Chai Brady
Conversations hinge on local discussions and agreement if Catholic schools are to divest patronage, Bishop Tom Deenihan tells Chai Brady
School divestment has come to the fore of discussions in Ireland once again, as it does every few years, but perhaps one of the differences this time is that the bishops in a statement after their summer meeting indicated a willingness to “move as quickly as possible” on the issue.
Everyone agrees with the principle that there should be fewer Catholic schools. In fact, it was the Church that first mooted the idea which led then-education minister Ruairi Quinn to establish the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in the Primary Sector in 2011.
Parishes were acutely aware that while demand for Catholic education remains extremely high, the shifting landscape meant that the Church could not – and should not – remain the default provider of education for all pupils in the Republic.
An increase in religious diversity and more people identifying as non-religious meant that there should be greater pluralism and the Church suggested the idea of transferring the patronage of existing Catholic schools – divestment – where there is a sufficient demand and, crucially, where the desire of Catholic parents for a Catholic education for their children can still be met locally.
Identified
In 2016, 78.3% of the population identified as Catholic – numbering approximately 3.7 million people – compared to 84.2% in 2011, according to CSO (Central Statistics Office) figures. However, as the Church knows acutely, possibly a third or even a quarter of that number are Massgoers.
Divestment has undoubtedly been slow. Since 2012 just 12 Catholic primary schools transferred to a multidenominational ethos. Overall, about 88% of primary schools have a Catholic ethos. The majority of these schools are under the patronage of the bishop in the diocese they are located.
Bishop Tom Deenihan of the Diocese of Meath, who is a member of the Council for Education and the Commission for Catholic Education and Formation, said the main barrier to divestment so far has been “local agreement”.
Or perhaps, more to the point: a lack of local agreement. Bishop Deenihan knows the landscape more than most having been involved in negotiations on the issue for over a decade. At a national level, everyone agrees that there should be fewer Catholic schools. But when it comes to communities across the country, people are reluctant to give up their own local school.
According to Bishop Deenihan: “There will be people in a school who may wish for divesting and there will be people in a school who would not want divestment. I think a significant issue is how do we get agreement locally in relation to what school we’re going to divest when there’s plurality.
“Divesting isn’t going to happen in a place where there is only one school, it’s going to happen in a place where there’s two or three Catholic schools. You are not going to have all the people who want an Educate Together school living in the same area,” he says.
For that reason, Bishop Deenihan insists that a decision to divest Catholic patronage will never be a “unanimous decision” among local communities.
Isolation
He said: “I think you can’t look at the school in isolation, you have to look at the plurality of provision within an area and then there may very well have to be a sort of a timeframe so that those who are in the school will be able to continue and those new students coming in will have a different type of thing so it will be a gradual process. It can’t be done overnight.”
The obvious solution, Bishop Deenihan says, is that students already enrolled in a Catholic school would work their way through until graduation, however for new enrolments it would be made “very clear that they won’t be availing of a Catholic education and after a period of time the school will no longer be Catholic”.
However, he said the experience so far is that despite the fact that “everyone says they are in favour of divesting, it has been reported, and the former archbishop of Dublin has commented on this widely, that when a particular place is identified, the situation changes”.
All politics is local, the adage goes – and so it proves with divestment. Even politicians who are vocal on the issue on the national stage shift gears when they get to their local constituencies and hear concerns on the ground.
It’s a frustration that Bishop Deenihan says is real. “Even politicians who are looking for divestment will campaign locally that the school shouldn’t be divested”.
However, he does think that the ground is opening up for a more mature conversation. “I think we are moving beyond that but at the same time there are difficult discussions to be held locally and what we are saying is that this is not the bishop’s decision, there has to be consultation with parents and with teachers and the wider community.”
There must be a process whereby people are consulted and feel part of the decision, he continued, saying that “there has to be a willingness to accommodate those who do not wish for a Catholic education. It is not reasonable that people who do not wish to go to a Catholic school should be forced to go to a Catholic school”.
His comments very much echoed the statement of the summer 2021 general meeting of the Irish bishops’ conference on divestment. The bishops, as patrons of Catholic schools, said they are committed to “proactively engaging with the Department of Education in relation to reconfiguration of patronage”.
They said they are supportive of “an educational landscape which reflects the reality of the increasingly diverse society in our country”. The statement added that a true plurality of patronage across the country should ensure parental choice whilst “enabling patrons to be true to their own ethos and characteristic spirit”.
“Parents are the first and primary educators of their children. It follows that the State should be responsive to the rights of parents to have their philosophical and religious beliefs supported during their children’s education.”
The bishops said that one of the great strengths of faith-based primary schools has been their rootedness in local communities and as patrons they are conscious that “any move to divest must involve a meaningful engagement at local level, supported by the Department of Education, with parents, teachers and the wider parish communities served by existing Catholic schools”.
The statement continues: “Parental choice is paramount, and that choice must be given full expression in any reconfiguration process. Within any new provision, parents who choose it should have access to an appropriate number of schools under Catholic patronage, which are enabled and supported in their Catholic ethos.
“Bishops would like to move as quickly as possible to a situation in which the State supports parents with the provision of schools whose ethos genuinely reflects what they want for their children. Going forward, bishops wish to have a fruitful dialogue about the best way of ensuring that our school system reflects a diversity of provision.”
Flourish
One of the reasons the divestment conversation has come to prominence again is due to a Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) programme called Flourish, developed by the Council for Catechetics of the Irish bishops’ conference with the support of the Catholic Primary School Management Association. It was introduced in April of this year.
Flourish has sparked criticism in some quarters with a number of Catholic primary schools publicly opting out of using the resource due to pressure from parents.
Despite the fact that it is a programme precisely for Catholic schools, some have objected to lines as simple as “puberty is a gift from God” and that the “Church’s teaching in relation to marriage between a man and a woman cannot be omitted”.
Bishop Deenihan said that it is not the Catholic Church who determines the curriculum, but the Minister for Education and Skills who is advised by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA). While RSE is part of the curriculum set out by the NCCA, Flourish is a set of resources for teachers to use in Catholic schools alongside the curriculum established by the NCCA.
“I read through the Flourish programme and it seems very reasonable, for example in 5th and 6th class there’s the whole issue of adolescence, there’s the issue of being able to say no, there’s the issue of internet safety,” he said.
“I think it’s important that if people are against some of the resources, they would actually say what they find objectionable but it’s important to bear in mind that the Catholic Church is not setting up an independent curriculum.”
Post-divestment
Focusing on a ‘post-divestment’ context, where an increasing number of schools begin to divest and no longer have a Catholic ethos, with the sacraments no longer being facilitated during school hours, parents who want a Catholic education in particular must be afforded the opportunity to have their child educated in a Catholic school, according to Bishop Deenihan.
At the same time, there is a realisation that many parents who have children in a Catholic school do so because it is either just the local school or standards are high. This presents a challenge in terms of preserving the ethos.
“Very often, people don’t necessarily pick a school because of the Catholic ethos, they may pick it because of the proximity or where friends go and things like that. Our position is that if parental choice is the determinant, and I think it has to be, then parents who wish for a Catholic education have to be accommodated to,” the bishop said.
“It’s more of a question of how we can ensure that those who wish for a Catholic education can be prioritised in relation to the remaining Catholic schools,” he said.
Currently, the Education (Admission to Schools) Act 2018 ended the use of religion as a criteria in school admissions in almost all cases. This means Catholic primary schools can no longer give preferential treatment to Catholic children when it comes to school admissions when the school is over-subscribed. However, other minority religion schools are allowed to continue to discriminate in favour of children of their own faith.
As more schools divest patronage in the coming years, Bishop Deenihan said the admissions policy should be reversed to cater for parents opting for a Catholic education. “I think critically there has to be some sort of commitment to parents that in a post-divesting context, they will still be able to avail of a Catholic education if that is what they wish for.
“What do you do in relation to admission policies? How do you ensure that people who live near the divested school and want the Catholic education will actually be able to send their kids to say, St Patrick’s School which remains under the Catholic patronage? With admissions legislation and all that, there is a difficulty,” Bishop Deenihan explained.
Contribute
The hope is that divestment can contribute to a thriving Catholic sector that is self-confident precisely because parents have self-consciously opted-in. In short, that the Catholic schools that remain can be authentically Catholic.
“The bishops are saying that we are in favour of divesting because plurality of patronage helps all schools be true to their own patronage and I think if Educate Together are forced to take Catholics, or if the Muslim schools have to take Roman Catholics, or the Catholic school has to take kids who don’t want a Catholic education, then there’s a knock-on effect in terms of ethos.
“We’re saying, parental choice is the determinant but we need to be able to give a Catholic education to those who wish for a Catholic education. In terms of a Catholic education, sacraments are hugely important.
“There are conversations happening with the department. I think we are anxious to proceed further along that road very quickly. I think the bishops have publicly stated their position and I think that brings with it a level of commitment and a level of clarity and I hope that will help the conversations continue. I think by the bishops coming out in this particular point in time, it gives clarity and commitment to their position,” he said.