An unwelcome success?

Catholic schools are in the eye of the storm: they are accused of discriminating between pupils on the basis of the faith to which they belong and of generating division in society. That’s the case in the United Kingdom and in Ireland, though for different reasons. What’s common to the situation in both countries, however, is, first, the success of these schools which for centuries have educated pupils from different communities and, second, the difficulty of promoting an education guided by religion in an ever more secularised society where the number of immigrants is constantly growing. In the UK the schools run by the Catholic Church represent a third of all schools in the public sector: 6,850 out of 21,000, while two out of every five schools in the private sector are confessional in nature. In England and Wales Catholic primary schools are often linked to the parishes and pupils come from families involved in the life of the church. Where applications exceed the number of available places these schools privilege pupils from Catholic families, while at the same time opening their student intake to different religions and ethnic communities. Schools for mission. In some areas of the country there are schools where the baptized pupils are actually a minority, while in others they are forced to exclude non-Catholic pupils. Recently the bishop of the diocese of Lancaster, the Most Rev. Patrick O’ Donoghue , defended the religious identity of Catholic schools and underlined their role in the task of evangelization in a document with the title “Fit for mission? Schools”. “Our hope of reinforcing the missionary and sacramental life of the Church also depends on our schools”, declared the bishop, who has visited every Catholic school in the diocese over the last six years. “For many pupils and parents the Catholic schools is the only experience they have of the Church”. The diocesan programme has been requested by schools in the USA, Canada, Australia, France and Malta. Risk of fundamentalism? The new emphasis placed on the religious identity of Catholic schools is disliked by Labour MP Barry Sheerman, who chairs the parliamentary committee at Westminster for children, schools and the family. He has declared that religious schools are a “source of concern” because they risk promoting religious fundamentalism. Sheerman would like Catholic bishops to appear before the committee he chairs to reply to questions about the nature of Catholic schools. “It seems to me that religious education is alright so long as it’s not taken too seriously”, declared Sheerman to the press, “but as soon as there’s a more doctrinaire attitude we need to stop and ask ourselves questions”. Shortsighted policy. “Unfortunately the media don’t place the emphasis on the great work being done by Catholic schools to promote cohesion within the communities in which they operate”, comments Oona Standard, head of the Catholic Education Service (an agency run under the auspices of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales), “and ignore data such as the fact that 30% of the pupils who attend Catholic schools are not baptized. The ethnic variety of our schools is demonstrated by government studies. It’s a shortsighted policy to think that eliminating Catholic schools would increase cohesion within the communities in which they operate. It’s parents who choose a Catholic education for their children and it’s important that this right be protected by the law, as it is at the moment”. The role of social integration played by Catholic schools has also been defended by the Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Rev. Diarmuid Martin, who declared that those who criticise Catholic schools “have not seen for themselves how effectively they unite communities of different ethnic and religious origin”. A quota for non-Catholics. In Ireland, where the Catholic Church runs 90% of the primary schools, the arrival of thousands of immigrants now makes it impossible for these schools to accept all pupils. Last year at Balbriggan, a little town to the north of Dublin, fifty coloured children from immigrant communities were excluded from local schools because they aren’t Catholics, a case that re-opened the debate on the schools run by the Church. The Church replied by saying it was willing to cede its own primary schools in areas where thousands of families of non-Catholic immigrants have recently arrived. So, for the first time a new system of school applications will be introduced in two primary schools in west Dublin from September 2008: it provides for a quota of a third of the places being reserved for non-Catholic pupils. The area of the archdiocese in question has seen a massive influx of non-Catholic immigrants. Hitherto Catholic schools have been obliged to give precedence to baptized pupils, but with the new application system at least a third of all pupils will be of non-Catholic faith. According to Archbishop Martin “some of the experts who comment on the role of Catholic schools in the process of integration have not seen for themselves their success in enabling pupils of different religions to work together”.