Catholic education in Ireland risks falling off a demographic cliff with the numbers of teachers in Catholic schools professing adherence to the faith projected to decline rapidly, according to an in-depth survey of Catholic education in Ireland that was recently released.
Conducted by Global Researchers Advancing Catholic Education (GRACE), an international research-based partnership between academics in universities and Catholic education bodies in Ireland, Australia, the US and the UK, the six-part report – titled “Identity and Ethos in Catholic Primary and Secondary Schools in Ireland, Exploring the Attitudes and Behaviours of Stakeholders” – raises very practical questions and suggests practical solutions to strengthen Catholic education.
However, the public reception of the report seems to propose only either/or solutions – fewer schools or a diluted Catholic education. It is clear that the dilution of the Catholic education has been happening in Ireland both through omission by school patrons, but also the increasingly authoritarian push by the Ministry of Education to provide value-neutral, factual and evidenced-based education in areas of social and moral formation, undermining the freedom and ability of the schools to fully embrace their ethos and promote the Gospel as Catholic schools do in other countries.
For years, Catholic Church in Ireland has come under significant pressure from activist interest groups to divest or relinquish patronage of an undefined number of the schools which it has set up and run over decades – and in some cases centuries. Based on the results of the survey, there is an argument that divestment is the most pragmatic, if not only, response to changing demographics and growing secularisation in order to retain a semblance of a genuine faith-based education for some, avoiding a compromised version for all that is diluted by external pressures and internal inability.
There is a increasing risk that families will be left with schools that have been divested to secular or humanist patrons, while at the same time discarding the Catholic heritage, blood, sweat, tears and years, that went into the establishment and running of the schools over many decades.
While the report offers some reassurance that there is evidence of a nurturing of Catholic identity and ethos in schools at present, with school principles, patrons and teachers over the age of 50 believing in God, practicing the faith and going to Mass regularly. But looking at the younger demographic coming through the ranks, it is likely that in the next 15 years this will drop off considerably – with a subsequent knock-on impact on the delivery of a Catholic education for children and young people.
At primary level, 89 per cent of all schools in Ireland have the Catholic Church as their patron, and the local bishop holds ultimate responsibility though “delegates some of his responsibility to the Board of Management (BoM) which is accountable to him”. At secondary level, 50 per cent of schools are under some form of Catholic patronage and the governance is slightly more complex: patronage and trusteeship rests principally with religious congregations and their trust organisations, or just with the latter, of which there are several.
At the superficial level, the figures presented in the report are somewhat comforting – the present will look after itself. Given the extent of secularisation in Ireland in recent years, Catholic school stakeholders appear to retain a high-level of religiousness relative to the general narrative around religion in the country which is ambivalent at best but often hostile and coming from influential circles.
Due to the ubiquity of Catholic trusteeship of schools, and the fact that they are publicly-funded and implicitly viewed as a public good, most in the general Irish population do not consider their schools to be explicitly Catholic. Catholic patronage seems primarily an issue for competing patronages, humanist/atheist interest groups, and antagonistic media and politicians. The majority of parents at local level express no desire for relinquishing patronage – or divestment, as it is colloquially named.
For someone outside Ireland, it would be expected that Catholic school stakeholders would be assumed to have a Catholic identity. In Ireland this is not the case. It would be rare that the Catholic identity of any school stakeholder – aside from the Chaplain – would be given much, if any, public interrogation. If anything, being “too Catholic” would be more of an issue than the opposite. For that reason, it may be surprising for many in Ireland to read that almost 98 per cent of principals, deputy principals, and religious education teachers and 88 per cent of teaching staff consider themselves Roman Catholic and 86 per cent say they believe in God, according to the GRACE report.
In 15 years’ time, school leadership will come almost entirely from those who are currently under 50 years of age today. Religious adherence amongst teachers drops from 63 per cent for the over 50s to 41 per cent amongst the younger cohort. Of significant concern should be amongst those specifically tasked with religious formation: the proportion of RE teachers who attend religious services drops from 74 per cent to 38 per cent when comparing the over and under 50s, respectively.
Is it possible that in the future, the majority of Catholic schools will be led by people with no commitment to the faith? The report indicates that despite the general, current high-level of support and goodwill for the Catholic ethos within schools, this will decline in the coming years without constructive and active engagement. But the question remains: engagement from where?
Much of the narrative upon the report’s release focused on the comments of one of the authors that the Catholic Church needs to speed up divestment of its schools in order to be able to properly resource a manageable number of schools. “If we don’t act now, we’re going to be pushed by demographic change,” Professor Eugene Duffy of Mary Immaculate College told The Irish Catholic, citing the declining commitment to Catholicism across the generations.
While divestment, and thus reducing the numbers of schools may seem a manageable – and somewhat convenient option – in order to protect the Catholic ethos in the face of what the authors correctly describe as “a milieu that is increasingly secular and, at times, can be hostile to Catholicism in Ireland’s schools”, it risks further failing children and parents who desire and deserve a Catholic education.
The tension between the State and the Church over education is partly a hangover from the historical fact that education has been provided through trusteeships that the Catholic (and Protestant) Church fulfilled when the State was absent or unable to step up to the plate, either under anti-Catholic rule from the UK or a post-colonial weak state without the resources or structure to establish a functioning public education system.
Over time, an increasing dependence on funding from the State arose, as it developed its tax-base and school funding moved from the local level to the national. This meant that, even if not expressed overtly, a financial pressure to align with the zeitgeist began to be felt. He who pays the piper, calls the tune, after all. From the 1980s onwards, the zeitgeist changed from Catholicism to secular humanism in Ireland, with the change gaining pace each passing decade.
With an increasingly zealous and ideological government pressuring schools to essentially act as agents of a State education through curriculum reform in areas that are intrinsic to the schools identity (especially relationship and sexuality education), Catholic patronage is rapidly being pushed to the decision point that the authors of the report recommend: divestment or dilution.
But it does not have to be this way. One of the most striking comments in the report highlights both a cause for concern and for optimism: “If the interest of the patrons is as low as this survey suggests, it is hard to expect that Boards of Management or others in leadership roles will be motivated to attend to ethos issues to any significant extent. It is remarkable, however, that so much good work is done despite this apathy on the part of patrons.”
It would be a pity if the report is used as an instrument that hastens the push for divestment, rather than putting in place an action plan to build on the good work that has endured despite the social and demographic change that may be a cause of the patron apathy.
The report presents a list of recommendations for structural improvements that can sustain the good work. Divestment will not arrest the religious-related demographic cliff that is coming and reflected in the Census data that shows that between 2011 and 2022 the percentage of 25-35 year olds identifying as practicing Catholics has fallen from 80 per cent to under 5 per cent.
The argument remains as to whether the solution of fewer yet more authentic Catholic schools will turn the tide and arrest the decline, or if the best outcome will be achieved through protecting and strengthening the current level of Catholic education.
Pessimists tend to prefer the former and hopeless optimists the latter. The best solution may be somewhere in the middle. Or it may be the worst. Experience in Ireland shows that no matter what the Church does to appease the secular State, it is never enough, and the bread that has been shared and eaten is quickly forgotten.
Photo: Students taking part in the Student Leadership Conference held in Dublin City University St Patrick’s Campus, 17 April 2024. (Image: Screenshot from Catholic Education An Irish Schools Trust (CEIST)).
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