Cathal BarryConcern has sparked a major renewal campaign.
Catholic secondary schools are being urged to proactively and unashamedly promote their distinctive ethos in a bid to ensure their survival into the future.
Concern about the continuing decline in the proportion of second-level schools with a Catholic ethos, in addition to a greater diversity of choice of school patronage, has sparked a major renewal campaign.
The Catholic Schools Partnership (CSP), which is spearheading the initiative, is developing a plan to assist schools in “reimagining” their ethos to make it more relevant to society today.
CSP Chairperson, Fr Michael Drumm said the process will help schools “reflect on their own ethos and to reimagine that for the times in which we live in”.
He said it was “perfectly understandable” that schools with a long tradition of Catholic ethos would undergo a process of renewal at a point in time.
“Schools that are on the go for a very long time naturally have to go through a process of renewal. They don’t have the same immediate energy that you may find in a body that’s completely new and that’s perfectly understandable,” he said.
Ferdia Kelly, General Secretary of the Joint Managerial Body (JMB) also urged individual faith based schools to take action.
He said the legacy of the ethos on which schools were founded was key to their future survivability.
“As a sector we have to ask ourselves what are we doing and where do we want to go. I believe we have been handed a great legacy but we are in danger of allowing that legacy to dissipate.
“We need to do something ourselves at local level. We need to ask ourselves to reimagine who and what we are and to do it in a coherent way,” he said.
Fr Drumm added that reflection on ethos in a holistic way would be “critical” for Catholic schools going forward.
“The reason you go back to the past is to get some energy and some of the guiding spirit. That’s way ethos matters and why reflection on ethos is so important,” he said.