non-religious alternatives

LittleBook

Kildrought wrote: »

To both mine and teachers' amusement, both my children picked up A grades in said exam!

Ha!! My daughter too!! :pac:

She's still obliged to take religion classes (during the leaving cert cycle) but since the exam itself isn't obligatory, all of the curriculum for the exam isn't covered. Her religion teacher suggested she take the extra classes (on Saturdays) and register to take the exam and we seriously considered it for a while ... an A is an A, right?

In the end she decided to focus on her preferred subjects.

How Strange

I've absolutely no problem with religion education which teaches an awareness and respect for all beliefs but I've got a serious problem with compulsory indoctrination in one religion and an educational system lacking in choice.
I'd rather avoid the mainstream school system for this reason.

unkel

Thank God* we have a choice now. None of my children are christened and they all are or will be in Educate Together national schools. The first ever Educate Together secondary school in Ireland is due to open the year after next right here in Lucan.

*only kiddin'

Sleepy

LittleBook wrote: »

Her religion teacher suggested she take the extra classes (on Saturdays) and register to take the exam and we seriously considered it for a while ... an A is an A, right?

In the end she decided to focus on her preferred subjects.

Glad to hear your daughter has more common sense than her religion teacher. The "an A is an A for points" point is one of the key problems with our education system right now: having an A in RE will be utterly worthless to 99% of students when they enter the college system, far better to focus on the subjects one will be using for their degree.

I'm actually utterly dismayed at the inclusion of RE in the exam system whilst philosophy, programming and health are utterly ignored.

implausible

Daisy M wrote: »

I dont mind the teaching of it I mind the exam and the fact the class tests are pretty hard going. I think its great to learn about other religions but I am not fully sure that if someone is an atheist that they should not have a choice. It really is the exam not been a choice I have a problem with. It is an extremely hard subject and my sons teacher really takes it seriously.

I just want to clarify something here in case there is any confusion - religion is NOT a compulsory exam subject in every secondary school, in fact I'd go so far as to guess that it's only the situation in a minority of schools. Parents do have a choice, in determining what school their child goes to. Different schools decide what subjects are compulsory for the Junior Cert - it may be Religion in one school, French in another and History in another.

SerialComplaint

lazygal wrote: »

Schools are exempt from the Equal Status Act in religious aspects and can legally refuse a child in favour of one that subscribes to the ethos. Happens all the time in a local CofI school, Catholics or those of no faith are regularly turned away.

Just to be clear, a school can NOT refuse a child because of their religion or lack of religion. They CAN give priority to children of a certain religion. If the school is over-subscribed, those of no religion can get bumped off the bottom of the list.

Orion

Yes they can. Schools are exempt from both the Equal Status and Employment Equality Acts. They can refuse employment to people of other faiths and refuse to enrol children of other faiths if they deem it necessary "to protect the ethos" of the school.

Vel

January wrote: »

Naming ceremony... and Educate Together school. Problem solved...

Not for us as the Educate Together school in our area is so over subscribed and our son is No. 154 on the list:rolleyes:

We are in a similar situation as don't want anything to do with the Catholic Church or the local Catholic school. My partner is from a Methodist background so we have been thinking of getting the kids baptised in our local Methodist Church in order for them to be considered for a place in the local Church of Ireland school which is really good. Its a big decision for us as both of us would prefer not to get them baptised at all but we also want to make sure they get a good education.

I have spent a lot of time reading up on the Methodist ethos which is very much family based and community focused which I like and I had gotten my head around the idea that you can't be anonymous like in the Catholic Church and would have to be prepared to participate in mass/events etc. We went up to meet the Reverand the other day and it was all going so well until he told us that some members of the congregation are very likely to have a problem with us not being married. Doesn't seem very Christian to me!

Sleepy

Vel, neither of our kids are baptised as COI but one is currently attending a COI school and his younger sister will be following him there in a year or two as education wise the school is fantastic.

My advice would be to speak with the headmaster/mistress of the school directly about getting your child's name down. We have noticed there's a definite clique of the "mummy's who do lunch" in operation but suspect that would be the case in any school in an area where you have quite a few well off parents.

Vel

Have done that Sleepy but all we were told is that they give places to COI first, followed by other Methodist religions, followed by the rest, so there is just no guarantee. They did pretty much tell us that if they were baptised Methoidst they would get in, hence why we had the meeting last week.

Quite frankly I don't care what people think of the fact that we have chosen to have children outside of marriage. We are in a strong committed relationship and both our children were planned, but I won't under any circumstances put myself into a regular situation where I feel we are being judged or have to justify our situation to others. My partner thinks I should just suck it up for the sake of the kids!

SerialComplaint

Orion wrote: »

Yes they can. Schools are exempt from both the Equal Status and Employment Equality Acts. They can refuse employment to people of other faiths and refuse to enrol children of other faiths if they deem it necessary "to protect the ethos" of the school.

There is no general exemption to Equality legislation for schools. That's why the Equality Authority go to the bother of producing a publication that tells schools about their specific obligations under the Equal Status Acts?

http://www.equality.ie/index.asp?locID=106&docID=66

The conditions about refusal of pupils are;

A second exemption concerns schools where the objective is to provide education in an environment that promotes certain religious values. A school that has this objective can admit a student of a particular religious denomination in preference to other students. Such a school can also refuse to admit a student who is not of that religion, provided it can prove that this refusal is essential to maintain the ethos of the school.

So it only applies to certain schools, and it only applies where the refusal is 'essential to maintain the ethos of the school'.

Very, very few schools have enrolment policies that refuse students based on their religion.

Orion

So you agree with me then. All catholic schools have a policy that one of their raisons d'etre is to promote a catholic ethos. This does not have to be in the enrolment policy.

95% (ish) of schools are patron-ed by religious orders so saying "only certain schools" is disingenuous. 100% of these schools can discriminate based on religion if they chose to and most do.

Proof is also a relative thing in this regard. The school simply has to say that it believes that allowing a muslim (for example) in to the school could harm the ethos of the school and no judge could rule against them. The only grounds someone would have would be if the school admitted someone of the same religion (or non religion) as you who was below you on the list. Otherwise they are well within their legal rights.

You can argue the toss about this all night if you like. But this is fact. I was heavily involved in a campaign against the two Bills in 1999/2000 for exactly this reason. I have heard all the arguments saying this will never happen. It has happened. It continues to happen. And it will happen repeatedly until some government finally grows a pair of balls and tells the various churches that they're not getting their own way anymore. Not in my lifetime I imagine.

SerialComplaint

I certainly don't agree with your claim that "Schools are exempt from both the Equal Status and Employment Equality Acts". That is not true. To say that "100% of these schools can discriminate based on religion if they chose to and most do" is not true. Most don't discriminate. Most principals want more pupils. More pupils = more teachers and more voluntary contributions and more economies of scale. Most schools don't want to turn away anyone. Some Catholic schools are reserving specific places for students of no religion. http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0123/schools.html

Believe it or not, I share your concern about religious control of schools. You don't do your case any favours by exaggerating the problem.

I did a quick Google search for school enrolement policies in Ireland. Not one of these schools will refuse a student because of their religion;

http://www.sixmilebridgens.ie/enrolment_policy.html
http://www.garrydoolisns.com/school-rules-and-policies/enrolment-policy/
http://www.stcolumbasns.com/?page_id=55
http://www.carnaunns.ie/media/files/Enrolment%20Policy.pdf
http://www.innishannonschool.com/About-Us/Enrollment-Policy.aspx
http://www.taneyschool.ie/Enrolment%20Policy.pdf
http://www.realtnamarans.ie/index.php?page=enrolment-policy

So where exactly are these 'most schools' that refuse pupils because of their religion?

lazygal

SerialComplaint wrote: »

So where exactly are these 'most schools' that refuse pupils because of their religion?

There are two near me. I won't name them as I'm not sure if that would contravene boards rules. One I referred to above, its a CofI school and I know parents of non-CofI children who have been refused a place in writing because they are Catholic and this would dilute the ethos. The other is a Gaelscoil with a Catholic ethos who has refused children who have not been baptised, the parents who fail to submit a baptismal cert for the child are routinely refused because it is a Catholic school. I'm in a Dublin suburb, there are also Educate Together and two other Catholic schools within my catchment area, and I know the Catholic schools, while slightly more flexible, have become a lot stricter about baptismal certs and have kept parents waiting to hear about a place, which isn't ideal for planning your child's education.

SerialComplaint

lazygal wrote: »

There are two near me. I won't name them as I'm not sure if that would contravene boards rules.

There is nothing in the charter about not naming schools. Enrolment policies are in the public domain, as I showed with the eight examples above.

There is no reason why you shouldn't link to the enrolment policies of the schools in question. I've already linked to one other CofI school (Taney) that includes the line 'Children of other religions and none' as the last priority in their enrolment policy.

Orion

SerialComplaint wrote: »

I certainly don't agree with your claim that "Schools are exempt from both the Equal Status and Employment Equality Acts". That is not true. To say that "100% of these schools can discriminate based on religion if they chose to and most do" is not true. Most don't discriminate. Most principals want more pupils. More pupils = more teachers and more voluntary contributions and more economies of scale. Most schools don't want to turn away anyone. Some Catholic schools are reserving specific places for students of no religion. http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0123/schools.html

Simply saying they are exempt is a mistake on my part. They are exempt from the religious discrimination part of them only - no other part.

I'll have to dig up the references - won't happen tonight. That you've found a few schools that are inclusive but the vast majority do discriminate. Even giving 1 catholic priority over someone else is discrimination. The fact that they then allow in some non-catholics does not lessen that discrimination.

So lets look at the ones you linked:
SixMileBridge:
The school has a Catholic ethos. In addition to Catholic religious education, Catholic values permeate all school activities. The Employment Equality Act 1997 safeguards the rights of schools of religious denominations to give priority to children of their particular denomination over children of other denominations. Accordingly, the Board of Management of Sixmilebridge N.S. has decided that priority will be given to applications made on behalf of a child whose parents are seeking an education in the Catholic tradition.

They're actually wrong in this - it's the Equal Status Act that gives them this right but the principle is the same.

Garrydoolis:
The school aims to promote the full and harmonious development of all pupils: cognitive, intellectual, physical, cultural, moral and spiritual, including a living relationship with God and other people and promotes a Christian philosophy of life.
What about non-christians such as Jews, Muslims, Atheists?

St. Columba's
St Columba’s National School is a Church of Ireland school. Priority for places is therefore given in the following order:

(a) Church of Ireland (Anglican) parishioners/accustomed members of the parish of North Strand. The rector of North Strand must countersign the application form. Note: Members of the Porvoo Communion i.e. The Evangelical Lutheran churches of Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania and Denmark, Old Catholic and Mar Thoma are full communicant members of the Church of Ireland when resident in Ireland.
(b) Children who are members of Protestant, Reformed, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches. A signature of a church leader is required on the Application Form.


That's just the first three - I haven't even looked at the rest. And they all discriminate based on religion as is their legal right.

Orion

SerialComplaint wrote: »

There is nothing in the charter about not naming schools. Enrolment policies are in the public domain, as I showed with the eight examples above.

Name away. It's not defamation if it's true.

SerialComplaint wrote: »

There is no reason why you shouldn't link to the enrolment policies of the schools in question. I've already linked to one other CofI school (Taney) that includes the line 'Children of other religions and none' as the last priority in their enrolment policy.

And there's another discriminatory school so - any religion before heathens

lazygal

SerialComplaint wrote: »

There is nothing in the charter about not naming schools. Enrolment policies are in the public domain, as I showed with the eight examples above.

There is no reason why you shouldn't link to the enrolment policies of the schools in question. I've already linked to one other CofI school (Taney) that includes the line 'Children of other religions and none' as the last priority in their enrolment policy.

Well, I won't be naming them so you'll have to take me on my word, which you're free to disregard if you want. I am a Montessori teacher and have had direct experiance of children in my class being refused places in local schools based on being the wrong faith or of no faith. I've seen it happen every year I've been teaching and other preschool teachers in my area have too. I don't plan on baptising our child so we'll be taking our chance with the ET school and the two other schools I know we have a chance with.
No matter how its spun, its enshrined in Irish law that schools are fuly legally entitled to refuse entry to children on the grounds of faith alone, whether individual schools you know of don't exercise that right contrasts with my experiance, where they do. It shouldn't be on the statute books in a republic that ANY state funded institution can legally refuse a state service to anyone on the grounds of religion.

SerialComplaint

Orion wrote: »

Simply saying they are exempt is a mistake on my part. They are exempt from the religious discrimination part of them only - no other part.

They don't have a general exemption from the religious discrimination part. They have particular, limited exemptions in relation to enrolment of students and employment of teachers.

Orion wrote: »

I'll have to dig up the references - won't happen tonight. That you've found a few schools that are inclusive but the vast majority do discriminate. Even giving 1 catholic priority over someone else is discrimination. The fact that they then allow in some non-catholics does not lessen that discrimination.

We seem to be going round in circles here. I understand and agree that schools can and do discriminate by giving priority to students of certain religions. I don't like this any more than you do.

However, I pointed out here that schools don't refuse on grounds of religion unless they are over-subscribed.

Orion wrote: »

So lets look at the ones you linked:
SixMileBridge:
The school has a Catholic ethos. In addition to Catholic religious education, Catholic values permeate all school activities. The Employment Equality Act 1997 safeguards the rights of schools of religious denominations to give priority to children of their particular denomination over children of other denominations. Accordingly, the Board of Management of Sixmilebridge N.S. has decided that priority will be given to applications made on behalf of a child whose parents are seeking an education in the Catholic tradition.

They're actually wrong in this - it's the Equal Status Act that gives them this right but the principle is the same.

You are correct about the Equal Status Act being the relevant Act. But why the selective quoting. Why don't you quote the bit that shows religion is not used to priorities pupils; i.e.

In the event of the number of children seeking enrolment in any given class/standard exceeding the number of places available the Board shall exercise its discretion in the application of the following criteria (in order of priority) for decision-making in relation to enrolments:

1. Applicants on class waiting list
2. Brothers & Sisters (including step-siblings, resident at same address) of children already enrolled, or that have been enrolled in the past - priority to oldest.
3. Children of current school staff - priority to oldest
4. Children living within the traditional catchment area of Sixmilebridge N.S. as defined by Parish boundaries.

Orion wrote: »

Garrydoolis:
The school aims to promote the full and harmonious development of all pupils: cognitive, intellectual, physical, cultural, moral and spiritual, including a living relationship with God and other people and promotes a Christian philosophy of life.
What about non-christians such as Jews, Muslims, Atheists?

More selective quoting. Here's how they prioritise - no mention of religion;

In the event of the number of children seeking enrolment in any given class/standard exceeding the number of places available the following criteria will be used to prioritise children for enrolment:

Brothers and sisters (including stepsiblings, resident at same address) of children already current school staff – priority oldest enrolled with priority going to be oldest.
Children of school staff.
Children of past pupils of the school
Children whose home address is closest to the school (as measured by a straight line on an O.S. map).
Lottery

Orion wrote: »

St. Columba's
St Columba’s National School is a Church of Ireland school. Priority for places is therefore given in the following order:

(a) Church of Ireland (Anglican) parishioners/accustomed members of the parish of North Strand. The rector of North Strand must countersign the application form. Note: Members of the Porvoo Communion i.e. The Evangelical Lutheran churches of Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania and Denmark, Old Catholic and Mar Thoma are full communicant members of the Church of Ireland when resident in Ireland.
(b) Children who are members of Protestant, Reformed, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches. A signature of a church leader is required on the Application Form.

More selective quoting. Why not quote their full list of criteria, including;

(f) Children of other faiths or none.

Orion wrote: »

And they all discriminate based on religion as is their legal right.

Yes, they do. But they don't refuse students on grounds of religion unless they are over-subscribed.

Orion

We are going round in circles alright. All of these schools above discriminate on the grounds of religion.

The one that has the 6th criteria as "other faiths or none" only lets them in if they have room after all their own kind are catered for. How is that not discriminatory?

SixMileBridge specifically states "priority will be given to applications made on behalf of a child whose parents are seeking an education in the Catholic tradition" - how is that not discriminatory?

Of course it's selective quoting - people can read the full policies themselves. But then you even agree that they discriminate on grounds of religion. So what exactly are we arguing about here?

SerialComplaint

lazygal wrote: »

Well, I won't be naming them so you'll have to take me on my word, which you're free to disregard if you want. I am a Montessori teacher and have had direct experiance of children in my class being refused places in local schools based on being the wrong faith or of no faith. I've seen it happen every year I've been teaching and other preschool teachers in my area have too. I don't plan on baptising our child so we'll be taking our chance with the ET school and the two other schools I know we have a chance with.
No matter how its spun, its enshrined in Irish law that schools are fuly legally entitled to refuse entry to children on the grounds of faith alone, whether individual schools you know of don't exercise that right contrasts with my experiance, where they do. It shouldn't be on the statute books in a republic that ANY state funded institution can legally refuse a state service to anyone on the grounds of religion.

I fully agree with your view that a state funded institution should not be able to refuse a state service on grounds of religion. I disagree with your stated view that it is commonplace for this to happen. I'd need to see the wording of the refusal letter and the enrolment policy of the school before I'd accept that. If you don't have that level of detail available, then this is really just local gossip.

Feel free to name the schools by PM in confidence if you like.

Orion wrote: »

We are going round in circles alright. All of these schools above discriminate on the grounds of religion.

The one that has the 6th criteria as "other faiths or none" only lets them in if they have room after all their own kind are catered for. How is that not discriminatory?

SixMileBridge specifically states "priority will be given to applications made on behalf of a child whose parents are seeking an education in the Catholic tradition" - how is that not discriminatory?

Of course it's selective quoting - people can read the full policies themselves. But then you even agree that they discriminate on grounds of religion. So what exactly are we arguing about here?

Again, to be clear, I agree that the enrolment practices are discriminatory. I disagree that schools are refusing students on religious grounds, except where those schools are over-subscribed, as I outlined in my first post on this thread.

byhookorbycrook

We are a hugely over-subscribed Catholic school and our policy is siblings 1st, then 1st come 1st served,so no, not all schools discriminate on religion.

analucija

I'm a 100% atheist and I do not believe in any kind of religious teaching in schools. Any kind in any school (includes educate together) and the easiest saving in education would be to just stop teaching religion in schools. It can be done after school and paid by whatever church is doing and they can employ the RE teachers. My partners views are similar but probably a bit less militant.

However we did baptize our son because it meant something to his grandparents and we will send him to local catholic school because it's better than the others. I think that good education is more important even though he'll have to suffer through some pointless waffle. I don't see any point in making my sons life harder just to make a stand about something as mundane as religion. As long as I can avoid going to mass, it should be fine.