A Catholic school must have a defined and verifiable Catholic ethos, the Archbishop of Dublin has told a conference of school principals.
In a robust speech yesterday, Dr Diarmuid Martin defended the place of religious education in a pluralist and multicultural society. Pluralist did not mean secularist, he said.
The archbishop was speaking at the annual conference of the Irish Primary Principals Network.
Dr Martin said many Catholic parents sent their children to other types of school while still wishing that they be prepared for their specific Catholic faith life in a context linked with the school.
"It would be interesting, however, to carry out a deeper study of what parents mean explicitly when they speak of a Catholic school," he said. "In many cases they might be referring to a vaguer concept of religious school or a school with a fuzzier generic Christian ethos."
A Catholic school, he added, must have a defined Catholic ethos which should be verifiable in all its aspects.
"If that is not the case, then the specific advantage and reason for having a Catholic school will cease. A Catholic ethos must be the integrating factor for all aspects of the life of the Catholic school. I have a lurking fear that the term ethos might be so ethereal that it may end up an empty yet politically correct term, which people can interpret as they wish."
Dr Martin continued: "We need a more robust definition of Catholic school. A Catholic school is such, not because it is or was run by priests, brothers or nuns.
"It is so because it places at the centre of its mission the passing on of the message of Jesus Christ, his truth and his love, from generation to generation, as a factor of liberation, integration and hope in the young person's life."
A more robust concept of religious education was needed. "There is a viewpoint which tends to look at religious education as something ideological, divisive and doctrinaire and perhaps not really a good thing for young people and certainly alien to . . . a modern pluralist democracy."
He said the opposite was true. "Religious education should be understood as an exciting project which is truly in harmony with a modern pluralist society." The conference highlighted the workload of principals. It heard that more than three-quarters say their workload is much too heavy, according to a principals survey. More than 40 per cent do not have a principal's office while most have either no administrative back-up or only part-time support. The Minister for Education, Ms Hanafin, said she was examining ways to lighten the bureaucratic load on principals.
A former second-level teacher, she was warmly received by delegates. However, there was some criticism when she defended the Government's record on the pupil/teacher ratio.
The chief inspector at the Department of Education, Mr Eamonn Stack, told the conference that there were now 150 inspectors. Last year, 389 school evaluations were completed at primary level and 431 subject inspections were made across secondary, vocational, comprehensive and community schools.
