Brandon Scott
The Labour Party’s proposal to move religious instruction outside of daily teaching hours in schools in the party’s recent election manifesto has prompted a senior figure in Catholic education to question what sort of alternative to religious instruction they would introduce and this is something that they haven’t addressed yet according to the CEO of the Catholic Education Partnership.
Speaking to The Irish Catholic, CEO of the CEP Alan Hynes, said: “I think people would have to ask themselves, if Labour are talking about removing religious instruction during teaching hours, which is one part of the Catholic ethos of the school, what do they want to replace it with?” he said. “That’s the question Labour need to answer.
“It’s likely that they will go with something like an ethics course of some form or another because when last in government and holding the education portfolio they pushed a separate ethics course that they wished all schools to teach. The thing is, every ethics course comes from a particular world view, so what world view do Labour wish to impart?”
“Labour are now purporting that the pupils attending Catholics schools will, in fact, receive another world view. So there’s kind of a slight-of-hand for parents – you might send your child to a Catholic school but we’re going to teach them something else … Something else that Labour has not defined. So what ethical view do they hold that the public holds in so little regard?”
Proposals like these are the result of a frustration with parents’ continued satisfaction with Catholic schools according to Mr Hynes, who stressed that parties like Labour, many of whom poll at low percentages in opinion polls, seek to “impose their view on the entirety of the population”.
“Labour along with several other parties are very frustrated essentially because parents are not wildly in favour of divestment,” he said. “But one thing is that as we’ve engaged in various different divestment projects around the country, for the most part, local communities have indicated that they wish to stay with Catholic schools.
“The other approach is the Labour approach that imposes a solution from above without any regard to local feeling or the feelings of those attending the school or the community within which the school is situated. This is a top-down thing, where again, a party that only represents 3 or 4% of the population has a desire to impose their view on the entirety of the population.”
Recent reports have indicated that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil would prefer to enter coalition with the Labour Party if returned to Government after the next general election.