29.02.2012
New Survey Reveals Resounding Support for Protestant Schools
Protestant schools throughout the Republic of Ireland cater for a broad range of religious and cultural diversity, according to the results of a new survey due to be launched on Saturday March 3. The survey, entitled ‘Our School Community’, also found that parents actively choose to send their children to Protestant schools for academic, cultural and faith reasons.
The survey was carried out following the establishment of the Forum on Patronage and Pluralism in the Republic of Ireland by the Department of Education and Skills in April 2011. The questionnaire was distributed to parents of Junior Infant and Sixth Class pupils in all Church of Ireland schools and elicited a massive response with 85 percent of all schools responding. The results reflect the views of 2,143 families.
The questionnaire covered five areas including background information on the parents responding, their reasons for choosing the school, their expectations of the school, how well the school met their expectations and the religious beliefs of the parents.
“We wanted to gain accurate, up to date information on who goes to our schools,” explained Dr Anne Lodge, principal of the Church of Ireland College of Education and one of the designers of the survey. “We wanted to have a sense of what people expect from our schools and how those schools are meeting their expectations.”
The survey found that when it came to the patronage of the school and religious education, church patronage and ethos were very important to the Protestant community with almost a quarter of Protestant respondents saying it was the most important factor in their choice. However, the support for faith schools was also quite high from those of other denominations and there was broad recognition of the importance of Religious Education.
Primary schools under Protestant management do not engage in specific faith formation but religious education is more broadly Christian based, explained Dr Ken Fennelly, secretary of the Church of Ireland Secondary Education Committee.
“The unique characteristic of Church of Ireland and Protestant primary schools from a Religious Education point of view is that the teaching of faith formation is recognised to lie with the parish rather than with the school. This allows schools to have an open Christian ethos and facilitates inclusivity allowing the child to engage with the broader Christian faith within the context of the Church of Ireland school ethos,” Dr Fennelly stated.
The survey found that the parents in Church of Ireland schools make up a cultural, linguistic and religiously diverse community:
· 38% of respondents were from the main Protestant groupings
· 22.5% of parents overall are Roman Catholic
· 20% of parents come from an unspecified Christian background
· 5.6% of parents come from other Protestant groups including Pentecostalists and smaller cell churches
· 7.4% of respondents declared they belonged to no religion
· 5.3% gave no information
Parents actively choose Protestant schools for their children for a range of academic, cultural and faith reasons:
· 46.2% felt that academics (reputation, standards and teachers) were most important
· 21% felt the atmosphere (care and individual attention) of the school was most important
· 17.5% felt that faith issues (patronage, ethos and religious education) were most important – 55.6% of parents rated faith issues as an important reason for choosing a Protestant school as opposed to being the most important reason
The faith context of the school and Religious Education are also seen as important issues for the majority of parents, according to the survey:
· 24% of all Protestant respondents felt that the school’s ethos was an important factor in their choice
· 38.3% of the Roman Catholic respondents rated the faith community of the school positively
Overall parents seemed extremely satisfied with the schools rating social issues, academic achievement, the sense of community, faith development and inclusion highly:
· 96.7% of parents rated social development (issues of self esteem and discipline) at their school highly
· 93.6% felt positive about the schools’ academic achievement
· 91.8% rated the sense of community within the school positively
· 49.5% rated the faith development aspect of the school positively – this included parents outside the Protestant faith and parents of no faith at all
“This survey gives people a broader sense of the complex picture of why a school’s ethos is important,” commented Dr Lodge. “It is not a simple issue and the findings show that this is a complex area and one that we need to explore further in an Irish context.”
The survey was designed by Dr David Tuohy SJ, Dr Anne Lodge and Dr Ken Fennelly. It was sponsored by the Church of Ireland Primary Schools Managers Association, the Church of Ireland College of Education and the General Synod Board of Education.
It will be officially launched at the Annual Conference for Primary School Boards of Management, which takes place at The King’s Hospital School in Palmerstown, Dublin 20, on March 3 2012.