Sir, – April Duff of Education Equality (May 22nd) expresses the view that "it must have come as a terrible shock for people of minority faiths that they are now being used as the primary excuse for maintaining a law that discriminates against them".
In response to the consultation process on proposed changes to school admissions, the Minister for Education and Skills invited all stakeholders to express their views on what was being proposed. Out of the 198 Church of Ireland and Protestant primary schools in the State, over 100 took the opportunity to respond to the Minister’s invitation. Each school expressed the view that the ability to prioritise entry on the basis of religious denomination, where oversubscribed, is of fundamental importance to their ability to serve families of a Protestant and other minority faith traditions. This information has been in the public domain for some weeks now and our public representatives were obviously aware of these strongly held views from their contributions to the debate on this topic in the Dáil last week. The “shock” is that Education Equality, a group that seems to be holding itself out as speaking for faith minorities in education (but yet also seems to be advocating for the secularisation of Irish education at primary and post-primary level), was apparently unaware of the widely articulated views of Church of Ireland and Protestant minority schools, at both primary and post-primary level, on this issue.
The rights of parents from a Church of Ireland or Protestant faith tradition are not in competition with those of other minority religious traditions. Neither is a “one size fits all” relativist approach to the provision of schools representative of either parental choice or a pluralist republic. The challenge is to make provision for various and varied educational patronage.
At our annual conference last Saturday, the Minister for Education and Skills outlined how Government has already made advances in that regard.
“Cherishing all the children of the nation equally” does not mean that every child must have the same educational experience nor attend the same type of school. Such a view would result in a diminution of rights and schooling experience. Rather, the quality of that education and the resourcing of it must be uniformly and equally delivered, but the type of school should vary and indeed does vary. No school is the same and neither does it remain the same.
At its annual conference last Saturday, the members of the Church of Ireland Primary Management Association articulated this view directly to Minister Richard Bruton and reiterated that the retention of section 7, 3, (c) is essential for oversubscribed Church of Ireland and other Protestant minority schools as a meaningful outworking of the constitutional rights of parents of a minority denomination in regards to accessing existing schools of their own faith tradition. We reject the construed notion that the removal of this existing right could justifiably be for the benefit of religious minorities. Increased provision for diversity of school type and increased school capacity are the obvious long-term solutions. I trust this clarifies our position for Education Equality. – Yours, etc,
Rev BRIAN O’ROURKE,
Chairman,
Church of Ireland
Primary School
Management Association,
Church of Ireland House,
Church Avenue,
Rathmines,
Dublin 6.