For all their differences, a desire to change the dominant role of religion in schools is uniting education systems north and south of the border.
In the North, this desire is manifesting in a strengthening call for integrated education, which seeks to educate Catholic and Protestant children together.
In the Republic, it is becoming less about changing patronage (a reconfiguration process that has largely failed) and more about the re-negotiation of faith formation in schools.
This shared desire to change the role of religion in education was evidenced in the remarkable motion passed at the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) conference last week, to set up a taskforce on faith formation in schools, and to kickstart the possible removal of the controversial religious certificate required for teachers to work in primary education.
The voice of an all-Ireland union
The motion on religion in education was passed by teachers from both sides of the border.
Unlike other teacher unions, the INTO is a whole-island union, representing 45,156 teachers at primary level in the Republic of Ireland, but it also includes 7,196 teachers at primary and post-primary level in Northern Ireland (2023).
On the surface, northern membership appears to be religious in nature. It is true that the vast majority of Catholic teachers in Catholic primary schools join the INTO.
Correspondingly, the bulk of Protestant teachers in Protestant primary schools join the Ulster Teachers’ Union (UTU). So, one would be forgiven for thinking that religion plays a significant role.
Not according to the union however. Much like their colleagues in the Republic, rather than being unwaveringly loyal to the centrality of Catholicism in education, it seems northern members of the INTO are similarly ready for change. Their support of the motion suggests this, as does the general interest in the North in integrated education.
Religion and Ireland’s oldest union
Founded in 1868, the INTO has always declared itself to be non-political (neither nationalist nor unionist) and non-sectarian, refusing to split along national and religious lines.
This neutrality goes back to the earliest roots of the organisation, and its commitment to representing all the national school teachers of Ireland regardless of religion.
As tensions grew in the late 19th century, the INTO began to fragment. Reportedly, a failure to drink a toast of loyalty to the Lord Lieutenant of Congress in 1883 resulted in a breakaway group of teachers in the North. They returned, but split more dramatically following the 1916 Rising.
The INTO said little about the Rising. But when Thomas Ashe died from force feeding while on hunger strike in September 1917 the School Weekly published that he had died tragically and was “sincerely mourned by all who knew him”. The union’s subsequent participation in the anti-conscription campaign in 1918, was the final straw for members loyal to the Crown, leading to the formation of the UTU in 1919.
Very different systems
This shared history doesn’t lessen the differences between the two systems today however. One contrast between the two jurisdictions is particularly stark.
At primary level in the North, children are screened at the age of 11. They are then sent to either more or less academic secondary schools on the basis of their results.
This early screening seems unimaginable in the Republic, where schools work within a far more inclusive model, and where, in general, children stay longer in an aspirational “catch-all” system.
Although free secondary education was introduced 20 years later in the Republic, according to a recent ERSI study, early school leaving is two to three times higher in Northern Ireland.
This gap has widened over time. The proportion of 16 to 24-year-olds who leave school with at most a lower secondary qualification is 14% in Northern Ireland, compared to 6% in Ireland. Streaming, whereby children are sorted by ability, has declined in the Republic also, based on research that it is largely detrimental to students.
Schools in the North also follow a different curriculum and are sharply divided by religion. Ninety-three per cent of primary-aged children in the North sit in classrooms of either Protestant or Catholic classmates. Even their screening tests differ depending on denomination.
In the South, only 6% to 7% of children sit in multi-denominational primary classrooms — but the rest are mostly taught in Catholic classrooms, where faith formation is taught during the school day, and features significantly in sacramental years.
And it is on this subject, the role of religion, that the two jurisdictions seem to find common ground.
Desire for Change
Now, as then, the INTO does not define itself as a Catholic organisation, even if it is the de facto Catholic union for primary teachers in the North.
INTO’s Northern secretary Mark Taggart makes this very clear
“Members choose INTO on the basis of profession, not religious beliefs,” he tells the Irish Examiner.
“We do not present ourselves as representing any particular sector of the community. While many of our members teach in Catholic maintained schools, we have members in all education settings across the North.”
So, Northern members’ interest in changing the role of religion in school should not surprise anyone, says Central Executive Council (CEC) representative Seamus Hannah.
“The members in the North will fall along similar lines as our colleagues in the south,” she says.
“INTO has campaigned in the North for a long time to have the Catholic Religious Certificate removed as a pre-condition for a teaching post in a primary school. This was reduced with the removal of the specific term ‘Catholic’ but a religious education certificate is still required.”
In fact, a 2023 LucidTalk survey indicate that as many as 66% of people in the North, whatever their religion, support integrated education. A sizeable majority of those who agree that Integrated Education should be the norm are aged between 18- to 34 years old, suggesting that the younger generation are particularly supportive of moving beyond religious segregation.
“The timing of this Northern Ireland wide attitudinal poll is particularly apt as we reflect on the 25th anniversary of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement which pledged to facilitate and encourage integrated education,” chairman of the Integrated Education Fund (IEF) — the body tasked with aiding education integration — Peter Osborne said.
“Over the past 25 years we have seen interest, support and parental demand for Integrated Education continue to increase.”
A recently published book, The Sundered Children, edited by author and journalist David Rice explores this topic of integrated education in considerable detail.
He opens the collection of essays by highlighting the dangers of children growing up in segregated schools, lamenting how “the youngsters of Northern Ireland, with very few exceptions, are brought up in separate denominational schools, rarely encountering members of the other side until they are in their twenties. By that time prejudices are locked in, and it is too late to change many an outlook. The other side is seen as ‘other’, which can be anything from the stranger to be avoided, to the enemy to be feared.”
Rice suggests that a united Ireland must not be considered before children can come to know one another through Integrated Education.
Historian Diarmaid Ferriter contributes a chapter.
“A few months after the signing of the Belfast Agreement,” he writes, “a member of the management board of a girl’s Catholic primary school in Belfast wrote to Taoiseach Bertie Ahern about the need for the pupils in that school to be exposed to much more than they were used to: ‘We have beautiful children who need to look beyond themselves’. That was true of children in all denominational schools. Those children are now in their thirties. Surely it would be better if their children and grandchildren were educated in integrated schools to try and create a more united Northern Ireland?”
Change to religion in the Republic
Similarly, people in the Republic are interested in change. In this jurisdiction it is not about bringing Protestant and Catholic children together — rather it is about being inclusive of children of all faiths and none in state schools.
In the Republic, there are signs of drastic change in religious belief. In Census 2022 the number of people who reported having no religion increased to 736,210, over 14% of the population. This was an increase of 63% since the 2016 census, and of 187% since the 2011 census. There were a further 3,823 people who reported that they were agnostic or atheist.
The recent INTO motion reflects these changes within schools. A 2022 Genisis report found that most parents (between 55% and 66%) do not think having a Catholic ethos or the option of faith formation are important when choosing a school, and most do not believe religious instruction is valuable within the school.
Proposing the motion on religion at the INTO conference, teacher and delegate Tomás O’Reilly from Sligo said that all teachers are asking for is a voice when it comes to religion in education.
Discussing his contribution with the Irish Examiner he explained that he has no problem with teachers teaching about all religions but is increasingly uncomfortable with faith formation.
Reconfiguration hasn’t worked he said, the process whereby a Catholic school might convert to a different patronage, so change is required in how religion is presented in schools.
“Because no matter how inclusive we try to be in our religion classes in the current system, and we do try to be inclusive, it must be hard for a child of a different faith or of no faith. It must be,” he said.
As a churchgoer himself, he believes parishes would be better off investing directly in their communities.
“In schools we run all sorts of programmes to encourage a lifelong love of reading. It is the same with faith formation.
Churches must want lifelong faith. Communion and Confirmation days are lovely occasions for families but cultural Catholicism is widespread now.
“I have no problem with that, but I assume churches must want people to attend regular mass. Leaving it to the school doesn’t achieve that.”
O’Reilly’s suggestion, that we focus on the removal of faith formation and the sacraments, rather than reconfiguration, seems a wise one if we are to avoid the segregation of children, into religious and multi-denominational schools in the Republic, mirroring the segregation of children into Catholic and Protestant schools in the North.
Back to basics
Returning to a whole-island context, if this drive for more inclusive classrooms, or at least more flexibility in how religion and/or faith formation is delivered, Ireland would return to the system of “national” education that was established under the ‘Stanley Letter’ in 1831, when the whole island was under Westminster’s rule.
The aim then was for all children to be educated together in schools that would provide “combined literary and separate religious education”. The two main churches never embraced their suggested joint management of education however. It remains to be seen how they will respond to what is now a whole-Island desire for change.
In Rice’s book President Michael D Higgins authors the opening chapter.
“The role of education is central to peacebuilding,” he writes, “with evidence to support the view that, when equitably available, of good quality, relevant and conflict-sensitive, education can help promote peace, inclusivity, tolerance, and provide safe environments.
“On the other hand, when its delivery is characterised with exclusion and inequity, for example through a biased curriculum, it can exacerbate conflict.”
Whilst hoping for integrated education in the North, President Higgins also reminds us that “we cannot be complacent about the agenda for inclusive education in the Republic either. There is a desire amongst much of the citizenry for more co- educational, multi-denominational and non-denominational schools at primary and secondary levels, and we need to see these options being delivered without delay.”
The convergence of these ideas on the role of religion in education seems interesting in the context of a united Ireland. Religion is one topic on which many educators, and certainly those within the whole-island INTO, agree.
The taskforce on religion must report to Congress by April 2025. It will be interesting to see how all other stakeholders, including the churches, respond to the findings.
