Union favours non-specific religious education

THE Irish National Teachers Organisation has said it favours a broad-based education system which would allow children of all denominations a religious education in Irish schools.

Earlier this year Education Minister Mary Hanafin gave the go-ahead for a multi-denominational primary school in Dublin run by the Vocational Education Committee.

Yesterday at the INTO conference, the union’s general secretary, John Carr said: “We must face the reality that within the primary education system, many of our schools give little or no formal knowledge or understanding of our relationships with some Christian or non-Christian religions. We cannot as a State continue indefinitely to build different types of schools to accommodate diversity in every part of Ireland. We have to find a new way of addressing the needs of all children within our education system.”