Department ‘passing the buck’ on school patronage, says bishop

A Church of Ireland bishop has called for a major rethink of religious patronage in education, criticising “half-hearted” efforts to increase inclusion and diversity.

Dr Paul Colton, Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross, said the approach of the department of education "has, to my mind, been one of, at times, passing the buck. Such issues are, it is said, 'a matter for each board of management locally'. This is not good enough."

He said a national debate was needed on the proper role of churches in education.

Suggesting Ireland was out of line with international standards, he noted: “In the United Kingdom and in other parts of Europe many of these issues have filtered through domestic courts and, in some cases, onwards to the European Court of Human Rights. I would be surprised if some litigation does not yet lie ahead of us here in Ireland too.”

In an address to the annual conference of the Irish Primary Principals Network on Thursday evening, Dr Colton said schools under religious patronage were often the only option in a neighbourhood.

As such, they had a particular obligation to be places of diversity and inclusion “not in some reluctant, half-hearted or residual way, but positively and with affirmation of diversity”.

Stressing that those who have no religious outlook “have rights too”, he said: “As long as Christian churches have what, in most parts of the country, is a monopoly on the delivery of primary education on behalf of the State, then we have an overriding duty to accommodate diversity and to provide for the educational needs that need to be met in the changing communities in which we are set.”

While there was a legal entitlement for children to “opt out” of faith formation classes, this was “in the main, not practicable, for all sorts of reasons, including limited resources for supervision.

‘Secular system’

“All too often the opting-out marginalises or even stigmatises some of the children who, in most parts of the country, do not have other choices of school in which to enrol.”

While some people advocated an entirely secular system, he said there was a risk that this would result in a Catholic system “by default” due to its majority status.

He said “the day may well come when a model of patronage based overwhelmingly on religious denomination may have to be replaced. Then, however, a new question will arise; can a system ever be exclusively and purely secular?

“I am very sceptical about how a secular system might work in a society where there is such an overwhelming majority of one religious outlook but many minorities.

“As long as the demography of Irish society is the way it is – where the majority of people, with whatever level of allegiance and practice, self-define as being religious, it is hard to imagine how a truly secular system can be guaranteed, not least in a way that does not become residual religious majoritarianism by default.

“In other words if 84 per cent of the people in a society self-define as Roman Catholic how can society in general, and minorities in particular, be assured that a so-called secular system will not, in fact, be Roman Catholic by majoritarian default?”

“In the midst of such debates I have found that even among determined secularists and adamant atheists – not least in the media – that the residual religious syntax and culture is, paradoxically, uncritically infused with the religion of their upbringing.”

He recommended the establishment of a national forum to debate these issues and perhaps even put to a national plebiscite the sort of education system we should have in the future.