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Showing posts with label Religious Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Religious Education. Show all posts
National Secular Society ✒ has warned the government that education about religion and belief should be reformed, rather than enforced, amid calls to compel schools to teach religious education.


Religious education bodies are calling on the government to compel schools in England to teach RE amid concerns support for the subject is waning.

An analysis by the RE Policy Unit found 34% of academies do not include RE on the school timetable. It also found 500 secondary schools are teaching zero hours of dedicated RE in Year 11.

The organisations are calling for school inspectorate Ofsted to work with schools not currently teaching "sufficient" RE to "ensure they comply with the law".

RE is a statutory part of the basic curriculum and all state schools must provide RE lessons.

RE popularity falls

The RE Policy Unit, which is made up of the Religious Education Council of England and Wales, the National Association of Teachers of Religious Education and RE Today Services, has called for RE to receive greater funding in recognition of "parent and pupil support" for the subject.

But its own analysis found entries for the full course RE GCSE fell by almost 20% between 2016 and 2021.

Continue reading @ National Secular Society.

Prioritise RE Reform Not Enforcement, NSS Tells Government

Atheist Ireland ✒ has written to the Minister for Education and the Comptroller and Auditor General about the misuse of public funds for in-service training of religion teachers in conjunction with Roman Catholic Diocesan Advisers. This is the letter that we have sent to the Minister.

We also attach a letter from the then Minister for Education in 2001 which acknowledges that it is not possible to have Diocesan Advisors at inservice courses for Junior Certificate Religious Education and that funding for local inservice by Diocesan Advisors is not possible.

Dear Minister Foley,

We are seeking information on the amount of State funds used over the years for in-service between the Religious Education Support Service, the PDST and the Catholic Church. We believe that this is a misuse of public funds. It is also an endowment of religion forbidden by Article 44.2.2 of the Constitution and religious discrimination under Article 44.2.3. We are also making a formal complaint to the Comptroller and Auditor General in relation to the misuse of public funds.

The Information Commissioner has recently ruled in favour of Mr. John Hamill of the Freethought Prophet podcast and blog that the Department of Education was not justified in refusing access to certain records relating to the PDST on the grounds that they are not held by the Department or do not exist or cannot be found.

The PDST are jointly presenting at in-service for curriculum Religious Education teachers alongside Catholic Diocesan Advisers. The curriculum Religion Teachers who attend these in-service days are from schools under Catholic patronage as well as ETB schools and colleges including non designated Community Colleges. As far as we are aware the PDST do not present or attend any other in-service days with other religions or beliefs.

Curriculum Religious Education is a core subject in the vast majority of schools. Parents and students are coerced into the course on the basis that it is not religious instruction but religious education despite the fact that the Supreme Court has found that the rights of parents in relation to the Religious and moral education of their children under Article 42.1 must be read in conjunction with Article 44.2.4, the right to not attend religious instruction (Justice Barrington, Campaign case 1998).

Diocesan Advisers are employees of local Catholic dioceses whose concern is the catechetical programme in post primary schools. Their primary role is to ensure that the provisions for teaching religious instruction and formation are upheld, particularly in terms of content and in terms of timetabling allocations. Diocesan Advisers organise an annual in-service for the religious education teachers of a diocese.

This gathering introduces teachers to leading speakers in the catechetics of faith development. Diocesan Advisers also organise other less formal in-services which are arranged on a local (school cluster) basis. See “The Role of the Diocesan Advisor for Post-Primary Religious Education” published by the Irish Catholic Bishops Conference in 2004. See press release.

A recent article in the Sunday Times and Irish Examiner has focused on the fact that a curriculum Religious Education teacher was given an anti abortion video as a resource for curriculum RE during in-service between the Catholic Church and the PDST.

When curriculum Religious Education was introduced it was made clear by the then Minster, Michael Woods, to Fr. Donal O’Neill, Chairperson of the National Association of Post Primary Diocesan Advisers co-ordinators that it was not possible to have Diocesan Advisers present at in-service courses for Junior Certificate Religious education and why funding for local in-service by Diocesan Advisers was not possible. We attach below this letter from 2001.

We are also providing a link to an article by Mr. John Hamill of the Freethought Prophet podcast and blog, who has been trying for years to get information on these particular in-service courses. This article refers to comments by Noel Farrell, an Assistant Principal Officer within the Department of Education and Skills (DoES) who has described the position of the PDST at these events as providing curriculum and pedagogical expertise. He stated that there were no documents in relation to reports or payments because these were not PDST events.

The PDST was established in 2010 and is funded by the Teacher Education Section of the Department of Education and is managed by Dublin West Education Centre. The attendance of the PDST at any in-service events organised by the Diocesan Advisers uses state resources because the staff are paid by the State and there are also transport cost involved. In addition curriculum RE teachers are paid by the state to attend in-service for Catholic faith formation and instruction.

The Department of Education are aware that PDST staff who are funded by the Department are providing curriculum and pedagogical expertise for curriculum Religious Education teachers at events organised by Catholic Diocesan Advisers for a Catholic catechetical programme in post primary schools whose primary role is to ensure that the provisions for teaching Catholic religious instruction and formation are upheld.

These events between the publicly funded PDST and the Catholic Church undermine the constitutional right of parents in relation to the religious and moral education of their children. It uses state funding to legitimise the integration of catholic faith formation (The Guidelines for the Faith Formation and Development of Catholic students) in curriculum Religious Education in a course that the Department claims is for all religions and none and where most schools and teachers inform parents that it is suitable for all religions and none.

Atheist Ireland’s recent Legal Opinion found that integrating faith formation into curriculum religion without the possibility of opting out was an attack on the rights of parents and the right to freedom of religion and belief. Your Department funds in-service for curriculum Religion teachers to integrate Catholic faith formation into the subject.

We look forward to hearing from you.




 ⏩Atheist Ireland ➖ Promoting Atheism, Reason And An Ethical Secular State.

The Department Of Education Misuses Public Funds For In-Service Training Of Religion Teachers

Atheist Ireland ✒ The Anti-Abortion School Video, The Catholic Church, The PDST, And The Department Of Education.


According to an article in the Sunday Independent today, a religion teacher in the Ursuline secondary school in Tipperary played an anti-abortion and unscientific video to students. 


This is relevant to an issue that Atheist Ireland wrote about three years ago, when we sought information under the Freedom of Information Act about the Professional Development Service for Teachers (PDST).

The video which was seen by the Sunday Independent contains numerous controversial claims, including that women who have abortions are at high risk of developing breast cancer, that abortion clinics harvest foetal organs to sell them to medical researchers to fight Parkinson’s disease, and that the “scalp of the aborted baby can be sued to correct baldness”

A parent of a student complained to the school and the issue went to the Teaching Council, who ruled that the complaint did not warrant a full disciplinary inquiry for the religion teacher involved.

The Irish Independent has seen the correspondence in relation to the complaint. According to the correspondence of the Teaching Council to the parent, the Teacher Council pointed out that the DVD was acquired by the teacher at a registered training day, meaning it was sanctioned by the Department of Education. The Department of Education said it and its teachers’ education supports service has no knowledge of the video referred to in the article.

The Professional Development Service for Teachers (PDST) runs registered training days for curriculum religion teachers alongside the Catholic Church. It seems at the very least plausible that it was at one of these training days that the religion teacher was given the video to show her students.

The teacher has said that she is committed to continuing her own professional development as a teacher. Showing this video was already part of her ‘professional development’ if she obtained the video on a training day organised by the PDST and the Catholic Church.

Atheist Ireland has tried unsuccessfully to obtain information about these training days between the PDST and the Catholic Church but the Information Commissioner found that the PDST are a private body and did not come under the FOI Act.

You can read our Article “Professional Development Service for Teachers won’t answer about in-service training with Catholic Church” here.

Atheist Ireland recently used the Freedom of Information Act to ask some questions of the Professional Development Service for Teachers (PDST), which is a State-funded body that provides in-service training for teachers, about its relationship with the Catholic Church when providing such training for religion teachers.

The PDST gave us incomplete, misleading, and contradictory answers to our requests. When we appealed the responses under the Act, the PDST changed track. They told us that they were not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, because they are a private body, and the Office of the Information Commissioner agreed with them.

Consequently, a body that is State-funded but has no legal status, is now working with the Roman Catholic Church to deliver in-service training to religion teachers in State-funded schools, without any day-to-day role for the Department of Education in supervising this work. Furthermore, there is no public accountability in relation to how this work is conducted.

The result of all of this is that the teacher and the school are claiming that the video was acquired at a registered training day. That registered training day was probably run by a publicly funded private body (the PDST) and the Catholic Church for teachers of curriculum Religious Education.

The Teaching Council has found that a Religious Education teacher showing a video to students that has been distributed by private bodies, without the consent of parents does not warrant a full disciplinary inquiry for the religion teacher despite the fact that parents and students objected on conscience grounds to the contents of that video.

On top of that the Department of Education claims it has no knowledge of the incident and the Department does not endorse external products or programmes in relation to SPHE. That statement is a nonsense because it was the Religion teacher that showed the video to students, and she got it at a training day organised by private bodies for curriculum religious education.

The Department of Education refuse to be open about what is happening with the PDST and the Catholic Church, and have just against washed their hands of the issue.

⏩Atheist Ireland ➖ Promoting Atheism, Reason And An Ethical Secular State.

The Anti-Abortion School Video

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