Religious education and the law in Northern Ireland's Controlled Schools

Abstract

This article examines the legislation under which religious education operates in Northern Ireland's schools. A brief historical sketch identifies the Irish Churches’ interest in the educational debates of the 1920s and 1930s. The legislation that established religious education in the curriculum is traced from those debates to the present statutory core syllabus which requires denominational Christian teaching and the teaching of two other world faiths. This requirement is examined in light of earlier statutes which provided that religious education in controlled schools must be undenominational and based on the Holy Scriptures. Several legislative anomalies are identified and solutions proposed. Human rights and equality concerns raised by the core's largely Christian content and its production by Ireland's Christian Churches are discussed and set in a wider European context.

Keywords:

• Northern Ireland
• schools
• religious education
• law

Notes

1. Acknowledging the risk of oversimplification, Schreiner (2007, 11) writes, ‘In general it is possible to differentiate between two main models of RE in Europe: the Religious Studies and Denominational or Confessional approach’. Some countries-for example, Norway-have moved from a confessional to a non-confessional model, whereas in Germany, Austria and Switzerland RE has ‘unlimited responsibility for the continuation of Christian faith’ (Ziebertz 2003, cited in Hull 2005, 10).

2. The employing authority for Catholic maintained schools is the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS); the five education and library boards fulfil this function for controlled schools.

3. ‘The aim, as Lord Stanley wrote to the Duke of Leinster in 1831, was to “unite in one system children of different creeds”’ (see Williams 2005, 38).

4. McGrath (2000, 64) makes a similar point about both ‘new’ governments claiming they ‘aimed to consolidate distinctive political and national values within the education system’.

5. The Human Rights Act 1998 incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into the law of the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland. Equality duties are largely set out in the Northern Ireland Act 1998.

6. The Department considered extending the provision for world religions because of the core's ‘adverse impacts on pupils from non-Christian backgrounds’.

7. Similar views had been expressed to the Department in meetings with other groups interested in RE. One complaint was straightforward: ‘Representatives of minority religious groups were excluded from the drafting of the Proposals’ (DENI 2006a, 8).

8. That responsibility for the preparation of the core syllabus was delegated to the Churches irritates not only the representatives of other faiths but some professional religious educators (Richardson 2007, 2008) who question the right of the Churches to prescribe the RE syllabus.

9. General Certificate of Education A level – taken by students aged 16–18.

10. Indeed, Nelson (2004, 255) highlighted a significant preference among Catholic schools to ‘pursue a predominantly Catholic syllabus at Key Stage 4’ and comments, ‘In effect they choose to avoid any detailed study of the Protestant tradition’.

11. One board claims its specifications ‘are consistent with the requirements of the non-statutory framework for religious education (England), the national exemplar framework for religious education (Wales) and the equivalent requirements for Northern Ireland’ (OCR 2008, 4). Another board claims its specifications are ‘consistent with the requirements’ of the ‘revised core syllabus in Northern Ireland, and should assist schools. .. to meet their legal obligations for the provision of Religious Education at Key Stage 4 as required in. .. article 13 of the Education Reform Order 1989 for Northern Ireland’ (AQA 2008a, 5). This board does advise that its specification ‘may not cover all of the content of the agreed syllabus which a centre is required to follow. It is for centres themselves to decide what additional measures they may need to take to meet their legal obligations’ (AQA 2008b, 17).

12. Such provision is made in England and Wales, where GCSE RS students are not required to study the locally agreed statutory syllabus.

13. Folgero v. Norway [2007] 23 BHRC 227.

14. Trigg (2007, 186) warns: ‘An educational system which stresses diversity, rather than the undoubted fact of an ongoing Christian tradition, fails to pass on a central aspect of English culture’.

15. The Working Party (Churches’ Religious Education Core Syllabus Review Working Party 2003, 5) held that education must be based ‘upon the Biblical revelation and Christian understanding’.

16. For example, Hull (2005, 10) comments pejoratively on the ‘ecclesiastical captivity of German religious education’. He thinks this limits the development of RE, which benefits under more secular educational control, as is the case in England and Wales. The German model for RE differs markedly from developments in RE in England and Wales where over the last forty years religious educators have come to regard themselves as impartial, secular educators whose task is not to nurture any specific religion but to promote the educational value of a religious studies approach. In Germany, confessional RE in state schools is regarded as the expression of ‘positive religious freedom’ (Nipkow 2006, 112). The German confessional model is open-ended and critical. The learner may reject the confession but only after he has understood it. Christian education in German state schools is about interpretation and understanding – not proclamation or evangelisation. Nipkow (2006, 11) does not eschew a religious studies approach, but wisely maintains: ‘One does not want to teach against one's own convictions under the umbrella of neutralism, objectivism and rationalism as a new secular “doctrine”’. In Germany, RE is still regarded as a branch of practical theology, whereas in Northern Ireland Protestant theologians have played little part in providing a Christian rationale for RE in state schools.

17. See article by Eoin Daly in this volume.