Funding is core issue for schools, not patronage

Ah, don't you just love our political system? First, we terrorise primary schools with the threat of bankruptcy over water charges, then we tell them it is all going to be all right; at least for another two years, when there will probably be a panic again.

The water charges are an interesting example of the relationship of the state to our education system. The Department of Education and Science acts as if the schools were completely private institutions when it suits it, and at the same time demands exacting educational standards as if they were completely State-run. For example, some years ago a former minister for education was asked what he was going to do about the fact that a school had been declared unsafe for public use on the minister's watch. The minister replied that it was every school's responsibility to ensure the health and safety of its staff and pupils. In short, the minister was going to do nothing.

The system is not working. One approach is to blame the system of patronage for the problems, that is, the fact that every primary school is sponsored by a patron body, usually a faith-based or multi-denominational organisation. It is suggested that dismantling this system and making the State directly responsible for all schools would solve the problems. This can only be described as a touching, if somewhat puzzling, faith in a state that has proved itself incapable of planning even water charges.

Apparently, all we need is an Irish Jules Ferry, the French minister for public instruction, who in the early 1880s was responsible for a series of laws that made primary education compulsory and completely secular.

Ferry wrote a famous letter to teachers, insisting that religious education was the province of the church and family, while moral education belonged to the school. He took it for granted that religious education and moral education could be divided into two unrelated entities. Of course a person who is not religious may be an exemplar of moral maturity. However, for many people religion remains an important conduit of morals. As a consequence of committing itself to confining religion purely to the private sphere, France rendered itself incapable of dealing with a sizeable minority of its population for whom such a separation makes no sense at all - the Muslim community.

It is a foolish assumption that the state can teach a moral code without the help of organisations in civic society. People do not act in a moral fashion because a teacher in school instructs them to do so; they absorb their morality from home, from the culture and from key cultural institutions. People may love their nation but they rarely love the state, and it is through love that morals are transmitted.

Ferry may have had good reasons for undermining the power of the former first estate, the Roman Catholic Church, which was powerful, complacent and corrupt. He certainly did French girls a favour, who were educated in large numbers for the first time. Mind you, it did take the French until 1944 to extend the vote to women. One reason often given for the delay was that women were too attached to the church, and therefore could not be trusted to vote according to republican ideals.

Interesting that an alleged commitment to liberty, equality and fraternity could be used to justify denying suffrage to half the French population.

Ireland is not unique in supporting faith-based schools and there are a number of different models in operation across Europe. Instead of seeing the church as an enemy with regard to education for citizenship, as happened in the Third Republic in France, in many states it is seen as an ally.

Mind you, few states have gone as far as Italy in 2006, when the Italian supreme court of the council of state approved of the presence of crucifixes in state schools, on the grounds of the need to transmit to non-EU students the principles of tolerance and freedom. According to Prof Alessandro Ferrari of the University of Insubria, the crucifix in the classroom was interpreted not as a symbol of exclusion for people from religious traditions other than Catholicism, but as an instrument guaranteeing their religious rights.

In Britain, the government and faith schools recently issued a joint document, Faith in the System, acknowledging the important role played by publicly-funded faith schools. For historic reasons, most of these schools are Church of England, but there are Catholic, Muslim and Jewish schools, all funded by the state, and a Hindu school planned for 2008. The British government has recently reiterated its commitment to such schools, and acknowledged that they are popular with parents and important instruments of social cohesion.

Even Eamon Gilmore, after remarks about baptismal certs being the equivalent of apartheid-era passbooks, has written a more conciliatory article in a recent edition of the Irish Catholic. He endorsed Archbishop Diarmuid Martin's call for a "plurality of patronage", and called for a national forum on education where stakeholders could work to determine the future.

The role of the State should be a key part of any such debate. Should the State be the sole provider of education, or is there something healthy about communities setting up their own schools to meet the needs of parents and families? Even in the world of business, current management theory favours responsibility being devolved to the lowest possible level. In this model, centralised agencies play a supportive role, only performing functions that are impossible for lower levels.

Future planning is a good example of something that is beyond the competence of local communities, but once houses are being planned, schools should be put in train immediately. This has already happened in Adamstown in Dublin, where schools, under a plurality of patronage, were open even before the houses were completed.

The primary schools are working well, and often are to the forefront of integration of newcomers. The problem is not the patron system, but constant scrabbling for funds. If the State genuinely saw its role as facilitating local communities, it would stop starving schools of resources, and stop fast-tracking hard-working principals to burnout and premature retirement. It might even decide to do something sensible about water charges