THE Primate of All Ireland, the Most Revd Alan Harper, has led protests this week by the Anglican, Methodist, and Presbyterian Churches in Northern Ireland at the deliberate exclusion, as he termed it, of their voice in education, under new plans before the Northern Ireland Assembly.
The Sinn Féin Education Minister, Catriona Ruane, had failed to provide these Churches with a real say in a new plan under which the administration of the province’s state-run schools would pass to “area-based planning groups”, the church leaders said.
Schools that come under Roman Catholic management are not affected, as the Roman Catholics did not hand over the running of its schools to the state in the 1930s and 1940s.
But the other Churches, which became known as Transferors, feel that they are being disenfranchised and sidelined by the Minister, whose party favours a secular education system, while the RC Church continues to run its own schools, fully funded by the state.
In a strongly worded response, Archbishop Harper, the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, the Rt Revd Dr John Finlay, and the President of the Methodist Church in Ireland, the Revd Roy Cooper, expressed their deep disquiet at the exclusion of their three Churches by the Minister of Education from membership of the area-based planning groups.
A statement from the three church leaders called the action “deliberate omission of Transferor representatives from these bodies”. It said: “They note the minimal nature of the assurance from the Department of Education that it will look at how the Protestant churches can be a part of the planning process, and they suggest that the interests of the Transferors should be represented as of right. . .
“The Protestant Churches are a significant stakeholder in education in Northern Ireland.”
Mrs Ruane has agreed to meet the church leaders again, and a Church of Ireland spokeswoman said on Tuesday that the meeting would be eagerly awaited.
In the Irish Republic, Anglican schools are run under the auspices of the Church of Ireland, and funded by the state, in common with Roman Catholic schools. |
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