Last June, students of Castaheany Educate Together National School raised their Yellow Flag for Interculturalism, a gift from the Irish Traveller movement that it received for completing nine steps aimed at promoting interculturalism, equality and diversity within the school. The Yellow Flag, which is now raised in the school’s grounds, symbolises its commitment to a multicultural education system.
Castaheany Educate Together National School, located in Dublin 15, has students from a variety of different backgrounds. It provides primary education for children of all cultures in an environment not predicated by a Catholic ethos. The school operates on a first come first served basis, so parents who want to place their children in the school must register them shortly after birth.
The school’s patron, Educate Together, is a representative organisation for multi-denominational primary schools in Ireland. It runs 58 schools in 19 counties, but there is a growing need for more. The organisation has sent 70 applications to the Department of Education and Skills for new schools, estimating that the State will need to accommodate 100,000 extra pupils over the next six-year period.
The Educate Together schools, along with several other nondenominational patrons, are unique in the Irish education system, in which over 90 per cent of primary schools in Ireland are run by religious institutions.
John Holohan, head of communications at Educate Together, said this does not reflect the cultural makeup of Irish society today. But he also has high hopes for change under new Minister for Education and Skills Ruairi Quinn.
“Minister Quinn actively wanted the cabinet position, it wasn’t just appointed to him,” said Holohan. “He knew what the situation was on the ground before he was given the position, and he’s now brought that knowledge into office with him.
“He’s a believer in secularism and has brought energy to his role in Government, and most importantly recognition of the problem. ”
In April, Minister Quinn launched the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in the Primary Sector, its aim to facilitate the debate on the patronage of primary schools in Ireland.
Speaking at the launch, the minister said: “There are real questions to be answered about the match between our type of school provision, the demand for greater diversity and the make-up of the communities which need to be served.”
Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin welcomed Minister Quinn’s decision. “It is about the type of society that we wish to build,” he said, “one in which people of different religious and philosophical backgrounds can feel that are each fully a part of an educational system which welcomes their particular philosophy of life.”
A UNCDR report strongly criticised Ireland’s education system in failing to accommodate children from different religious and cultural backgrounds. Laws exist throughout the European Union to protect everyone against discrimination on the grounds of religion, including education. This fundamental right is also expressed in our own constitution, in which the State “guarantees to respect the inalienable right and duty of parents to provide, according to their means, for the religious and moral, intellectual, physical and social education of their children.”
Andrea Valova, chair of the board of management of Maynooth Educate Together, was shocked at the way primary schools are run when she arrived in Ireland. Speaking about Educate Together schools in general, Valova said: “I just think the concept is what is really needed.”
She continued: “You have this Nigerian boy, this Chinese boy and this Polish boy playing together. In school there is no talk of ‘This boy looks different or he goes to another church’ – they are just friends.”
Hopefully our multicultural society can change the way it educates children, as they are the makeup of the next generation of Irish people.
Keith Reid is a freelance journalist with a Master's degree in international journalism. He can be reached at keith.m.reid@gmail.com.
