Laying radical foundations for the primary school system

This month marks the 180th anniversary of sustained quality education which has served this country so well

A FEW WEEKS ago I was in Liverpool; as a delegate of the PES (Party of European Socialists) as well as representing Ireland at the Irish Embassy reception and a number of related events at the British Labour Party Conference.

I was met at the airport by Peter Quinn, the son of my third cousin Brendan. He took me over to 33 Bank Road, Bootle where my father Malachi was born in 1903. My grandfather, John Quinn, who emigrated from a hill farm in Attical, Co Down in the 1890’s returned to Newry in 1911, buying a grocery shop called the Milestone, and grew it into a thriving business. Two of my grandfather’s brothers remained in Liverpool. After leaving Bootle, Peter drove me to check into the Knowsley Suites Hotel on the outskirts of Liverpool city. I then realised not only the strong family connections to Liverpool but Ireland’s primary school system’s connection to Lancashire as well.

Edward Stanley was born in Knowsley House and appointed as chief secretary of Ireland in 1830. He held that post for three years before he eventually became prime minister of the United Kingdom.

In his short period in Ireland, when so many Irish people had emigrated to Lancashire and Liverpool in particular, he laid the radical foundations of our Irish primary school system in 1831.

This month, we celebrate the 180th anniversary of sustained quality education in the national school system which has served this country so well.

But the original system designed by Edward Stanley was very different to what we have today. Religious divisions between Christian denominations in Ireland were intense at the time. The Anglican Church of Ireland was the Established State Church and people of all persuasions had to pay tithes or taxes towards its upkeep. Catholic emancipation had been finally achieved two years earlier in 1829. The disestablishment of the Church of Ireland would not happen until 1869, 38 years after Stanley set out his educational plan in a letter to the Duke of Leinster who was the chairman of the new Commissioners of National Education.

Religious bigotry, the legacy of the penal laws of the previous century, official attempts to convert Catholics to the Reformed Church through a network of charter schools and a mushrooming of more than 9,000 hedge schools of varying quality dominated Irish education in the first two decades of the 19th century. A commission of enquiry into education completed its work in 1827.

One of the main issues identified was how to provide for a quality state supported education system for a deeply divided population which was sometimes suspicious of and hostile to each other. Stanley’s solution was simple and radical. All schools would be required to accept both Catholic and Protestant children who would be taught secular subjects together. The children would be separated only for religious instruction which had to take place at specified times. When religious instruction took place for one group, pupils from other denominations would not be required to attend.

He set out in detail how primary schools would be established and benefit from state support. Applications were sought from patrons who were prepared to establish and operate schools. Such patrons could be individuals, such as landlords, groups of interested persons or church leaders.

However, Stanley sought to ensure that priority would be given to mixed groups of Catholics and Protestants when applying for state aid. The objective then was that the primary schools would be non-denominational or, in the words of the time, “mixed”.

However, within a few decades the power of the various churches increasingly ensured that “mixed education” was not realised and the schools (or national schools as they were called) were in fact denominational.

In 1922, the new Irish State concentrated on changing the curriculum of primary schools by placing greater emphasis on the Irish language but left the church control and denominational character of primary schools unchanged. The denominational nature of the primary school system was officially recognised in 1964 when a preamble was added to the Rules for National Schools, giving “explicit recognition to the denominational character of these schools”. Today 95 per cent of the 3,163 State-aided national or primary schools continue to be under the patronage of the Catholic or Protestant churches.

Stanley would be proud today of the growth of his plan for primary education. His scheme, which saw the introduction of education for all, was years ahead of the rest of Britain at that time and one of the first of its type in the world.

In November this year, new boards of management will be elected for a four-year term. All 22,000 participants are volunteers, who receive no expenses and without whose help it would be virtually impossible to run the schools. Stanley could hardly have imagined how his scheme could have developed and grown.

He would, no doubt, now wonder how Ireland, in the 21st century, could cater for the competing claims of different Christian denominations and provide for the diversity of the three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam along with other world religions as well as atheists, agonistics and humanists.

Perhaps, when we come to celebrate the bicentenary of the Stanley letter in 20 years time, we will have found a satisfactory model.