This article appeared in The Mayo News on Tuesday, July 30, 2024.

Picture this. You’re nervously waiting in the corridor for an interview at a finance company. You really want this leadership role. The door opens, and you’re called in. You take your seat in front of the panel. Handshakes and introductions follow; someone cracks a joke to put you at ease. You fervently hope you’ve made a good first impression. The chief executive thanks you for attending and gets the ball rolling with the first question.

“So tell us. How do you plan to uphold the Catholic ethos of this company?”

You’re not religious. You don’t practice any faith. But you know you have to pretend to have a chance at the job. So, you lie enthusiastically about how you will devote nearly 10 percent of your weekly working hours to training your team in Catholic beliefs like creationism, immaculate conceptions, virgin births and not eating meat on Fridays. Time that could be spent, well, working. 

This farcical scenario is, incredibly, a reality for teachers interviewing for roles in nearly 90 per cent of the country’s primary schools that remain Catholic, despite only 69% of the population identifying as Catholic in the last Census. It might sound discriminatory, like it’s convening the Employment Equality Act, which prohibits discrimination on religious grounds, but no – it’s entirely legal. Section 37 of the Act provides an exception, allowing religious institutions to favour employees who maintain their ethos or prevent the undermining of it.

So, teachers in Catholic schools are obliged to provide up to 2.5 hours per week of religious instruction, increasing around first communion and confirmation times, regardless of their own beliefs – or lack thereof.

Not everyone is in agreement, and the clamour for change is – rightly – growing louder. Education Equality is one voluntary, parent-led advocacy group seeking to end religious discrimination in taxpayer-funded schools. The group uses social media to draw attention to the systemic biases that affect non-Catholic and minority religious students within the education system, sharing daily personal testimonials which detail the exclusion and othering experienced by parents and students, and the fears and frustrations of the many teachers who must preach what they do not practice in order to get and keep their jobs.

Back in February 2023, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) told Ireland it should take steps to remove religious bias from all education settings, in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The CRC also urged Ireland to adequately resource a strategy to meet its own (fantastical) targets for increasing the number of multi-denominational schools by 2030. Only 169 multidenominational schools exist in Ireland.

Incredibly, there are no nondenominational schools at all in the country. While some progress has been made, notably the abolition of the so-called Baptism Barrier, which prioritised Catholic children over non-Catholics in school admission policies, parents who want to opt their children out still have little choice but to enrol them in Catholic schools. 

The CRC also recommended that Ireland establish statutory guidelines to ensure children have the right not at attend religious classes. Parents currently have the right to formally opt their children out of religious instruction in Catholic schools, but frequently, as illustrated by Education Equality testimonies, these children remain in the classroom, and are not always assigned appropriate alternative learning material.

The Department of Education does not capture data on how many children are opted out, nor have they issued guidelines to schools to handle opt out requests. Additionally, Catholic schools have the freedom to teach sex education according to their ethos, which can have damaging implications for LGBTQIA parents and students.

To date, Minister Norma Foley has refused to engage with Education Equality, nor has she acknowledged their concerns. She has, however, announced a survey to gather parents’ preferences on school patronage, a move described by the group as a ‘stalling tactic’ in a divestment process that has moved painfully slowly since 2012.

Faith is not fact. Everyone absolutely has a right to practice their faith, but there is little logical justification for using precious academic hours to indoctrinate children into a religion. The culture (or cult) of the Big Day Out for communions and confirmations means that many parents, despite rarely setting foot in a church from one end of the year to another, are reluctant to withdraw from faith formation. It would be interesting to see how many would still voluntarily participate if the work had to be done outside school hours.

In a country known for its rich history of storytelling, it’s long past time the focus in Irish schools shifted from preaching to teaching, ensuring that the only thing teachers need to practice going forward is their profession.