Colm O'Connor: Protection of religious rights in all schools is a concern

The need for substantial divestment through transparent public processes is increasingly clear, writes Colm O’Connor

Only 13% of surveyed teachers attended Mass weekly and nearly 69% spent less time on religion than was required by the syllabus.

DURING this Catholic Schools’ Week, I’ll be reflecting on the fact that, for the past five years, my daughter has not been able to walk to our publicly funded village school with her friends but instead has to be driven to an equality-based primary school in a nearby town. This disruptive and unnecessary commute has not been the free expression of our ‘parental choice’. We did not want to move her or her brother, but we had no choice if we wanted to protect them from daily religious indoctrination.

I have written previously about how this indoctrination complicated our family’s ability to process our grief following the death of one of our children, but our story is far from unique.

In 2018, the then education minister, Richard Bruton, recognised this and so included a provision in the Admissions Act that required Catholic schools to state publicly how they accommodate opted-out children. However, this requirement has been circumvented across the country by schools simply stating that ‘the procedure’ is for parents to talk to the principal. This practice is intimidating for parents, lacks transparency, is a dead end, and is against the spirit in which the legislation was written, and yet Norma Foley, the incumbent education minister, has stated in the Dáil (November 4, 2021) that it is solely a matter for individual schools. 

This response fails to take children’s and parents’ rights seriously and denies the reality that school boards and their managements are not free actors — they operate within the parameters set out by their bishops.

Rapid changes

Recent Vatican documents on education have recognised the rapid changes caused by globalisation and the need for students in Catholic schools “to know about different beliefs and dialogue both with those beliefs and with non-believers” (Educating to Intercultural Dialogue, 2013). However, these words are diametrically opposed to our experience and to that of other parents from non-/minority-faith backgrounds that I know. Our family’s belief system was literally sent to the back of the class and ignored on a daily basis.

The need for substantial change across the system has been apparent for some time. As far back as 2008, a Red C poll carried out by the Irish Primary Principals’ Network found that 66% of principals and 70% of parents wanted “schools to be under the authority of the State with all religions given equal opportunity”. Since then, the results of referenda on divorce, same-sex marriage, and abortion, along with the steady decline in Catholic weddings (34% in 2020, though Covid was likely a factor) would suggest that these figures likely now underestimate the need for change.

University College Dublin’s recently published report on ‘Children’s School Lives in Junior Infants’ provided further evidence of this societal change. It showed that only 13% of surveyed teachers attended Mass weekly, that nearly 69% of these teachers spent less time on religion than was required by the syllabus, and that religious education was their least-enjoyed subject.

The former archbishop of Ireland, Diarmuid Martin, recognised this change as a threat to the characteristic spirit of Catholic schools, saying in 2017 that parents were increasingly looking “on their local Catholic schools primarily as State schools”. This insight seems to be supported by the results of a survey commissioned by the Catholic Church and published this week. It stated that while 83% of parents choose their children’s school due to its location, just 44% choose it for its Catholic ethos.

In this context, contradictions are likely to emerge between the ethos of the school and the beliefs of parents. An example of this phenomenon can be seen in the wording of the recently published RSE programme, Flourish 

The document acknowledged that: “In many cases, the classroom will be the first, and possibly only place, that the child considers their actions in terms of the teachings of the gospels.”

Dr Martin saw significant divestment as the solution to this problem, but progress has been glacial. Since the process began a decade ago, an average of two of the country’s 2,750 Catholic primary schools have been divested per year. The current process seems to me to be the pretence of progress behind which the State can renege on legal obligation to protect the religious rights of all students.

This failure has been criticised by the Children’s Rights Alliance, the Irish Human Rights Commission, and, most notably, the UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child on four separate occasions.

The Government’s recent draft response to the committee presents their inertia as progress and makes the dubious claim (Article 17) that students at second level have the right to a full opt-out subject if their school teaches one religion only. Parents — and presumably the UN — would be interested in evidence supporting this claim and in hearing why the same legal obligation does not apply to religious primary schools.

Divestment

The need for substantial divestment through transparent public processes is increasingly clear, but the protection of religious rights in all schools is a distinct and more immediate concern. To avoid indoctrination, Ms Foley should revise the Education Act, which assumes that parents’ views are the same as that of the patron and predates the children’s referendum in 2012, and either move faith formation outside of the school day or timetable it alongside an alternative subject such as ethical education.

If only 44% chose the schools because of a religious ethos, both options should be easy to timetable if the will is there.

The NCCA’s Revised Primary Curriculum is the obvious place to make these changes, but the current draft regretfully maintains the status quo and may well result in legal challenges from increasingly frustrated parents.

As a society, we have broad questions to answer together about the nature, purpose, and future of our education system. Developing a national consensus will ultimately require Ms Foley to call the citizens’ assembly for education that was promised in the 2021 programme for government.

Colm O’Connor is the principal of Cork Educate Together Secondary School. He writes here in a solely personal capacity.