Sir, – The State cannot simply allow hundreds of schools, costing billions and paid for by the State, to be transferred to “education” trusts, in effect massive property portfolios, to be administered in perpetuity by a tiny number of unelected and unaccountable trustees, and affecting the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of our children.
Rather than requiring the State to build a new, parallel education system, some of the existing schools under religious control – paid for by all the people of the State – should be returned to the control of the people, through such bodies as Educate Together, in line with the decline in religious practice throughout the state. There will be more than enough real Catholic schools remaining for those who wish their children to be educated in a genuine Catholic school, and not just a “Catholic” school, whose sole entry requirement is a baptismal certificate, even if such a certificate has been obtained only for the purposes of entry. – Yours, etc,
ANTHONY O’LEARY,
Portmarnock,
Co Dublin.
Sir, – Rev Patrick G Burke (August 10th) asserts that the way to solve the shortage of secular primary schools is to take "advantage of the remarkable flexible system we have in this country and establish secular schools".
That sounds so simple. Yet the Department of Education will rarely fund– perhaps justly on a cost basis – a new school in areas where there is not a growing population of school-age children. In these areas it is not a shortage of places but a change in parental demand that is leading to calls for more secular schools.
Even in areas with a growing population like Wicklow town, where the department sanctioned a new Educate Together school 12 years ago, it is not an easy task to set up a school. Wicklow Educate Together’s 300-plus children are finally moving into a new proper school building in 2016 after spending years in two unsuitable buildings and a scrap of land for a play area.
The system is remarkably inflexible to cope with changing parental wishes and the increasing demand for secular education. – Yours, etc,
DANNY HASKINS,
Wicklow.