Sir, – Ten years into the school divestment process launched with much fanfare by former minister for education Ruairí Quinn in 2012, one might have expected the Government and Department of Education to finally admit defeat ("Progress on multidenominational schools too 'slow'", News, January 10th).
Instead, both seem wedded to the fiction that this failed initiative remains a credible and appropriate response to the tectonic shifts that have taken place in Irish society over the last 30 years with respect to religious belief and practice. It is not.
The Government’s stated target of 400 multidenominational schools by 2030 is both hopelessly optimistic and woefully inadequate.
According to the official figures, 20 schools have been divested in the last 10 years but another 236 schools must be divested within the next eight.
This assumes that one accepts the department’s rather flexible understanding of the term “multidenominational”, which includes many schools that are actually interdenominational as well as others oxymoronically described as “multidenominational with a Catholic ethos”, which offer religious instruction during the school day.
Even if the Government’s target is reached on schedule, however, it would still represent only about 12 per cent of all primary schools.
With half of all marriages already being celebrated in non-religious ceremonies, we are trying to drag our education system into the last century, not this one.
For many years now the Government has stressed the importance of listening to the voices of parents, yet it is allowing these same voices to be silenced by refusing to publish the results of numerous parental surveys.
It has also allowed small rural schools to be “reconfigured” behind closed doors without any parental consultation whatsoever. Parents around the country are being ignored, whether they are surveyed or not.
For their part, far from supporting the reconfiguration of patronage, the bishops appear intent on leveraging the process to extract concessions from the State, thereby frustrating the efforts of a growing number of non-religious families to assert their human and constitutional rights.
Education Equality believes that religious instruction and worship should be offered on an optional basis after school hours to those who want it, rather than being imposed through the State curriculum on those who don’t.
While we have not yet had the opportunity to make our case to Minister for Education Norma Foley in person, we would greatly appreciate if her Government would drop the divestment charade in favour of something a little more substantive.
It’s getting embarrassing. – Yours, etc,
DAVID
GRAHAM,
Communications Officer,
Education Equality,
Malahide,
Co Dublin.