It may seem a simple solution. There are two immediate problems with it. Firstly, to do this would mean excluding some children. Where will they go? Secondly, to set aside places for children who are not baptised would mean that children who are baptised are excluded – because they are baptised! This seems absurd.
For historical reasons, our primary education system is largely a public-private partnership venture of State and religious bodies. “Even in the darkest era of our history, with penal legislation, dispossession, and poverty the lot of so many, education was still highly prized.
“Even before the State gave support to schooling, through the national school system, the educational census of 1824 recorded that there were over 9,000 ‘hedge’ schools in existence. They catered for two out of every five children of school going age at the time, long before compulsory attendance.
“These were schools of the people, by the people, for the people,” Prof. John Coolahan (pictured) said at the launch of the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in the Primary Sector in 2011.
Thirty years earlier, Prof. Coolahan wrote in Irish Education – Its History and Structure about the tensions following the initiation of the National School system in 1831. “It was to be a multi-denominational or mixed system… However, in a climate of hostility and suspicion between the churches and with fears of proselytism rife, Ireland presented a difficult arena… Of the three main denominations the Presbyterians were the first to force significant changes… The Church of Ireland… also opposed the national school system from the beginning… The existence of an alternative Church of Ireland school system… was ensuring that many of the national schools were attended by Catholics only.”
Both the Presbyterian church and Church of Ireland were opposed to separation of secular and religious instruction. To say that the Catholic Church sabotaged the national school system from the start is historically incorrect.
Changes are certainly needed to reflect the changed population profile in Ireland today. The churches, in the public-private partnership, have provided large subsidies to the State in making education available.
Costs
If all schools were taken over by the State tomorrow, the State would face enormously increased costs, and would have to face the same situation where parents still prefer one school over another.
Unless, of course, the State were to abolish the right of parents to choose for their children the kind of education they see as best. This would be State totalitarianism in education, it would be unconstitutional, and it is difficult to imagine that the people of Ireland would vote for this.
Some say the Catholic Church has a “stranglehold” on primary education. The implication seems to be that “control” by Catholic authorities is somehow malevolent. We need controlling structures lest we descend into chaos. The Government has control of many aspects of our society. Is that a stranglehold? How has government control of our health services, and housing and financial services, and provision for asylum seekers, worked out? No institution is without failings.
Control
Rather than complain about the level of control, we should ask whether the various Church authorities, overall, have been effective as patrons and managers in the partnership with the State in providing education for our people.
Would the people of Ireland have greater trust in total control of all our education by the Government alone, than they do in the present arrangements?
There is one solution which the State has yet to face up to. Sufficient schools, in the required variety and in the required locations, are needed. In order to provide diversity within schools as well as between schools, the State must see that schools under religious patronage can make alternative arrangements for children whose parents do not wish them to be present during religious instruction.
The national Census provides data; this will be updated in Census 2016.
Statistics are on the Department of Education website. From 2000 to 2015, the total number of pupils in national schools increased by 105,136.
The number of new places actually provided 2000-2015 was 73,985: a shortfall of 31,151. This is the equivalent of 62 new national schools of 500 pupils each which were not provided.
Some of the shortfall could, of course, be taken up in schools which had spare capacity. It is not a mystery why we have a ‘squeeze’ in school admissions in some places.
We must place the responsibility where it lies. The State must make the provision which, under the constitution, it is obliged to do. The new Government, of whatever hue or rainbow, must deal with it.
Fr Pádraig McCarthy is a priest of the Archdiocese of Dublin.