Sir, – One must feel a degree of sympathy for your education correspondent Carl O’Brien, who is forced once again to devote his journalistic skills to perhaps the least newsworthy story in Irish education, the Sisyphean pursuit of changes in primary school patronage (“Parents to be surveyed about converting schools to multidenominational ethos”, News, September 29th).
Department of Education secretary general Bernie McNally refers, predictably, to “the Government commitment for increasing multi-denominational provision”.
This commitment is just rhetorical, however. Successive governments have only ever proffered a distant 2030 target that is increasingly unlikely to be met.
How many schools does the department plan to reconfigure in 2024?
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If they have done their sums, the figure will be at least 33. This is the minimum number of school transfers that are required next year, and every year for the next seven years, to reach the Government’s long-stated target of 400 multidenominational schools.
Even if this task is somehow achieved, it will only reduce religious control of our primary education system from 95 per cent to around 87 per cent. And this in a country where Catholic marriages already stand at just 40 per cent and falling.
This process is not working, nor should we expect it to.
It is flawed not only in its execution but also in its conception.
It is long past time for a grown-up conversation about the continued role of religion in our schools.
A Government that thinks in election cycles cannot pin its hopes for reform on an organisation that thinks in centuries. – Yours, etc,
DAVID GRAHAM,
Communications Officer,
Education Equality,
Malahide,
Co Dublin.