This September, Educate Together is opening two new national schools on an emergency basis in Dublin suburbs. One is in Lucan and the other widely publicised development is in Balbriggan. In both cases, the need for additional schools has been flagged well in advance to the Department of Education and Science and the openings are as a result of Educate Together responding positively to department requests for co-operation to meet serious school place shortages, writes Paul Rowe
In both areas, there is a high proportion of Irish ethnic minority families unable to access places for their children. This has given rise to justifiable concerns over issues with integration and enrolment policies.
Educate Together has agreed to open these schools after being given the resources and accommodation to do so and because we are convinced that in both areas there is already extensive unmet demand for our model of school.
However, accelerating a process that usually takes between 9 to 18 months and accomplishing it in a very short period is a challenging task for any educational body. Such an emergency response should not be necessary in a properly planned system. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin's call for better planning for new schools echoes work done by Educate Together over many years aimed at improving the process and ensuring that new schools open in a properly funded, planned and professional manner and in appropriate accommodation.
A mechanism whereby school sites are transferred as a condition of planning permission for housing estates is essential for the future. Until this step is taken by the Government, sites will only be available at exorbitant cost to the taxpayer and will almost always be late for the residents of new housing developments.
We are confident that the Balbriggan school will develop into a successful Educate Together school that will reflect the same wide social and ethnic mix that characterises our existing school in the town. Educate Together schools are based on a legal obligation to deliver equality of esteem and access to children "irrespective of their social, cultural or religious backgrounds". As the only national body in Irish primary education bound by such obligations, we are committed to ensuring that there will be no discrimination on racial or religious grounds in the intake of this school or any school in our network.
There has also been much misguided comment over the impact of the enrolment policies of existing schools on the shortages of school places and the difficulties encountered by those without Catholic baptismal certificates accessing local schools.
Catholic schools and their enrolment policies are not the cause of school place shortages. Neither are they the cause of religious discrimination in the system as a whole. Faith-based schools may lawfully prefer those of their religion when taking enrolments. It is appropriate that parents may choose such a school if this is their preference and be confident that the school accurately delivers their choice. What is unacceptable is that in most areas of the country there is no choice. The reality is that increasing numbers of families are being compelled to send their children to schools that must prefer a specific religious outlook whether or not such a school accords with their conscience. This lack of choice is the State's responsibility.
This is the case that Educate Together has raised formally with the Department of Education and Science, all parties in the Oireachtas, the United Nations and the Council of Europe. These international bodies have issued direct and friendly recommendations to the Irish State to act to ensure that alternatives to faith-based schools are much more readily available to Irish parents.
It is essential that progress on this issue is made at a time when our planners indicate that hundreds of new primary schools will be needed in the next 13 years.
It is a fundamental injustice to maintain a system of publicly funded education in which an increasing number of parents are compelled to send their children to a faith-based school because no alternative is available. It is particularly unacceptable that children baptised in a particular faith have priority in accessing State-funded education.
The 98 per cent proportion of faith-based schools in the Irish system must be changed.
There is an urgent need for the Minister and her department to work with organisations like Educate Together to ensure that parents have access to multidenominational schools if they so wish. She must ensure that there are sufficient school places for all children and that parents may make a free choice between faith-based schools and those based on the broad principles of the model worked out by Educate Together over the past 30 years.
We look forward to working with the department and other partners in education to ensure that there is a balanced choice of school type available for all families in Ireland.
Paul Rowe is chief executive of Educate Together www.educatetogether.ie