THE Minister of Education has given in to church pressure and will amend the Education Bill to make explicit the role of patrons or owners, most church-linked, in school management.
Ms Breathnach will also limit the grounds on which students may appeal school decisions to serious matters like expulsions, a key demand of the teacher unions. She will introduce these amendments during the Bill's committee stage, which begins on Thursday.
Another amendment which will please the churches will ensure that an increasingly full core curriculum does not exclude religious instruction.
Department sources admitted yesterday that the constitutional guarantee given to religious bodies to run their own schools had been "taken for granted" in the original Bill, and amendments would make clear that boards of management "have a responsibility to the, patron and can't carry out the aft fairs of a school without reference to the patron".
The Minister's amendments will include a statutory reference to the role of patrons and boards of management under the existing deeds of community and comprehensive schools, the charters of Protestant secondary schools and the articles of management of voluntary Catholic secondary schools.
Representatives of all these groups have expressed alarm that their deeds, charters and articles could be overruled by the Bill as originally drafted.
The Minister hopes, for example, to assuage the fears of the Church of Ireland that its schools' boards of governors would not be recognised by the Bill. Department sources said the present situation, under which Protestant schools' boards of governors are both patrons and boards of management, could be allowed to continue.
On the appeals procedure, the Minister will change the relevant section to provide that only decisions which "significantly" rather than "materially" affect a student may be appealed to the proposed Education Boards.
Department sources said this would restrict such appeals to matters like expulsions and indefinite suspensions of students. They said the change would be "comforting to people worried that frivolous appeals might get through the net."
The amendment would include "a requirement that disputes be resolved at local or school level, wherever possible, and appeals be dealt with as quickly as practicable," said one source.
The Minister has also responded to urgings from the Union of Students in Ireland to require boards of management in second-level schools to facilitate students who want to set up "student councils".
Primary school boards will also be encouraged to put in place mechanisms to encourage senior pupils to become involved in drawing up school rules in areas such as discipline.
Responding to the arguments of the Conference of Religious of Ireland, the Minister will require all education boards to establish a committee to advise it on tackling educational disadvantage in its region.
Another amendment will require the Minister to consult with the education partners before making national regulations in a wide range of areas from recognising and inspecting schools to admitting students, appointing teachers and changing the curriculum.
Education boards will be required to consult widely in drawing up regional education plans, including inviting submissions on the local media.