In a recent parliamentary questions session in Ireland, Taoiseach (prime minister) Leo Varadkar provided a surprisingly frank and sensible response to questions from members of parliament (TDs) who are demanding that the government force the divestment (or reconfiguration) of schools that have been established and run by Catholic entities for decades and, in some cases, centuries.
Richard Boyd Barrett, leader of a radical left party People Before Profit, a very minor party in the parliament, on March 22 questioned Varadkar about the lack of progress in divesting school patronage from Catholic bodies who run almost 90 per cent of primary schools.
Because consultation with communities and parents has not realised the expectations of anti-religious groups in Ireland, with communities resistant to changing schools that have delivered and performed for their children for decades, Boyd Barrett unwittingly answered his own question:
“The latest evidence that the divestment programme is not going very well was seen in Raheny, where there were discussions for the reconfiguration of three Catholic schools, and it has run into serious trouble. It is not the first example of this, which points to the fact that the whole process of consultation is not working. While I can only read the reports, it is not the first time I have heard of this sort of thing. We do not have anybody who is really selling the benefits of divestment.”
TD Bríd Smith, of the same party, reinforced the point, again undermining the argument of the far-left parties in government who seek the outcome they desire irrespective of the perspective parents and communities.
“The respondents they do get tend to state, ‘I want my kids to grow up in a Catholic school’. This is because the respondents tend to be those who are positive about the status quo.”
The view from the enlightened left is that the people simply do not understand what is the best for them and their communities and that “we” need to be “more proactive as a State in saying it will happen in the lifetime of this Government”.
Responding to the questions, Varadkar noted that he is personally in favour of “greater choice around education and education ethos”. He said his perspective is that “the most important view is that we try to respect the wishes of parents and indeed the parents of future pupils of particular schools. We must also take into account the views of staff”, which runs contrary to the heavy-handed ideological approach taken by the minority parties.
Emphasising the local perspective, he pointed towards his own constituency in Dublin, where, despite being urban and predominantly secular in perspective (going by voting in recent referenda), local preference is for patronage that is experienced and reliable.
“Similarly, in the Castleknock area, a new secondary school will soon be formally opened under the patronage of the Edmund Rice Schools Trust [a Catholic group]. It is important to take into account what parents actually want and what their wishes are. I do not agree with forced secularisation of our education system. If a school is working well and parents are happy with how it is working, that view should be respected.”
The patronage of schools in Ireland has been questioned repeatedly over the last 20 years, with repeated consultation processes proving resistant to the popular narrative when the discussion turns from the general to the specific schools.
While the practice of Catholicism dwindles in Ireland, there remains a majority that are nominally Catholic and a strong minority that continue to practise. In urban areas where population density allows for a multiplicity of schools to be offered as a choice, and in rural areas where a single school has to serve all, the preference is for retaining what has served the community well over time. The disparaging narrative towards religious-run education at national level is simply not reflected locally.
Of course this does not satisfy Bríd Smith who claims that “people are being forced to send children to Catholic schools because of the lack of choice.”
In practical terms, what is not recognised by advocates for change is that when they call for non-denominational or secular education in response to an increasingly plural society, their perception that the secular school is neutral is not recognised by a large portion of the population.
The refrain is that when schools are funded by the state purse they must be somehow pluralistic, whereas the reality is that this process requires those who have preference for a Catholic, Protestant or Muslim school, have their preference made subordinate to a “neutral” secularism which is not neutral at all.
School patrons in Ireland, historically, took on a role of management of schools for a number of reasons. Firstly, for a long time the state was neither around nor able to manage the education requirements of all its children. Nor was it considered to be the role of the state until very recently to act as a corporate provider and manager of education services across it.
Communities and civil society groups- often through their churches as the most organised and significant community group – took the lead in establishing education facilities in their locality where the state apparatus was weak or absent. They also formed part of community identities whereby the community engaged in the process to protect their identities in the face of a less than agreeable state apparatus in times of Penal Laws prior to independence in Ireland.
The patrons and their representatives, both lay and institutional, dedicated and devoted their lives and times to setting up and running these schools prior to and even when the State become the main funder of these schools.
For politicians such as Richard Boyd Barrett and Bríd Smith this rich history is to be discarded in order to force parents to accept, whether they will it or not, the type of school preferred by a small minority of politicians. The Irish Prime Minister is to be commended for resisting the populist rhetoric from the Left.
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