Minister urged to back growth of community national schools

Minister for Education and Skills Jan O’Sullivan is being urged to support a major scaling up of the community national school model as a way of giving parents greater choice of school patronage.

Education and Training Boards Ireland (ETBI) has developed 11 community national schools, which are multi-denominational and fall under state patronage, as part of a pilot project introduced in 2008.

It plans to double this number by 2020 but is seeking greater buy-in from the department of education as well as parents, presenting the community school model as an ideal solution to disputes over religious patronage.

Michael Moriarty, general secretary of ETBI, said "we need to be far more proactive in promoting the community national school model. It has been in the shadow for a number of years".

He said one “road block” to further expansion was the fact that the Minister was being made patron of the new schools rather than the ETB which was charged with managing them.

“We are looking for that to be sorted. We have had the pilot phase but the pilot has to end somewhere.”

The change in patronage would give ETBs “more clarity” in their management roles, said Mr Moriarty. It would also help ETBs to further promote community national schools “in response to parental wishes in the local community”.

Educate Together

The community national school model is presented as distinct from Educate Together in facilitating faith formation in Catholicism and other religions through its “Goodness Me, Goodness You” programme.

It is a new venture for the ETBs, which were created out of the old VEC network and have until now concentrated on secondary and further education.

Mr Moriarty was speaking as the ETBI’s two-day annual conference opened in Galway on Wednesday.

Ms O’Sullivan, who is addressing the conference on Thursday, is seen as more supportive of the community national school model than her predecessor Ruairí Quinn who strongly promoted Educate Together as an alternative patron to the Catholic Church.

The church continues to control over 90 per cent of the state’s 3,200 primary schools.

The Catholic Primary Schools Management Association affirmed its commitment to religious inclusion when it said on Tuesday that its schools would be "delighted to welcome" refugee children from Syria and other conflict areas.

The association’s general secretary Fr Tom Deenihan said the majority of its schools had space to enrol children, and would be happy to do so.

“Children of various creeds and nationality comprise the multinational enrolment profile of Catholic schools throughout the country,” he said.

“As an integral part of local parish life in Ireland, Catholic schools would not be found wanting at this critical time for refugees.”