The need for emergency schools in Co Dublin shows our education system hasn't kept up with changes in society, writes Rosita Boland.
'When you start segregating children in schools, it's not great for the future." It's midweek of the first full week of the new term, and Kenyan-born Philip Njoroge has arrived at the gates of Balbriggan's Educate Together school to collect his five-year-old daughter, Natasha. The school sprawls across a series of prefabs in Moylaragh, a vast housing estate where a handful of newly planted trees are struggling to make an impact on the vast, empty, football-pitch-sized green area in the middle.
Njoroge has been in Ireland for five years, most of that time living in north Co Dublin, and he had problems finding a school place for Natasha before she was accepted by Educate Together. The family had tried Catholic schools first.
"We are not Catholic, and your religion is one of the questions that appears most prominently on the application form. They should not be so tight on what your religion is, because the country is opening up, and we should embrace everybody," he says.
As it happens, neither Njoroge, nor any of the other parents The Irish Times speaks to at the gates of this school, which opened in 2005, are aware that a second Educate Together school, Bracken, will open in Balbriggan on September 17th. This emergency school, which will cater for local children who were left without a school place, has been provoking controversy all week.
On Monday, it was reported on Morning Ireland that a meeting last Saturday, organised by the Department of Education for parents in the Balbriggan area who had not yet found school places for their children, had been attended by upwards of 70 people.
"As they take their seats, one thing becomes startlingly clear: apart from the organisers, myself, and five or six others, everyone else in the room is black," commented RTÉ's education correspondent, Emma O'Kelly.
Later that day, the Minister for Education, Mary Hanafin, denied that there is racism in the Irish education system.
"It might be a skin-colour issue, but it's not necessarily a race issue," she said. "The nature of Irish society is changing. It's particularly changing in some communities."
The debate continued when Anne McDonagh, director of education with the Archdiocese of Dublin, responded to complaints by parents from ethnic backgrounds that they had been unable to enrol their children in schools under Catholic patronage.
"We must stick to our enrolment policy of providing an education for Catholic children and siblings first," she said.
McDonagh was referring to the controversial Equal Status Act 2000, Section 7 (3c), which states: "Where the establishment is a school providing primary or post-primary education to students and the objective of the school is to provide education in an environment which promotes certain religious values, it admits persons of a particular religious denomination in preference to others or it refuses to admit as a student a person who is not of that denomination and, in the case of a refusal, it is proved that the refusal is essential to maintain the ethos of the school."
While all this was being discussed on the national airwaves, the doors of another emergency primary school, Scoil Choilm, were being opened for the first time. Overseen by principal Treasa Lowe, Scoil Choilm, in the Dublin 15 area of Diswellstown, admitted 83 junior infants, the vast majority of whose parents come from Nigeria, Colombia, Romania, Poland and Moldova. Like the children who will be attending the emergency Educate Together school in Balbriggan, these had difficulty finding places within existing schools in the area. According to Lowe, most of them live in Porterstown, some three kilometres from Diswellstown. When the current emergency school finds a site to build on, Scoil Choilm will move to Porterstown.
The vast majority - 98 per cent - of primary schools in the State are under the patronage of the Catholic Church. This is a historical legacy which no longer corresponds with the proportion of the population who wish to educate their children solely in the Catholic ethos. There is very little choice for parents who wish to find an alternative local primary school to the existing traditional Catholic model.
On Wednesday, the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, told The Irish Times that he blamed poor planning by the Department of Education and other State agencies for the crisis in school places in north and west Dublin.
"I would be very happy to see a plurality of patronage and providers of education. I have no ambition to run the entire education system in Dublin," he said.
On the same day, Hanafin responded to criticism from UN bodies which have twice called on the Government to change the relevant legislation. Two years ago the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination called for the Equal Status Act to be amended because racial and religious discrimination intersected, with the danger that the non- Catholic children of immigrants could be discriminated against. The Minister stated that the current legislation "reflects the Irish education system" and that she saw no need to change that.
On Thursday, Archbishop Martin declared: "I have clearly told the Department of Education, and I've also said it quite publicly, that the Catholic Church, for historical reasons, is over-present in the management of schools for the new demographic of Ireland."
This week's events offer a microcosm of changes in the State over the last few years. The size of our population and its ethnic diversity have increased in ways that are severely testing our existing social structures. The latest census figures show that, in 2006, foreign-born residents made up 14 per cent of our population. They also show that areas in and around Dublin have dramatically increased in population in recent years.
In 2006, the population of Co Meath was 162,831. A decade earlier, in 1996, it was 109,732. In Dublin Fingal, a key area of pressure for school places, the population in 2006 was 239,992, up from 167,683 in 1996. Fingal covers an area of approximately 278 sq km and, according to Fingal County Council, its population is expected to reach 260,000 by the year 2010. In Blanchardstown, which is in Dublin 15, the same postcode where emergency school Scoil Choilm is located, the immigrant population increased by 120 per cent, from 6,928 to 15,270, between 2002 and 2006.
It is generally accepted that schools are a key element in the integration of an incoming community. There is also the separate issue of planning for and facilitating new schools in areas of dense population, such as the commuter towns around Dublin. The complaints are consistent from residents of new developments: housing is being built first, and auxiliary promised services do not always follow.
On February 17th, Hanafin announced a new, additional model of primary-school patronage. The State's first community school at primary level was to be introduced on a pilot basis in Dublin 15. Diswellstown Community National School's patron would be County Dublin VEC and it was projected to open in September 2008.
"My department will now begin a process of consultation with the relevant education partners to explore the detailed implementation measures that will need to be put in place prior to the opening of the new school," Hanafin said.
However, on May 29th, it was announced that, in addition to the original plans, the Minister had approved the establishment of a new emergency school, Scoil Choilm, in Diswellstown, which would open this September. The department reverted to tradition in seeking out the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin as its patron.
The following day, Paul Rowe, chief executive of Educate Together (which now has 43 schools in the State) said he was surprised that his organisation had not been approached by the department to act as patrons of Scoil Choilm, as "our model is ideally suited to the needs of the area".
The Educate Together ethos "aims to meet a growing need in Irish society for schools that recognise the developing diversity of Irish life and the modern need for democratic management structures", he said. "In particular, Educate Together guarantees children and parents of all faiths and none equal respect in the operation and governing of education."
Since the announcement of the imminent opening of Educate Together's emergency school in Balbriggan, the school has received an additional 60 applications, with the figure increasing daily. Rowe envisages that its ultimate intake will, like other Educate Together schools, reflect a diverse ethnic spread.
When asked by The Irish Times why it sought the patronage of the Catholic Church for the emergency school at Scoil Choilm, the Department of Education stated yesterday that it "had the co- operation of patrons in addressing the issues which arose in Dublin 15 and Balbriggan this year and it looks forward to continuing this co-operation into the future, including during the consultation process for and the subsequent introduction of the new model of primary school patronage."
Over the course of the summer, it had become evident that many of Balbriggan's children were still seeking a primary school place for the approaching academic year. It came to the attention of the National Education Welfare Board (NEWB) that up to 40 families in the area were without school places for their children. Established in 2002, the NEWB has a statutory function to ensure that every child between the ages of six and 16 either attends school or receives a corresponding programme of approved education. As Michael Doyle, regional manager for Leinster North/Ulster explains, the board exists to "give guidance, advice and support". He reports that the areas in his region where the NEWB has been asked by parents to give the most help in the last 18 months are Dublin 15 and the east coast towns of north Co Dublin. The NEWB has been working with virtually all of those Balbriggan-based parents of children without school places who turned up for the meeting with the Department of Education.
"Historically, it was the case that parents applied verbally for school places, but we don't recommend that," Doyle says. "We advise parents to either complete the application form which the school itself provides, or to write their own letter of application to the school. There is an obligation on the school principal, acting on behalf of the board of management, to reply within 21 working days of receiving a written application to indicate whether the application is being accepted or not."
If an application is turned down - as happened in many of the Balbriggan cases - parents can fight the decision by lodging an appeal with the relevant section in the Department of Education. The main criterion used to define catchment areas for schools is the parish boundary, reflecting the historical presence of the Catholic Church. If refusing applications, principals will now also inform parents about the existence of the NEWB, which can help by trying to find places in other schools in the area.
Archbishop Martin's announcement this week about being open to a plurality of patronage for schools was welcomed by both Educate Together and the Irish VEC Association.
There is a legal obligation on the State to provide an education for all children aged six to 16, hence the establishment of Bracken, the emergency Educate Together school in Balbriggan, in less than a fortnight. If Educate Together is in a position to take on the opening of a new school within two weeks, it does beg the question as to why it was not asked to open the emergency school in Diswellstown, and why the department's pilot project for Diswellstown will take at least 18 months to establish.
"This week is a warning of a need to plan ahead for these issues, and we would agree that it [the debate] shouldn't be simply reduced to racial discrimination. It has come about as a combination of factors and the rapid growth in population in areas such as Balbriggan," says Philip Watt, director of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism. "It raises issues about the need for more pluralism in our education structure, and we would agree with Archbishop Martin's comments about patronage this week."
The Minister was forced to defend her department against allegations of racism this week, while simultaneously acknowledging that the initial cohort of children needing places in Balbriggan were black. The fact that the Equal Status Act gives preferential admission to children of a particular religious denomination meant that it was only a matter of time before this outcome presented itself.