School Patronage - The Answer Already Decided?

This report from the Irish Times is of interest - it describes how a group is being established to examine how the patronage of some Irish primary schools might be transferred away from the Catholic Church (or more precisely, the local bishop) in order to better represent the religious make-up of Ireland and in order to afford choice to parents who may wish to have their children educated in a school with a non-Catholic ethos.

A word of explanation may be needed for non-Irish readers - the Article 42 of the Constitution of Ireland says the following about education:

42: The State acknowledges that the primary and natural educator of the child is the Family and 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.

42.2: Parents shall be free to provide this education in their homes or in private schools or in schools recognised or established by the State.

The State shall not oblige parents in violation of their conscience and lawful preference to send their children to schools established by the State, or to any particular type of school designated by the State.

The State shall, however, as guardian of the common good, require in view of actual conditions that the children receive a certain minimum education, moral, intellectual and social.

The State shall provide for free primary education and shall endeavour to supplement and give reasonable aid to private and corporate educational initiative, and, when the public good requires it, provide other educational facilities or institutions with due regard, however, for the rights of parents, especially in the matter of religious and moral formation.

In exceptional cases, where the parents for physical or moral reasons fail in their duty towards their children, the State as guardian of the common good, by appropriate means shall endeavour to supply the place of the parents, but always with due regard for the natural and imprescriptible rights of the child."

It should be noted that the State is not charged directly with providing primary (elementary) education, but rather should 'provide for' - in other words, co-operation with religious and other groups in terms of the provision of education is explicitly foreseen.
So it is that most Irish primary schools - 90% or so - come under the patronage of the local Catholic Bishop or a religious order. The other 10% are mostly Protestant schools, interdeminational/nondenominational schools or schools established for the promotion of the Irish language.
Now, it should be noted that the State funds all these different sorts of schools in an even-handed manner. Our primary education system is almost entirely state-funded. Likewise, the curriculum and most of the regulations to do with running the schools come from the Department of Education and not the patron. So, it would be a mistake to suggest that these schools are CONTROLLED by one religious group or another. [The last line of the news report is a nonsense - the Department of Education has much more 'control' in the schools than the Church.] However, the Patrons (religious and otherwise) are key to the management and ethos of the schools. So, a school under Catholic patronage would have daily Catholic religious education and prayers. The school would play an active part in the life of the parish and should be expected to have a Catholic spirit. Non-Catholic pupils are welcome in our Catholic schools, of course, and parents may opt their children out of Catechism classes and so on. In general, I would argue that our schools are very accommodating and Christian in the welcome they give to non-Catholic students and the way in which the reasonable rights and expectations of parents are respected. This is especially important in areas where there is no alternative to the local Catholic primary schools.
I mentioned management earlier - whilst a Catholic primary school is funded by the State and is subject to a state curriculum and regulations, it is actually managed by a Board of Management on behalf of the Patron (local Bishop). It is an 8-member board. The Chairperson and one other board member are directly nominated by the Patron. (Normally the local priest and a local layperson are the bishop's nominees.) The school principal and a teacher also sit on the board. Parents nominate two members and these six members select the final two members from the local community. The management of the school, therefore, is very representative of the various parties who have a strong and genuine interest in the school itself - an excellent example of subsidiarity and local involvement.

Anyway, it has been clear for a number of years that the de facto monopoly of Catholic primary schools wasn't meeting the needs of parents in some parts of the country. The idea of parental choice in these matters is something that co-incides nicely with Catholic thought, so the Irish Bishops have said that they are open to transferring the patronage of some schools. I think that it's probably fair to say as well that some schools have found it difficult to maintain their Catholic identity/ethos when a large proportion of the students attending are non-Catholic, so this transfer of patronage could also be seen as facilitating the strengthening the ethos of those schools which remain under Catholic patronage. Parents would have to chose to send their children to a Catholic primary school, rather than sending their children to a local Catholic school because the only schools out there are Catholic. Similarly, teachers would be choosing to teach at a Catholic primary school rather than just accepting at job at a Catholic school because there are no other teaching posts available.

However, this report from the Irish Times is worrying in that it states that the Minister for Education wants to see 'at least half' of the schools currently under Catholic patronage to be move to some other form of patronage. In other words, less than 45% of Irish primary schools would remain in Catholic patronage. One wonders how he came up with that figure and why he thinks that it is fitting that he should announce the answer before the body investigating the question has even met. When you consider the fact that most small rural primary schools are very embedded in the life of their local parish, it doesn't make sense to suggest that their patronage should be transferred. In the main, parents, teachers and community are happy with the status quo. So, does the Minister have his figures wrong or is there something more ideological behind his statement?