Catholic Bishops dictate VEC model in 2008

lazygal

From rte.ie:
http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0328/educationfoi.html


I'd like to say I'm shocked but angry doesn't begin to describe it. What kind of people work in the Dept of Education that consistently bow to Catholic (and it is Catholic bishops who dictated in this case) pressure?

Fuming. Any way of starting some sort of campaign? Also got quite upset at this comment: When some parents ask about the provision of classes in moral education instead of religious education, they are told that “moral values cannot be divorced from a religious setting”. Doc 105

So my unborn child won't be able to be moral because they'll not be religious? I
'm sure Jesus would say the same. :mad:

UDP

It truly is mind boggling but I imagine many of those making decisions in the department are there for years and are from the completely indoctrinated along with pushover ff ministers that were there back then. I hope the current minister would stop this type of behavior.

Lets just hope there is a significant dent in the catholic numbers released in the census today to give quinn more to work with. It really is repungent.

Peregrinus

I look in vain for the word “dictate” anywhere in the report to which you link,

If anything, the report seems to contradict the claim implied in your headline:

- “From the start [in 2007] there were plans was to divide children [in Community National Schools] along denominational lines for several weeks in the run-up to Easter.”

= In late 2008 the then Minister, Batt O’Keeffe, “reaffirmed to the Catholic bishops what is described as an earlier commitment to provide Catholic pupils with the same programme of religious education as offered by Catholic Primary Schools”.

- “Departmental officials interpreted the minister’s so-called ‘reaffirmation’ in 2008 to mean that Catholic and other children would have to be separated for much longer periods.”

- “Other religious leaders were clearly opposed to this.” (The Methodists and the CofI are mentioned.)

- School principals, teachers and departmental officials all expressed their concern.

- “The documents received by RTÉ cover deliberations up until the end of 2009. They do not show how, or if, this matter was resolved.”

- However, though the documents may not show how the discussions progressed, we do know the outcome. The actual practice is that “Pupils at the schools currently divide into four different Religious Education groups for up to four weeks in the run-up to Easter. Catholics are in one group, Other Christians in another, Muslims in a third, and Hindus, Buddhists and so-called Humanists in a fourth.”

In other words, the original intention is what was implemented. The demand by the Catholic bishops for much more extensive separation, although apparently favourably received, was not, in the event, acceded to. As far as I can see, the Catholic bishops lost this particular stoush.

Now, you can legitimately ask a lot of questions, and raise a lot of serious concerns, about the involvement of the Catholic church, and the churches in general, in public education in Ireland. But when you characterise this particular story as an example of “Catholic bishops dictating VEC Model” you are being, charitable, very careless. When the Catholic bishops ask for something and don’t get it, that cannot fairly or truthfully be described as them “dictating” the outcome.

To my mind, the real issue here actually comes at the very beginning:

“In 2007 the effects of unprecedented levels of immigration plunged the education system here into crisis. Suddenly it was clear that there were not enough Primary school places to cater for all. It was also clear that our traditional, largely Catholic primary school system needed urgent reform.

The then Minister for Education Mary Hanafin announced a brand new kind of school called the Community National School. Its aim; to educate all comers, from all religious backgrounds and none.”

Was the alternative of a completely secular type of school considered? If it was, on what basis was it rejected in favour of the CNS model? If it wasn’t, why not?

It seems to me that, once the Minister made the decision to proceed with a “multi-faith” model, then she was committed to listening to, and taking seriously, and attaching some weight to, the views not only of the Catholic church but of other religious groups (and of comparable non-religious groups, e.g. Humanists).

recedite

Peregrinus wrote: »

In other words, the original intention is what was implemented. The demand by the Catholic bishops for much more extensive separation, although apparently favourably received, was not, in the event, acceded to. As far as I can see, the Catholic bishops lost this particular stoush.

The original intention was for no segregation.
The first two schools were getting on well under the integrated system, and according to this doc. when the VEC became aware that RCC reps were cooking up a deal with Fianna Fail ministers to force them into segregation, they said;
"it is likely that the position adopted by the catholic church will be damaging to the new model of patronage being developed in the NCNS's"

So we discover now that the VEC were forced into accepting the segregation model, and they did not originally approve of it at all.

In 2008 the emphasis was on "drawing the children together" and "being together whilst celebrating difference" However the RCC reps were determined to achieve some segregation for the purposes of delivering their Alive-O indoctrination programme. This despite the fact that they would generally already have another (fully catholic) school in the same locality.


note to mods; It might be an idea to merge with this thread which has more details on the issue of segregated /together school models.

robindch

lazygal wrote: »

What kind of people work in the Dept of Education that consistently bow to Catholic (and it is Catholic bishops who dictated in this case) pressure?

I'm no proponent of conspiracy theories, but in this case it seems plausible that there are a number of highly-placed individuals within the Department of Education whose primary allegiance lies with the institutional church, rather than children or their education.

Any time I see people in favour of splitting up children for the purposes of infecting them with the prejudices of their parents, I think of Jane Elliot's frightening Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes classroom experiment. Here's Philip Zimbardo introducing it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hqp6GnYqIjQ

lazygal

I remember Prime Time covering a VEC school a while back and it was madness to have small children split up because 'You're Catholic, you're Muslim and oh, you don't do religion, so off to do some colouring'. I've also seen the blue-brown thing before and the Dept of Education would do well to look to it for some perpective.

the culture of deference

Another smack in the face for logic and our future.

If we bring children up believing in fairies and magic, then we should not be surprised when they turn out to be incompetent unimaginative adults.

How are we ever going to remove the church from schools?

Peregrinus

Thanks, recedite

Couple of points:

1. Your version – that the original idea was for no separation at all – contradicts what the RTE story says. I’m not saying you’re wrong, or that the RTE story is. I note there was a slew of documents released and, even then, they’re incomplete¸ so the task of ploughing through them and accurately summarising them is not an easy one.

2. Granted for the purposes of the discussion that your version was correct, we still have a final outcome which is not what the bishops apparently wanted, and not what the VEC wanted, but a compromise between the two. Again, it’s simply untrue to say that the bishops “dictated” the outcome. If they had dictated it, they would have got the outcome they wanted.

3. And the indication is that the bishops had to compromise significantly. The document you link to suggests that the bishops had a “fundamental difficulty” with a shared programme – “even on a trial basis”. They wanted Catholic children to receive the same RE programme as they would get in a Catholic-patronised school. It looks to me as though the bishops were pushing for complete separation, so that Catholic students would not participate in any shared programme, but would receive the standard Catholic programme – which, of course, runs for the full academic year. In the event, they have achieved separation only for four weeks of the academic year.

4. I come back to the point I made in my earlier post; once the decision was made to have “multi-faith” schools, it was inevitable – and, arguably, proper - that the views of different faith organisations would have some weight with the Minister, and some influence over the final shape of the CNS model. And given the extent to which the bishops apparently had to compromise, it’s not immediately obvious that the degree of influence they did achieve was improper. Isn’t the real issue here the decision to establish the CNSs on a multi-faith rather than wholly secular basis?

the culture of deference

Peregrinus wrote: »

Thanks, recedite

Couple of points:

1. Your version – that the original idea was for no separation at all – contradicts what the RTE story says. I’m not saying you’re wrong, or that the RTE story is. I note there was a slew of documents released and, even then, they’re incomplete¸ so the task of ploughing through them and accurately summarising them is not an easy one.

2. Granted for the purposes of the discussion that your version was correct, we still have a final outcome which is not what the bishops apparently wanted, and not what the VEC wanted, but a compromise between the two. Again, it’s simply untrue to say that the bishops “dictated” the outcome. If they had dictated it, they would have got the outcome they wanted.

3. And the indication is that the bishops had to compromise significantly. The document you link to suggests that the bishops had a “fundamental difficulty” with a shared programme – “even on a trial basis”. They wanted Catholic children to receive the same RE programme as they would get in a Catholic-patronised school. It looks to me as though the bishops were pushing for complete separation, so that Catholic students would not participate in any shared programme, but would receive the standard Catholic programme – which, of course, runs for the full academic year. In the event, they have achieved separation only for four weeks of the academic year.

4. I come back to the point I made in my earlier post; once the decision was made to have “multi-faith” schools, it was inevitable – and, arguably, proper - that the views of different faith organisations would have some weight with the Minister, and some influence over the final shape of the CNS model. And given the extent to which the bishops apparently had to compromise, it’s not immediately obvious that the degree of influence they did achieve was improper. Isn’t the real issue here the decision to establish the CNSs on a multi-faith rather than wholly secular basis?

Bishops have no place to dictate what schools should do.

Religion should have no place in schools or our education system.

recedite

Peregrinus wrote: »

1. Your version – that the original idea was for no separation at all – contradicts what the RTE story says. I’m not saying you’re wrong, or that the RTE story is.

The RTE story says of what happened between 2008 and 2009;

The teachers appealed for the continuance of integrated teaching but they were told that splitting classes was now “a requirement”

There was apparently much discussion of how best to present news to the parents that they were going to be shafted. Teachers were told to say nothing to the parents until a good plan for it had been worked out.

I will concede to you there is some ambiguity about what "the original idea" means, if anything. In reality, the original idea was simply to defuse a shameful episode in which (black immigrant's) children appeared on TV with no schools to go to, because they had all been (legally) refused admission on grounds of religious discrimination. Following on from that various schools were set up in a hurry.

It seems the first two VEC primary schools were originally operating on an integrated basis, but then the catholic bishops intervened to tell the Dept. of Education that unless Alive-O was delivered to some pupils (which would have to happen in a segregated environment) then they would declare the school to be "non-denominational", and that would contravene departmental policy which only supported the establishment of a new "multi-denominational" type of VEC school.

Isn’t the real issue here the decision to establish the CNSs on a multi-faith rather than wholly secular basis?

Yes, I think that is where it all went wrong.

Zamboni

I'm not happy with the content but it is fantastic to gain access to this level of documentation.

Zamboni

Educate Together is calling for the immediate publication of the evaluation reports that were to have been produced within the first 5 years of the Community National School pilot scheme. Paul Rowe again:

“We are calling for any further expansion plans for Community National Schools to be deferred until the schools have been properly evaluated and this fundamental flaw in the design of their model has been corrected’.

http://www.educatetogether.ie/press-releases/2012/03/community-national-schools/

lazygal

http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0330/dept-ignored-warning-over-religion-teaching.html

Further development here. It seems the Dept. dropped one of its own bodies in favour of a private Catholic education body, the Marino Institute.

recedite

I'm not clear on whether the dept dropped The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment in favour of the RCC Marino Institute for the purposes of designing the entire religion curriculum for all religions, or just the one being applied to the segregated RC kids?

In any case, as the muslim kids are apparently back to playing with colouring pencils in the spare room;

the Muslim 'stream' has been suspended at the request of parents pending a resolution

It seems like its back to "business as usual" for what is just another state funded faith school.

Stroke Politics

The whole VEC primary school scheme was cooked up by the Knights of Marlborough Street under Mary hanafin's watch to head off the Educate Together model before it got too popular. They said "you can have your multi-denominational model of education, so long as it's a Catholic model of multi-denominational education".

As it's still a pilot scheme, it is not subject to the same criteria as other new schools. So a VEC school was allowed to open with 7 infants in September 2010, and received a second teacher in 2011, and an SNA in 2012. A lot of staff for 27 children, whilst the other well-established schools in the area were losing staff and SNA's. They are not subjec to the same BOM structures whereby the parents are represented by democratic elections. Instead they have a single VEC-appointed manager.

Time for Ruairi to pension off the Knight's and re-order the patroinage of these schools on an equal footing with the others.....

Stroke Politics

recedite wrote: »

I'm not clear on whether the dept dropped The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment in favour of the RCC Marino Institute for the purposes of designing the entire religion curriculum for all religions, or just the one being applied to the segregated RC kids?

In any case, as the muslim kids are apparently back to playing with colouring pencils in the spare room;
It seems like its back to "business as usual" for what is just another state funded faith school.

The religious education programme used by the CNS's is "Goodness Me, Goodness You", and was developed by Coláiste Mhuire Marino, the teacher-training college off Griffith Avenue, not the Marino Institute. Clare Maloney was the leader of the development team AFAIK, she was/is the head religious education lecturer at the college, and this college was the former Christian Brothers training college, they are still involved in the running of it. It is not possible to train to become a teacher at this college without completing a Certificate In Religious Education, and this being a catholic college, this means catholic religions education....

recedite

Stroke Politics wrote: »

They are not subject to the same BOM structures whereby the parents are represented by democratic elections. Instead they have a single VEC-appointed manager.

I think there is an abuse of power going on here. Most of the parents are fairly newly arrived from countries where they are not used to "having a say," and many may not even have English as a first language. They are being coerced into "supporting" a new type of school, as its probably the only school in the area they can get their kids into, and then this "support" is being used as leverage to get more of the same flawed schools built by the State elsewhere.

I'm not a huge fan of Islam, but it's good to see the muslim parents calling for their kids to be educated with the others, and taught ethics and morals at school instead of religion. If muslims can give their kids their own specific religious teachings outside school hours, why can't others?

Dept. of Education recently announced four more of these schools to be set up around the country, on the basis of the "success" of the pilot ones.
But these documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show that neither the parents, nor the teachers, nor the The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, want kids segregated in schools.
Clare Maloney and The Christian Brothers do however, and nobody else seems to have a say in the matter at the moment.

seeing_ie

This should be getting a lot more attention than the census figures.

The Irish posters on a rugby forum with a large percentage of international users picked up on it.
http://forum.planet-rugby.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7171&hilit=irishers

Zamboni

seeing_ie wrote: »

This should be getting a lot more attention than the census figures.

Completely agree.

lazygal

http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0328/educationfoi.html

This RTE piece has the documents at the end, now they'd need a substantial trawl through but I'm utterly baffled as to why Educate Together aren't kicking up a massive stink as more of the schools have been sanctioned by the current Minister.

iguana

Is the VEC model the patron which Quinn is intending taking over the patronage of the schools that will be changing from RC patronage over the coming years?

lazygal

I'm not totally familiar with the secondary system but doesn't the VEC model already have some schools in the second level system? I'm open to correction!


This whole mess stinks to me and I really think more investigation is required. Fair play to RTE for the FOI goldmine it unearthed but I really think a full programme on it is needed. It also doesn't bode well for an ET model at second level, if the deference on the part of the civil servants in the Dept of Education outlined in the Ryan report is still alive and well-and it seems to be, given this attitude. It baffles me why the bishops were even given a hearing.

Hotblack Desiato

lazygal wrote: »

It also doesn't bode well for an ET model at second level, if the deference on the part of the civil servants in the Dept of Education outlined in the Ryan report is still alive and well-and it seems to be, given this attitude. It baffles me why the bishops were even given a hearing.

I would imagine that at least some of them have now retired so there is hope...

lazygal

ninja900 wrote: »

I would imagine that at least some of them have now retired so there is hope...

The bishops or Dept. mandarins?! I'm not so sure, there seems to be a definite cultural deference towards the church in the Dept. so even if some of the older ones have retired they're not exactly leaving a legacy of open mindedness for alternative education models and inclusion behind them, are they? Also there's been a pretty poor run of ministers which I'd imagine has allowed a certain level of the status quo to remain for decades. Hard to shift that attitude, especially with a Labour minister who the Catholic groups like to paint as having an aggressive secular agenda.

recedite

VEC's have been using their long established secondary schools network to demonstrate a level of support for their proposed segregated primary schools, but this may not be genuine support for the bishop sponsored model at all.

In deciding the patronage of any new schools, and also any older schools which are to be moved outside of church control, the Education Minister looks at two things;
1. Local parents put kids names down on a list for their preferred option, ie a form of democratic voting, so what is the demand shown for each proposed type of school?
2. What other schools are in the area, ie is there a reasonable selection for people to choose from? The dept. is now less likely to sanction another of the same type.

Solair

The problem with implementing any kind of a secular (and I do not mean atheist) education system in Ireland is that the majority of educational professionals in Ireland were educated and trained in religious institutions.

If you are a primary teacher, you have more than likely been trained either in St. Patrick's in Drumcondra which is a Catholic Church linked/run institution.

Or, Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, the name should be a big clue there ... it's not secular.

Or, you can go to The Church of Ireland College of Education (again, the hint's in the name!)

A very small minority of Irish primary teachers were trained by Hibernian or trained abroad, but even those have to indoctrinate themselves in some aspects of religious teaching unless they are going to teach in an Educate Together school or something like that.

Then in the secondary schools, while the majority of teacher go to secular universities, they train and work in religious schools.

So, the whole concept of 'the nuns', 'the brothers', 'the priests' and 'the bishop' dictating school policy is absolutely institutionalised in the thinking within schools and within the Department of Education.

Of course the Dept. of Education's biased toward religious school models, that's all it knows! It's part of that system, it was educated in that system, and it only understands one way of doing things.

To break that link, you'd need to change to a model of actual community-based education with proper boards of management, perhaps elected like US PTAs and serious and deep reform of the entire system.

I don't see that happening, because Ireland doesn't do anything radical ever. So, I'd say we'll still be stuck with this ridiculous setup in 2050.

We have a loopy situation where education's basically entirely publicly funded, yet control is outsourced to private (mostly religious) institutions because the state *FAILED* to establish a public system about 60 to 80 years ago, when the rest of Europe modernised its education system.

We absolutely should have a proper public system that is open, equal and available to everyone regardless of religious background, gender, race, money, or anything else.

I quite honestly don't see much difference between a system that segregates people based on religion to one that segregates people based on race.

Our education system is fundamentally sectarian, sexist, class-ridden and effectively we have no public school system as we have allowed vested interests to run it, based on flimsy arguments, in a way that is not necessarily in the interests of the greater good, rather as a promotional tool for their own religious points of view or as a tool to exclude students from backgrounds that might not be suitable by imposing small fees, yet having the staffing entirely paid for by the state.

To take it a step further, we never even managed to integrate schools based on gender, so frequently parents are forced to send one kid to one school because she's a girl and another to another because he's a boy. The facilities are not necessarily equal and the opportunities aren't either.
In 2012, in a Western European democracy, that is an absolute disgrace.

To make matters even worse, because the system is so fractious, we have endless different flavours of schools most of which are poorly resourced e.g. no science labs, no gyms, no libraries, no sports facilities, no psychological services etc..

In many urban areas, and even rural areas, you could merge various smaller, poorly resourced, schools into something more viable with decent facilities on a campus.

Instead, we cave into all the petty vested interests and retain the status quo while totally undermining the educational opportunities of our kids based on what exactly?!

A class system and snobbery we won't admit to?
Religious bigotry passing itself off as 'tradition'?
Sexism?

Personally, I couldn't care less what someone's religious beliefs are, but I passionately believe that we need a proper, public, open-access, fair, well-resourced, well-run, democratically controlled, local community-based education system that serves EVERY kids' needs, not just the ones who happen to be Catholic or Protestant or Male or Female or ...

I think that can only be achieved in a secular school system, leaving religious education to parents and religious organisations as they see fit in their own private time, at home, in a church, a mosque, a synagogue, a temple, in a sunday school or whatever floats their boat...