The calls for changes to the current school admissions system continue to grow, with the launch of a new campaign aiming to prevent schools discriminating on religious grounds.
The Archbishop of Dublin has defended the rule prioritising children who have been baptised for places in Catholic schools, whereas today John Walshe, former special advisor to former Education Minister Ruairi Quinn, spoke to Newstalk Breakfast about this issue this morning and about the changes that need to be made. Listen here.
Former Minister for Justice Nora Owen looks back on decades of waiting for progress and asks:
Are we there yet?
This is a common question asked by young children going on a car journey but soon the same four and five year olds will be asking this with regard to delivery of school places. New question: “Where am I going to school, Mammy, when I am 5?”
When Ruairi Quinn became Minister for Education in 2011, he recognised that Ireland had a problem with providing school places for children whose parents did not necessarily want to send their children to Catholic ethos schools.
95% of our 3200 primary schools belong to the Catholic church and Ruairi Quinn’s plan was to get some (not all) of these handed over to be run by other denominations or to non-denomination managements.
Four years later and only nine schools have been divested--eight to Educate Together of which only two are in buildings owned by the Catholic Church and one by Church of Ireland.
So it is still Catholics-only in the majority of our schools and if your children are not baptised then they go to the bottom of the list.
I have no problem with the Catholic Church owning some of our Primary schools, as there are still many who want such schools, but Ireland’s population has changed very much in the last 15 years and Ruairí Quinn’s changes are essential if our young children are to get an education.
I well remember the huge furore, and also support, for the first nondenominational primary school in Dalkey in 1978. You would think the people planning to open this school had been trying to re-invent the wheel!
But 35 years later less than 100 such schools have opened.
Unfortunately an element of Nimbyism has crept into this whole debate where parents just won’t accept a change in the status of their school, the Church authorities are dragging their heels and even where there are places available in Educate Together schools, the Dept of Education has defined “catchment areas” and tough on your child if you are outside of the defined area.
So, please, please someone with mediating skills step into this mess so our young children aren’t the ones to suffer while the adults can’t make decisions.
- Nora Owen
