Downgrading of RE in curriculum ‘worrying’

Catholic schools and religious education experts have criticised State proposals to remove religious education as a core element in Ireland’s primary school curriculum.

Under a consultation document issued by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, no space is explicitly set aside in school curriculum for religious education, in contrast to the current curriculum, introduced in 1999, which required that 2.5 hours per week be allocated to religious education.

“I believe this is indicative of the push to privatise religion and confine it to the personal sphere”, Dr Dan O’Connell of Limerick’s Mary Immaculate College told The Irish Catholic. He criticised the decision to relegate the so-called ‘patron’s programme’, which typically includes religious education, to a discretionary and flexible part of the curriculum as having been “done without any explanation whatsoever, and without any evidence or research”.

Seamus Mulconry, General Secretary of the Catholic Primary Schools Management Association, told The Irish Catholic that the decision was “worrying”.

“The patron’s programme normally refers to religious education, and putting it into flexible time means putting it in with things that are not appropriate for a programme which is fundamental to the ethos of schools,” he said, continuing, “we are not the only organisation that has concerns about this – I think those concerns would be widely shared by other patrons as well.”

He expressed concerns that if the patron’s programme was downgraded, “over time it may erode its role in the school”.