It was the most empowering experience I ever had: taking control and opening a school
For most parents in the age of the nuclear family, parenting is a private function carried out behind closed doors. To extend your parenting into a wider network of community, other parents and schools can be a deeply empowering experience.
Sheila Ahern and Marian Fitzpatrick were among a group of mothers who took parenting to the limit. When their young children had no multi-denominational primary school to go to they started one from scratch in less than a year. The result is the 19th Educate Together school, which opened in the King's Inns in Henrietta Street, Dublin, on September 4th. "We all had our children down from the day they were born on the waiting list of the Educate Together school in Glasnevin and we had no hope of getting them in. We realised that getting a school for our children would happen only if we did it," says Marian Fitzpatrick, mother of four-year-old Elizabeth, one of the new school's first pupils.
On November 13th last year 10 working mothers got together (fathers were too busy, apparently) and, in addition to leading busy lives caring for children and working full-time outside the home, spent 20 hours per week each going about the business of finding a premises. They pooled their contacts, met all their public representatives - amongst them the Taoiseach - and scanned every inch of the Dublin Corporation draft development plan, which Senator Joe Costello took off his own wall because they couldn't afford the £25 to buy one. At one point they even climbed the viewing tower in Smithfield and scouted for empty buildings. After a five-month search, one of their contacts - Justice Ronan Keane, who has a special interest in multi-denominational education - offered them the former home of the under-treasurer at King's Inns, a magnificent building. "It's like going to Trinity College Dublin at the age of four," comments Marian Ahern.
Once they had the lease, and had had the premises approved by the Department of Education, they began hiring two teachers and a principal. They then campaigned for 95 per cent funding from the Department of Education, which previously had funded multi-denominational schools at only 75 per cent during a probationary period of "temporary recognition". Pre-enrolment day was crucial and when 250 children were signed up, Sheila and Marian were amazed. With such a high preenrolment, they won their battle and received permanent recognition and top-level funding from the day they opened.
How did they do it? Networking overtime, they pulled in everyone they knew of any influence. Marian, who worked in RTE, used her media contacts to get radio time and newspaper inches for the cause. It was a model for parent networking and shows how parents really can make a difference when they have the commitment.
"We had a dynamic group of parents in that each of us brought a different talent. We would never have met as friends had it not been for our common motivating factor, which was our children. I have never been involved in the community like that before," says Marian. Sheila says: "It was the most empowering experience I ever had: taking control and opening a school."
Diversity is important to all the mothers on the committee and they were particularly concerned that, as the State is seeing an influx of people from other countries and races, their children should be part of a multi-cultural environment where difference is celebrated. The new school is both religiously and racially mixed - which is a far cry from Sheila and Marian's own childhoods in strict, homogeneous Catholic schools where values were never questioned.
"Our school is child-centred. All the children know that they have a right to ask questions and to be answered," says Sheila.
"My son Finn (6) was excited to be treated as an individual and to be shown that his opinions are important," says Marian.
Having overcome adversity to beat the system, Marian and Sheila comment that they did all the work free of charge for the Department of Education, which was handed the school on a plate.
Parents who want to have an influence over their children's schooling need not necessarily go as far as Marian and Sheila did. Rose Tully, president of the National Parents Council (Post-Primary) urges parents to become involved in parent teacher associations and in the NPC. "Parents who take an active interest can help improve the educational system and support teachers to ensure a good system for their children," she says.
The days are gone when parents were regarded as valuable mainly as fundraisers by religious-run schools, she says. Under the Education Act, parents have a right to be involved.
Many parents have concerns about issues of ethos and discipline and it is only by becoming involved in the local school and inter-acting with teachers and principals that parents can understand how a school works. For children, the advantage is that when a child has a problem, parents know precisely who to talk to in the school, having already developed a working relationships. Tully asserts: "Research shows that children perform better when their parents are involved in school life."
