THE growing strains faced by governors and boards of management of church schools on each side of the border were lamented because the Synod received the newest report from the Boards of Education.
Canon Malcolm Kingston (Armagh) introduced the report from the Board of Education in Northern Ireland. The Board, he said, was concerned by growing voices in politics and the media which were questioning the part played by faith in education, and continued to consider that schools were best served by a non-denominational Christian ethos open to those of all faiths and none.
The Board has also been engaged in debates over the religious education (RE) curriculum, and defended schools’ holding a Christian act of collective worship to retain their Christian ethos. He said that the Board was also deeply concerned in regards to the underfunding of colleges in Northern Ireland. Through the Transferers Representative Council (a joint body of other Protestant churches who’ve schools within the state sector), the Board had been working with the Roman Catholic Church on a process to ascertain joint Protestant-Catholic schools, managed together by multiple denominations.
Covering the Republic, Hazel Corrigan (Cashel, Ferns & Ossory) reported that just about 1600 members of primary-school boards of management had now been given training by dioceses, which was an enormous achievement by volunteers. Work was also under method to revise the RE curriculum for Church of Ireland primary schools, she said.
The Bishop of Derry, the Rt Revd Andrew Forster, said that the Church’s work in schools was one in all its most vital contributions to ministry, following on from Jesus’s elevation of the status and dignity of youngsters. The education landscape had been “horrendous” lately, he said, referring to lockdowns, online teaching, and budget cuts on each side of the border. He thanked teachers for continuing to do more with less, and in addition those clergy who supported local schools, especially in governance and management.
The Revd Adrian Dorrian (Down & Dromore) said that being a college governor was probably the most fulfilling parts of his ministry, and urged clergy to be lively in recruiting congregants on to boards.
The Archdeacon of Meath & Kildare, the Ven. Leslie Stevenson (Meath & Kildare), noted how demands on boards of management had grown enormously lately. He also said that many colleges were struggling financially, because the state reduce funding yr after yr; and teachers were finding the workload intolerable.
Canon Gillian Wharton (Dublin & Glendalough) echoed Archdeacon Stevenson’s concerns. Grants from the Department for Education within the Republic didn’t arrive normally until Christmas, forcing schools to maintain paying the bills for the entire of the primary term by themselves. It was “disingenuous” for presidency ministers to assert that no school needed to ask for parental contributions, she said, when such contributions were needed simply to maintain the lights on. She also made a plea to cancel the closure of the Church of Ireland Primary School Management Association, which is because of disband.
Tim Smyth (Meath & Kildare) spoke of the challenges faced by school management boards, which were purported to be private corporate bodies, and needed to cope with GDPR, HR, and other complex concerns by themselves, but in the event that they ever dared ask parents for money, they’d be publicly scolded by the federal government. He felt that church schools were under-resourced centrally, and that the funding crisis may very well be resolved only by urgent conversations with the federal government. He also raised the problem of the federal government’s compelling schools to rent certain teachers each time a emptiness arose, which might never occur in every other walk of life. This system just didn’t work for small schools.
