Respecting wishes of parents should be priority in offering school choices

The choice of schools that parents have for their children has become a social and political hot potato, as pressure grows to remove requirements to be baptised to guarantee entry.

Richard Bruton said, quite correctly, in January that efforts have not been effective enough to divest the property of a local faith-based school to a multi-denominational patron in the dozens of areas with proven demand for choice.

But when he also said control would instead rest with the local bishop in deciding which school and what patron could take it over (on a lease-only basis), strong concerns were raised. With known opposition by the Catholic hierarchy to the model offered by Educate Together, in which preparation for Catholic sacraments and other faith-specific rites does not take place during school hours, the independent body feared it could be pushed out.

The multidenominational network was the favoured option in most areas where the Department of Education surveyed parents four years ago — and not all areas showed adequate demand to justify divestment of a local school. Mr Bruton’s proposed model might see that local democracy overlooked.

Educate Together cried foul this summer over the transfer of patronage from the local Catholic bishop to an alternative patron of a primary school outside Killarney. It happened to be a vacant building in which Educate Together had expressed interest, to fulfil local demand to open one of its schools.

There is no question of there being anything wrong with the community national school system being operated by Kerry Education and Training Board, or its counterparts running similar schools elsewhere. Education and Training Boards Ireland general secretary Michael Moriarty told his annual conference yesterday he has every confidence the Two Mile School will become the school of choice in the Killarney area.

Despite numbers of pupils attending the reopened school with its new patron not yet matching those when it was last opened in June 2016, the ETB is confident those numbers will grow in years to come. Only time will tell the answer to that question.

In the meantime, the Department of Education has yet to secure a property for Educate Together in the town.

Ultimately, respecting the wishes of parents should be the number one aim of Mr Bruton and his department. If previous initiatives to widen choice have been too ineffective, replacing them with anything that restricts, or does not follow, the choices of parents in a wider area is not the solution.