School patronage

recedite

What sickens me about the new duck is that its a win-win scenario for the old religious patron.

The state would pay a lease to the church for the "reconfigured" school, in perpetuity. That gives the old patron a shedload of extra money to install better facilities for the religious school they are still using up the road. Just so everyone knows which is "the good school" in the area. If that fails to attract sufficient punters, there is this measure to keep the numbers up. And of course the state would continue to fund it as well.

Hotblack Desiato

expectationlost wrote: »

ministers says he'll do surveys for school choice

Oh FFS we are back at ten years ago with this crap. :mad: no doubt in the press releases there will be weasel language about 'the need to establish the demand for any change' :mad: :mad:

and as ever what has numbers got to do with fairness?

Well exactly. If all of my neighbours are devout catholics (or *insert religion here*) that doesn't give them the right to abuse the local state funded school to indoctrinate my child.

papers saying that the minister wants to lease schools off the church rather then try to buy (or take them) and there will be no strings attached?

Yes as taxpayers let's pay to rent back schools that we paid to build in the first place and have paid to maintain ever since. FFS

Peregrinus

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Perhaps, but the duty of the BOM is to the school, and not the bizarre arrangements Michael Woods and Bertie Ahern landed us with.

Sure, but this doesn't get around the fundamental tension. Taking property, or the proceeds of property, from religious orders to fund the redress scheme (or to reimburse the state for funding it) means that the same property can't continue to be used for current purposes, which in many cases are socially useful/necessary purposes. So this, um, reallocation of the property is likely to be opposed by stakeholders who are adversely affected. Like Boards of Management.

I wouldn't criticise the Boards for that. As you point out, they are doing what they are supposed to do. I'm just pointing out that this is an inherent feature of the plan to recover the costs of redress, or part of them, from the religious orders. This tension was always going to arise.

Hotblack Desiato

It doesn't surprise me that they are putting forward 'encumbered' property like playing fields attached to schools.

Meanwhile religious orders are making out like bandits selling unused properties in Dublin for housing development - as they've been doing for the last 30-odd years.

Odhinn

Let the school take care of it catholicism in action -

"A public meeting has been called by a priest in Co Wexford to discuss non-attendance at Mass by parents whose children are due to be confirmed this year.

Fr Patrick Banville, administrator at St Senan’s parish in Enniscorthy, said he had “made it abundantly clear that for Confirmation families, participation in Sunday Eucharist is not optional, it’s absolutely essential”.


In the parish newsletter Fr Banville said that since the beginning of the school year last September, “the majority of Confirmation parents and children have been absent from the Sunday Eucharist”.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/confirmation-children-families-must-attend-mass-says-priest-1.3385833

smacl

expectationlost wrote: »

I liked action plan man, but indo
Parents get vote to take schools out of control of the Church really?

Good to see the Indo are still managing to keep abreast of political appointments :rolleyes:

However, based on the survey process about to get under way, Education Minister Ruairi Quinn has set next June as the deadline for the naming of the first batch.

Peregrinus

The Indo report is from 2012.

smacl

Peregrinus wrote: »

The Indo report is from 2012.

Ah, my bad, read the date on the top, not the article.

Peregrinus

This is one of the most annoying of the very many very annoying features of the Indo website. And that's before we get into the very annoying content.

I could say more, but on a thread about school patronage it might be a bit off-topic.

robindch

Odhinn wrote: »

In the parish newsletter Fr Banville said that since the beginning of the school year last September, “the majority of Confirmation parents and children have been absent from the Sunday Eucharist”.

Wouldn't blame them - it's really quite dull.

Hotblack Desiato

The fact an article from the Ruairi Quinn days could just as easily be written today with little or no changes, says it all really :mad: When are politicians going to pull their heads out of their ârses on this issue? How is DoE allowed to hobble the few schools which have divested? There's a bad smell of Opus Dei / Knights of Columbanus off all this.

Odhinn

robindch wrote: »

Wouldn't blame them - it's really quite dull.

I avoid it like the plague meself. We don't tick the box marked catholic in the census though.

expectationlost

strange editorial from irish examiner https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/views/ourview/school-patronage-survey--another-swizz-in-a-failing-process-827182.html

suggesting that just asking parents of pre school kids about which patrons they want is a swizz, because just like abortion its national issue so they should ask everyone?, but I would presume parents of pre-schools kids would be more secular then the general pop, and if you were going to survey you might get a 'better' answer asking just them
but really apart from on a practical level of checking the numbers of kids around you shouldn't need to ask about religion at all.

Odhinn

"asking" in a country notorious for its hypocrisy on the subject is a cop out.

evolving_doors

The question itself is a bit misleading.

Would you like more choice?
Sure who wouldn't.

Would you like to segregate all the kids in Ireland according to their religion?
Hmm I thought this was about education?

recedite

expectationlost wrote: »

strange editorial from irish examiner https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/views/ourview/school-patronage-survey--another-swizz-in-a-failing-process-827182.html

As you say, its not a very well thought out argument. The preschool parent cohort would likely be less religious than the national average, so if anything, consulting with them only would skew the vote against the conservatives.

It could be argued that they are the ones that will be affected.
It could also be argued that they don't know as much about what is ahead of them, as compared to those who have already gone before them.

IMO, as a republic we need to establish certain basic principles in the education system. Such as...
Equal opportunities (stop the state funding of "private" schools)
Stop facilitating the segregation of kids along religious lines.
Keep all religious indoctrination out of state schools.
End the legal loophole in our equality legislation that says religious discrimination is not discrimination when it happens in a religion-managed school.

Beyond that, give local parents some choice, ie let them vote with their feet. This cannot be achieved when there is a shortage of school places, or when Dept of Education hobbles one type of school by restricting their intake to half a class, in order to protect the intake of another school.

expectationlost

whoops this was the indo article on the newer surveys https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/education/parents-to-get-their-say-on-whether-local-school-should-stay-catholic-36580424.html

Where demand for the transfer of at least one Church-run school is identified, the local bishop will be expected to consult with the school and parents about options offered by other patron bodies.

what does that mean?

expectationlost

Odhinn wrote: »

Let the school take care of it catholicism in action -

"A public meeting has been called by a priest in Co Wexford to discuss non-attendance at Mass by parents whose children are due to be confirmed this year.

Fr Patrick Banville, administrator at St Senan’s parish in Enniscorthy, said he had “made it abundantly clear that for Confirmation families, participation in Sunday Eucharist is not optional, it’s absolutely essential”.


In the parish newsletter Fr Banville said that since the beginning of the school year last September, “the majority of Confirmation parents and children have been absent from the Sunday Eucharist”.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/confirmation-children-families-must-attend-mass-says-priest-1.3385833

maybe its because priests write like this “that for the majority of Confirmation parents, Mass is not valued, is not a love-thing, a matter of attraction and encounter, and this absence (or at least the refusal to enter the struggle to get to Mass as a family) suggests that Confirmation is without a context,”

Michael Nugent

expectationlost wrote: »

whoops this was the indo article on the newer surveys https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/education/parents-to-get-their-say-on-whether-local-school-should-stay-catholic-36580424.html

Quote: Where demand for the transfer of at least one Church-run school is identified, the local bishop will be expected to consult with the school and parents about options offered by other patron bodies.

what does that mean?

Based on various things stated by the Department and/or the Minister so far, it means that:

If there is a divestment, the Catholic Church will be involved in the decision over which alternative patron body it is divested to, and in practice will have a veto.

The two main options at primary level are Community National Schools run by the local ETB, or Educate Together.

The procedure for deciding who the school would be divested to is conducted by the local ETB, which - as Atheist Ireland FOI documents have shown - is likely to be as committed to a Catholic ethos as the Church is, and which has an existing relationship with the Catholic Church.

Then the State will pay the Catholic Church to rent the school building, and the State will pay the ETB to maintain what in practice will continue to be a Catholic ethos.

recedite

Michael Nugent wrote: »

Based on various things stated by the Department and/or the Minister so far, it means that:

If there is a divestment, the Catholic Church will be involved in the decision over which alternative patron body it is divested to, and in practice will have a veto.

The two main options at primary level are Community National Schools run by the local ETB, or Educate Together.

The procedure for deciding who the school would be divested to is conducted by the local ETB, which - as Atheist Ireland FOI documents have shown - is likely to be as committed to a Catholic ethos as the Church is, and which has an existing relationship with the Catholic Church.

Then the State will pay the Catholic Church to rent the school building, and the State will pay the ETB to maintain what in practice will continue to be a Catholic ethos.

I think you are right, this is exactly the plan.
The ETB schools are specifically being set up to continue to provide RC religious instruction, even segregating and isolating the other children where "necessary".
There is one glimmer of hope though. How these schools are run is a lot looser and less centralised than a school controlled by the church. There are signs that they could throw off the shackles at local level, and morph into a different kind of school in practice.

expectationlost

https://www.kildarestreet.com/debates/?id=2018-02-13a.42&s=We+are+not+in+a+financial+position+to+build+additional+schools+just+because+people+do+not+want+the+schools+that+are+already+in+place#g61

Richard Bruton:On the issue of when the Department decides to build additional accommodation and sanction new schools, this is applied on the same basis in every one of the 314 planning areas. The Department will only sanction additional new schools where there is a scarcity of places in the area. We are not in a financial position to build additional schools just because people do not want the schools that are already in place.

Howlin:The Government is forcing people to send their children to denominational schools.

https://www.kildarestreet.com/debates/?id=2018-02-13a.42#g61 bonues point for anyone finding Ruiari Quinn saying a similar thing as Bruton a few years ago. https://www.kildarestreet.com/td/ruairi_quinn/dublin_south_east


seems like the dept of ed were spinning on this story https://www.rte.ie/news/education/2018/0213/940371-educate-together/ although I wish she had linked to the surveys

Hotblack Desiato

This is what boils my pi$$

All this talk of parental demand and surveys. There were no surveys in my area

A few years ago DoE decided to extend the sex segregated RC primaries here so, guess what, no room for an ET :rolleyes:

The only non-RC primary is the small CoI which is bursting at the seams (And the vast majority of kids are from non-CoI families)

Meanwhile as this shambles at primary level plays out, there is no prospect of change at second level. One large strict RC girls school run by a religious order with a history of child abuse, with limited subject choice along sexist lines. One large strict RC boys school run by a religious order with a history of child abuse, with limited subject choice along sexist lines. Nothing else.

This is a very large Dublin suburb with thousands of kids in school and there is no choice here and the DoE is not offering any prospect of change.

expectationlost

FF pledges to expand Educate Together schools amid restrictions http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/ff-pledges-to-expand-educate-together-schools-amid-restrictions-1.3394085 the neck on FF'ers is something else

recedite

..the department examines school size in order to preserve a balance among all schools in an area and to ensure that one school is not expanding at the expense of another.

I think this is the basic flaw in the Dept. policy. It is anti-democratic.
If FF feel its in their interests to promise a policy change if they are elected, then fair enough. That's how democratic change happens.

hognef

"Enrollment in Catholic schools continues to increase", says RTÉ:

https://www.rte.ie/news/2018/0226/943799-catholic-school-enrolment-increases/

Overall growth is 5000. Half of that is in Catholic schools, which are coming from a 91% market share. Clearly the growth is only in absolute numbers. Relatively, it's market share is in fact still reducing.

Shouldn't the headline be quite the opposite of the actual headline? Presumably, RTÉ has an agenda here.

Peregrinus

Headlines are written by subeditors up against deadlines who barely have time to scan the story. Nine times out of ten, distortion in a headline is usually the result of a cock-up. If you're looking for an agenda, you have to look at the whole story.

Which is not to say that there isn't an agenda here, but it's not straightforward to read. Yes, the Catholic church, with 91% of the schools, only picks up 50% of the additional enrolment, but what does this signify? Government policy is to reduce reliance on the Catholic sector, so we might well ask why any additional places are being created in that sector. Why is the whole additional enrolment not being steered into non-Catholic schools? Is it that parents want places in Catholic schools, and the government has been unable to divert them all into schools of other types? Is it that in many areas of the country there are still only Catholic schools, and if there is growing demand in these areas there is no alternative, at least in the short term, but to add places in Catholic schools? Is is that the non-Catholic sector is so small that there's a practical limit to the rate at which they can add new places in the space of a year, and the growth in Catholic schools simply represents parent who can't get a place in a non-Catholic school?

In fairness to RTE, the headline doesn't suggest any of these explanations. It just notes the growth in enrolment in Catholic schools, and the story points to reasons why it is surprising that there should be any growth at all in Catholic schools - government policy, declining Catholic identification per the census results, etc. And they point to what may be the reason, or at least part of the reason, for the growth - namely, the Department's reluctance to fund additional non-Catholic schools, or additional places in existing non-Catholic schools.

What the story doesn't do is explore the extent to which parents want places in Catholic schools - presumably, because the Dept of Ed figures on which the story is based have no information about that. It may well be that the 50% of additional enrolment going to Catholic schools is more than the government's priorities would suggest, but actually less than would reflect parental wishes. But if there's an agenda at work in failing to point to that as a possible factor (and, myself, I doubt there is) then it's not a pro-Catholic agenda, is it?

recedite

My only complaint with the story is the phrase talking about the govt. "reliance on the Catholic sector".
You'd think the RCC was building these new schools, paying the salaries, and then kindly handing them over to the state, out of the goodness of their hearts.
Instead of the reality, which is other way round.

evolving_doors

"Enrollment in Catholic schools continues to increase",

If enrolment in all schools has increased then why single out one cohort, which as a % is lagging behind.

It would be just as valid and worthwhile a headline as...

"Consumption of sandwiches in Catholic schools continues to increase".

smacl

evolving_doors wrote: »

"Enrollment in Catholic schools continues to increase"

More like "Sales in black cars increases" at a time when the original model T was the only car in production. :rolleyes:

Peregrinus

evolving_doors wrote: »

"Enrollment in Catholic schools continues to increase",

If enrolment in all schools has increased then why single out one cohort, which as a % is lagging behind.

Because it's surprising; it's not what we'd expect, and the news report explains why. "Enrolment in non-Catholic schools continues to increase" is not surprising. Nor is 'enrolment in schools continues to increase".