FOUR PRIVATE Dublin Protestant secondary schools have claimed before the High Court that a teachers’ redeployment scheme introduced last year by the Department of Education interferes with their autonomy over whom they can employ, and with the rights of parents to have their children educated according to their religious faith.
The scheme arises out of the closure of a number of schools in Dublin due to declining populations.
The schools – St Andrew’s, Booterstown; Rathdown Girls School, Glenageary; Wesley College, Ballinteer; St Patrick’s Grammar, Christchurch – are seeking declarations that the Minister for Education and Science has breached their constitutional rights by requiring them to accept teachers under the scheme.
In their action, which opened yesterday before Mr Justice Bryan McMahon, they want orders directing the Minister to cease operation of the scheme, to pay the salaries of teachers appointed by the schools outside the scheme, and damages.
In opposing the action, the Minister contends the schools have to prove their denominational nature and ethos with regard to the selection and recruitment of teachers.
The Minister also says the question of how to deal with surplus teachers was agreed with the social partners, including teachers’ unions and school managerial authorities, as part of the national agreement Towards 2016. The schools say they first learned in February last year that the scheme was to be introduced in May 2007. They say this was done without consultation or agreement with them. To implement the scheme, a director of redeployment was appointed with the power to unilaterally assign a teacher, and his decision is binding on all parties.
Opening the case, Gerard Hogan SC, for the schools, argued that the redeployment scheme was unconstitutional and ultra vires, because it interfered with parents’ rights to have their children educated according to their faith and with the rights of school boards of management or governors to appoint teachers.
While the State pays the salaries of teachers, it was the responsibility of boards of management to select and appoint teachers under the 1998 Education Act, Mr Hogan said. The powers of the redeployment director under the scheme directly conflicted with the rights of schools to interview and assess candidates for teaching posts.
While the representative body for schools in the majority Roman Catholic sector had agreed “under duress” to the redeployment scheme, the Protestant schools “never accepted it”, counsel said.
The schools were not arguing that the teachers on the redeployment panel would not be suitable, but even “one unsatisfactory teacher” could have an effect on the standing and morale of a school, counsel said. For instance, if it was part of the tradition and ethos of the school that teachers stayed after-hours for study periods or to take pupils to religious services, a teacher who did not subscribe to that ethos could say they did not wish to do that.
The schools say their refusal to take part in the redeployment scheme has meant they have had to pay from their own resources the salaries of any new teachers. They say the Minister has wrongfully withheld funding for salaries even though all teachers available to be transferred under the scheme have already been allocated to other schools. The Minister’s actions “are intended to punish” them for non-participation in the scheme, they contend.
St Andrew’s is a co-educational, inter-denominational school founded by the Presbyterian church in 1894; St Patrick’s is the only Protestant secondary school in Dublin city centre; Wesley is the only Methodist second-level school; and Rathdown is one of only two all-girl Church of Ireland boarding schools in the state.