Paul KeenanClaim that NI schools are divisive rejected
The State must not use the threat of withdrawal of taxpayer funds to Catholic schools in a bid to quicken the pace of change in education, a leading expert has warned.
Francis Campbell – Vice-Chancellor of St Mary’s University, Twickenham – said that “while the State can impose reasonable restrictions on the use of public funds, it shouldn’t use the threat of deprivation of public funds either as a matter of outright strangulation of unfashionable beliefs and groups, or to favour unfairly some parts of the plurality over others”.
Last year Prof. John Coolahan – chairman of the forum on patronage – suggested that the Government should consider cuts in funding to Catholic schools in a bid to speed up the process of some Catholic schools being handed over to non-Catholic patron bodies.
But, Mr Campbell said “that would destroy over time associations and communities that do not hold the State line in every way”. He was speaking at a national conference on education in Dublin attended by over 200 stakeholders in faith-based schools organised jointly by The Irish Catholic and St Mary’s University.
Mr Campbell also rejected claims that Catholic schools in the North contribute to sectarianism.
“You mostly hear it from ill-informed critics who have never experienced Catholic schools in Northern Ireland and the sterling work they did during the Troubles to hold the line and to prevent the society from slipping into civil war.
“It can be convenient for an elite or an establishment to blame religion for the Troubles, it sort of exonerates them from their responsibility for sectarianism over the decades,” he said.
Radicalised
Mr Campbell – a native of Co. Down told the conference: “I don’t know of anyone who was radicalised by what they were taught in a Catholic school in Northern Ireland. I do know many who were prevented from being radicalised by their education in Catholic schools.
“Many were challenged to think morally and to act courageously and the Church never flinched from its transmission of a strong moral code regarding the taking of human life,” he said.
Ruth Kelly, a former UK Secretary of State for Education and now a pro vice-chancellor at St Mary’s also rejected claims that faith-based schools lead to divisions in society.
She said that she was always struck as Education Secretary that “none of the terrorists picked up by the security services or identified after an attack had attended a faith school; all were products of a secular education, and had seemingly been ‘integrated’ into Western culture before being radicalised”.