Slow progress of divestment shows parents want a choice of schools — not to change existing ones
Today a majority (88%) of Ireland’s primary schools remain under Catholic patronage. File picture
Ireland’s primary schools increasingly serve a society that is more diverse, more secular and more multicultural than at any point in the State’s history. As demographics have evolved, demand for access to schools of multi-denominational patronage has grown sharply.
This was underscored by the findings of the recent Primary School Survey, published by the Department of Education and Youth earlier this year, which found four in 10 parents want the option of sending their child to a multi-denominational school. More than 200,000 households participated in the survey.
Yet, despite successive governments recognising this growing demand over the previous decade and a half, and despite repeated commitments to diversify school patronage, progress has been strikingly slow. In hindsight, the real surprise may not be the pace of change but rather that policymakers expected a different outcome.
For over 15 years, successive governments have acknowledged the need for greater diversity in Irish primary education. In 2011, the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in Primary Schools, established by then minister for education, Ruairí Quinn, sought to diversify a primary school system overwhelmingly dominated by Catholic patronage.
Policymakers envisaged large-scale transfers of schools from religious to multi-denominational patrons alongside the establishment of new multi-denominational schools. Early ambitions were substantial. Minister Quinn suggested that almost half of Catholic primary schools might eventually transfer patronage despite some observers at the time regarding those expectations as unrealistic.
The forum report recommended that approximately 250 schools across 18 dioceses should be surveyed to identify areas where there appeared to be demand for greater patronage diversity. It suggested that, of these 250 schools, around 50 might ultimately divest. A subsequent report found sufficient parental demand for “immediate” transfer of schools to other-than-Catholic patrons in 23 of the 38 areas examined.
However, the forum report excluded approximately 1,700 stand-alone rural schools from consideration for patronage transfer, concluding that divestment was not a practical option. Instead, it recommended that these schools become more inclusive within their existing structures.
This highlighted the significant practical constraints facing the minister’s divestment target and provided an early indication that it was based on overly optimistic assumptions.
Public opinion surveys conducted at the time suggested significant support for greater school choice, as was the case in the findings of the recent survey by the department. This finding has remained consistent over time, with demand continuing to grow for schools that reflect a broad range of beliefs, identities and worldviews.
While slow, progress been made. Both Educate Together and the Education and Training Board-managed Community National Schools (CNS) models have expanded. By September 2026, 19 Catholic schools will have reconfigured to become CNSs, taking the total number of CNSs to 33. Over the same period, one Catholic school has transferred patronage to Educate Together and 57 new Educate Together schools have opened.
Today a majority (88%) of Ireland’s primary schools remain under Catholic patronage. In 2024, the then education minister Norma Foley acknowledged that divestment schemes had yielded only “very small results”, meaning entire communities still have little or no access to multi-denominational options.
The most immediate obstacle to the diversification of school patrons is structural. The State funds almost all primary schools but owns relatively few of them. Most are under the ownership and patronage of religious bodies. Divestment therefore depends largely on the willingness of existing patrons to transfer schools.
Governments can encourage change but have limited ability to compel it. The challenge was compounded by the absence of clear implementation milestones. While in 2016, education minister Richard Bruton set a target of 400 multi- and non-denominational schools by 2030, there were few publicly visible annual benchmarks against which progress could be measured.
Moreover, the selection of a consensus-based approach in 2011 was always going to create challenges. A process that required agreement among parents, teachers, boards of management and a wider community with differing priorities and attachments to the status quo was always going to be slow; and further undermined in some areas by the apparent deliberate spreading of disinformation, leading to public anxiety.
As the saying goes, all politics is local and while national surveys suggest significant demand for diversification, local support is often weaker and its politics more complex than this polling suggests.
The core assumption underpinning successive patronage reforms is deceptively simple. That is, if parents want greater diversity in education, they will support changing the patronage of existing schools. Fifteen years later, that assumption appears increasingly questionable.
Many parents support a more diverse school system in principle while remaining reluctant to alter the patronage of the school their own children attend. This is not necessarily a contradiction. For families already embedded in a school community, patronage often becomes secondary to considerations such as stability, familiarity and trust. A change of patron creates an element of uncertainty, which may concern some.
If the patron body changes, will the principal stay? Will teachers leave? Will school traditions disappear? Will the school uniform change? Will practising Catholic children still have access to sacramental preparation? (Incidentally, yes; many children in multi-denominational schools engage in religious instruction outside of school hours).
The burden of proof falls on the proposed change rather than on the existing arrangement as during the consultation process parents are effectively asked to choose between the certainty of the existing arrangement and an as-yet unspecified alternative. This creates a natural advantage for the status quo.
Given the appetite for quick wins in politics, it is perhaps unsurprising that the target of 400 multi- and non-denominational schools by 2030 was abandoned in the current Programme for Government. Yet abandoning the target does not remove the underlying challenge.
While some parents may feel that the solution is to simply create additional alternatives where demand exists, the problem is that many parts of Ireland lack the enrolment numbers or infrastructure to support multiple schools. That is why governments turned to divestment in the first place.
The lesson from the past 15 years is not that parents do not want greater diversity in school choice. The evidence suggests a great many do. Rather, it is that policymakers misunderstood the nature of that demand. They assumed support for diversity would translate into support for converting existing schools.
In practice, many parents appear to want greater choice without losing the schools they already know and trust. That distinction matters.
If future governments continue to rely primarily on voluntary divestment, progress is likely to remain slow. Any serious effort to diversify school patronage will need to reckon with a simple reality; people often embrace reform in principle while preferring continuity in practice.
- Anne Marie Kavanagh is associate professor of Ethical and Intercultural Education, Dublin City University
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
