Public Policy in a Divided Society

Schooling, Culture and Identity in Northern Ireland

Alex McEwen

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429813085
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Education General
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1999, this volume is focused on the framing and implementation of public policy in education in a society with deeply entrenched cultural and political identities as expressed by Protestants and Catholics through their different schooling systems.

1 Historical Background to Education in Northern Ireland

Schools before and after Partition, 1921

The purpose of this chapter is to trace the historical roots of disagreement about education and their consequences for past and contemporary approaches to framing public policy with respect to schooling in Ireland. One of the first questions to be faced in tracing the background in Ireland to policy-making in education before and after partition, is where to start. The earliest point for present purposes is the period following Henry VIII’s break with Rome and the subsequent decision by the Tudors to consolidate the Protestant religion in England. The consequences for Ireland were to place it in a strategically sensitive geo-political position in relation to those continental powers that remained Catholic and, in the case of Spain especially, were determined to re­ establish Catholicism in England. A key principle of English foreign and ultimately domestic policy during this period was to secure the strategically vulnerable western flank of newly Protestant England from invasion by an increasingly hostile and acquisitive Catholic Europe. The practical outcome of this policy was to be the English colonisation of Ireland as a means of protecting itself from invasion.

The Normans, led by the Earl of Pembroke known as Strongbow, had earlier come to Ireland in 1170 at the invitation, ironically, of the Irish King of Leinster, Dermot McMurrough, as an ally in his struggle with the High King of Ireland Rory O’Connor, but over the following centuries they had become largely assimilated to Irish culture and language through intermarriage. They were to become part of the problem as English Kings and Queens tried to consolidate their hold on Ireland and to impose their authority on what they came to think of as their subjects. It was Queen Elizabeth I in the aftermath of the Spanish attempt to invade England in 1588, who made the most serious attempt to curb what she saw as Catholic Irish anarchy, disobedience and indifference, at best, to English interests in protecting its vulnerable western flank. Elizabeth’s determination was further strengthened by the experience in 1601 of a second attempted invasion of Ireland by a Spanish fleet in alliance with an Irish land-based force led by two of the chieftains of the province of Ulster, Hugh O’Neill and his neighbour, Hugh O’Donnell. Ulster at that time was the least anglicised province of Ireland where Gaelic culture was strongest and English penetration weakest. The joint Spanish and Irish force was defeated at the battle of Kinsale which, in political terms, effectively marked the end of Gaelic Ireland and the beginning of England’s determined attempt to eliminate native Irish culture, and the Catholic religion that went with it, in a country where the Protestant Reformation had not taken root. This was symbolised further by what is remembered as ‘the flight of the earls’ when O’Neill and O’Donnell, despite being pardoned and allowed to keep their lands after submitting and promising allegiance to the crown, were unable to countenance their effective subjugation in their own Ulster heartland. They left dramatically and secretly from Rathmullen in Co. Donegal in 1607. It was also the beginning of the synthesis between Irish Nationalism and the Catholic religion.

The solution for the Tudors and subsequent monarchs in the 17^th and 18^th centuries was to be the wholesale settlement of Ireland by English and Scots entrepreneurs and farmers hungry for land in what became known as the ‘plantation’ of Ireland. Earlier plantations had failed for lack of investment and commitment with the result that English authority was confined to the Pale, a circle of English influence of about 15 miles around Dublin. It is an irony of history that the most rebellious and Gaelic province of Ulster was also that part of Ireland where the plantation eventually took hold. This was due mostly to the influence and presence in greater and greater numbers throughout the 17^th century of Scottish Presbyterian settlers who, backed by the crown, drove out the native Irish from their farms and homes. After Protestant success in the Williamite wars at the end of the 17^th century in Ireland and Europe, the position of the Catholic Irish peasants was worsened when a series of laws was passed restricting their civil liberties and privileges. Among many other restrictions, the Penal Laws, enacted at beginning of the 18^th century, prevented Catholics from holding any office of state, standing for parliament, and most importantly from buying land. Through the Penal Laws, schooling also became an agency of the attempted anglicisation of Irish culture through the effective proscription of Catholic schools and Catholic teachers. Sending Catholic children abroad to be educated was similarly banned. The Catholic response was the creation of a countrywide, but somewhat haphazard, system of clandestine ‘hedge schools’ run by former priests and Catholic scholars and teachers. They were often quite literally held in the open countryside, but out of sight from public view. A series of relief acts culminated in 1829 with the repeal of the Penal Laws. These were accompanied in 1831 by the introduction of a state-funded National System of Schools which had as a central tenet that they should be non-denominational in an attempt to rid education of the tradition, both official and unofficial, of proselytism.

The prime mover in establishing the schools was the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Edward Stanley, who wrote to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Leinster, on the need for a national system of schooling that met both Protestant and Catholic needs. The letter acknowledged what Stanley called ‘unintentional proselytising’. The relevant section is worth quoting:

The determination to enforce...the reading of Holy Scriptures without note or comment, was done with the purest of motives... it seems to have been overlooked that the principles of the Roman Catholic Church (to which, in any system intended for general diffusion throughout Ireland, the bulk of the pupils must necessarily belong) were totally at variance with this principle; and that the indiscriminate reading of the Holy Scriptures without note or comment, by children must be peculiarly obnoxious to a church which denies, even to its adults, the right of unaided private interpretation of the sacred volume with respect to articles of religious belief. (October 1831; H.C. 196)

The new National System of Schools, Stanley advised, was to be religiously integrated and administered from Dublin by a National Board of Commissioners. Educational policy was to be based on equality of treatment of religious belief which led to immediate criticism from the Church of Ireland. It was at that time the country’s established Church and as such it claimed to be the only legitimate body through which education for all denominations should be organised. The Church rejected, from its position as the official Church, any provision for schooling based on religious equity. There was no support from the government for its objections which resulted in the Church of Ireland setting up its own system of schools, the Church Education Society, attendance being open to all subject to their acceptance of Bible reading as part of the curriculum. By 1860 it had created 1,700 schools attended by 80,000 pupils although its dwindling finances and the deteriorating quality of the buildings forced the Church eventually to join the National System.

The more serious and effective criticisms of the new system came from the Presbyterians who had historically been suspicious of ‘popery’ and objected to the integrationist ethos of the National Schools focusing on:

The mixed nature of the Board’s composition, the powers retained by the Board particularly over textbooks and teachers, the separation of religious from literary instruction, the removal of the Bible as the central focus of all education and the right of clergymen of different denominations to attend the school premises for separate religious instruction. (Coolahan 1981; P.15)

Through vociferous lobbying and public protests they managed by as early as 1840 to achieve significant alterations to Stanley’s original vision for the National School System. Coolahan summarises these as:

Clergymen of different faiths did not have the right to attend the school in an ex-officio capacity but they could visit as general members of the public. A separate day no longer had to be set aside for religious instruction; this could now be given at any time provided advance notice was given. Hitherto there had been an onus on the manager or teacher to exclude children of a different denomination from religious instruction other than their own. This responsibility was now changed and such children need only be excluded if their parents specifically intervened to request such exclusion. (Ibid; P.15)

Initially, the Catholic bishops supported the introduction of the National Schools as the first ostensibly integrated, non-proselytising form of schooling in Ireland. In 1838, their representative on the National Board of Commissioners, Archbishop Murray, sought the views of his fellow prelates about the progress of the new schools. He received 23 responses most of which were positive and encouraged him to continue to represent the Church’s spiritual and educational interests on the Board. A few years later, however, the Catholic Bishops became increasingly critical of the textbooks authorised by the National Board, especially those which combined common secular and religious material. Their suspicions of the potential for proselytising through the Board’s control of textbooks seemed to be confirmed on the publication of ‘Lessons on Christian Evidence’ and ‘ Easy Lessons on the History of Religious Worship’ by Bishop Whately, the Church of Ireland’s representative on the National Board. In these he alluded to Catholic worship and beliefs as having ‘pagan origins’. Their response was a resolution to the Lord Lieutenant that:

No books or tracts whatsoever for the religious or moral instruction of Roman Catholic pupils, shall be admitted into a National School without the previous approbation of the four Roman Catholic Archbishops. (February 1840; Source DAA, Dublin)

Criticism of the National Schools became more muted as the Catholic and Protestant Churches were effectively allowed to go their own denominational ways with respect to religious and moral instruction as the system as a whole became increasingly dominated by the Churches through the agency of clergymen as local managers of the schools. It is worth quoting at length what the Powis Report of 1870 found with respect to how far the denominational character of the schools had proceeded:

The most usual form (of patronship) is that of an individual minister of religion, either a Roman Catholic priest, or a Presbyterian; sometimes, but not very frequently, he is a clergyman of the Established Church...the schools are always of a quasi denominational character. (Para. 115)

It is greatly intensified by the situation of the school building. If the patron is a Presbyterian, he builds his school, if possible, as an adjunct to his meeting­ house... So completely do the sacred and the secular buildings combine and harmonise, that it is sometimes difficult for the observer to determine which part is church, and which school. (Para. 117)

The Roman Catholic priest keeps his chapel and his school separate (and) as a rule takes far more personal interest in the religious instruction of the children, than does the Presbyterian minister. (Religious instruction) he leaves almost entirely to the teacher. The priest, however, allowing the teacher to do no more than hear the catechism...frequently gathers the children into his chapel. (Para. 118)

The Report found many examples, as well, of the original ethos of the National System where schools were managed by lay patrons with mixed religion teaching staffs and pupils: ‘Some lay patrons have shown themselves to be so superior to all sentiments of exclusiveness or sectarianism, as to appoint teachers of a different persuasion from that which they themselves profess’. (Ibid; Para. 125). The schools suffered throughout the 19^th century from government under-in vestment and the effects can be seen from a survey in 1902 published in the Belfast Telegraph (26 September, 1902). It noted that the schools, which by this time were mostly controlled by the Churches, ‘Occupied the same relationship to the churches as a gentleman’s stables do to his house’. In addition, the Belfast Health Commission Report of 1908 found:

Much evidence...as to the unsatisfactory condition of Belfast schools. We ourselves visited a considerable number, and were able to satisfy ourselves that while some are quite creditable and others are good, many are very unsatisfactory indeed. Professor Lindsay quoting from personal experience, described some of them as ‘filthy dens’ and ’simply disgraceful’ and expressed surprise that a wealthy city like Belfast should not only permit the use of such schools, but compel the children to attend them.

The British administration of the whole of Ireland ended with partition in 1921 when negotiations between the British government and an Irish delegation culminated on the 6^th of December with the signing of what was known as the Anglo-Irish Treaty. As far as the British government was concerned it had laid the foundation for a peaceful settlement of Ireland’s Troubles ending, they hoped, centuries of enmity between the people of the two islands by granting the Irish autonomy over their affairs through a system of Home Rule. The successful plantation of Ulster in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, and in particular its most north-easterly part by Scottish and English Protestants meant, however, that the Treaty was fatally flawed in respect of the political and, always in Ireland, the religious aspirations of the plantation’s descendants whose schools were an integral part of their cultural and religious separateness. Their views on future political structures in Ireland ran counter to the British government’s establishment and the Irish delegation’s acceptance of two Parliaments, one in Belfast representing chiefly the six counties of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Tyrone, Londonderry and Fermanagh and another in Dublin for the remaining 26 counties. Unlike the northern Protestants, the London and Dublin based parties, at the time, saw this arrangement as a temporary expedient in the process of the two Parliaments combining, sooner rather than later, and the establishment of Home Rule for the whole 32 counties of Ireland. The Treaty’s full remit was suspended for one month in the six northern counties in order for them to debate whether or not they wished to be part of the new Irish Free State. The result was a foregone conclusion given the inbuilt Protestant majority of the six counties; they exercised their option of going it alone and have stayed that way ever since with the result that Ireland was partitioned into a 26 county Free State and a six county statelet which became known as Northern Ireland and which has remained part of what became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Schooling Reforms after Partition

The reform of education was one of the first steps taken by the new government of Northern Ireland not least because of the ragged physical state of the National Schools introduced and partially funded by the government in 1831. The scale of the task has been summarised by Farren (1995):

Northern Ireland inherited nothing more than the schools and colleges which had been operating within its six counties. These amounted to 2042 National Schools, 75 intermediate (post-primary mostly grammar schools), 12 model schools...Because the Boards of National and Intermediate Education had been based in Dublin, no local administration existed within Northern Ireland. The task facing the new Ministry of Education was, therefore, an enormous one. It virtually meant starting to build from the ground up...(P.38)

Administratively and politically, with respect to educational policy, the new government saw its other task as bringing the system as a whole into line with Great Britain; the start of what became a policy in most areas of government of ‘step-by-step’ with Westminster. The approach was in pursuit of its more general aim of creating a six county British state on the same island, but distinct and separate from, the 26 county Nationalist Free State of Ireland to the south and west. One-third of the people of the new statelet, however, disputed its legitimacy on the basis of their Irish Nationalism; that politically a unified 32 county Ireland was the best way to establish an independent and viable Irish state. From a more practical viewpoint, Catholics were acutely aware of their minority status in the newly partitioned northern part of Ireland and the economic, social, religious and cultural discrimination they were likely to suffer. The disputed legitimacy of Northern Ireland, as it became known, spilled out on to the streets precipitating two years of violent terrorism and counter-terrorism resulting in 232 deaths, the majority of whom were Catholics and substantial movements of Nationalists across the newly formed border with what became known as ‘The South’. Schooling was to be the touchstone for what became a positional ‘war’ between Nationalists and the new and subsequent Unionist administrations which governed Northern Ireland for the first 50 years of its existence.

The new government in Belfast quickly established the Lynn Committee to investigate means of reforming the former National School system under the chairmanship of Robert Lynn, the Unionist MP for West Belfast and editor of the strongly Unionist newspaper ‘The Northern Whig’. The Catholic Church refused to sit on the Committee because of its antagonism to the creation of the separate six county political and cultural entity with a built-in Protestant majority and which, it thought, along with many others, would not last for long. The Committee’s first interim came out in June 1922 and was to form the basis of the Londonderry Act of 1923 which proposed a strongly secularist pattern of state-aided primary schools which was anathema to the Protestant and Catholic authorities alike.

For the Presbyterians especially, the removal of the Bible as the central focus of the education of young children during normal school hours and the prohibition of any financial support for teaching religion was something they immediately and vigorously contested. Lord Londonderry, by contrast, had framed the legislation in reference to the 1920 Government of Ireland Act which forbade either of the new governments to ‘make a law so as whether directly or indirectly to establish or endow any religion’. The 1923 Education Act sought to avoid any preference for a particular denomination in schools and in this sense conformed to the spirit of the earlier Government of Ireland Act. But its religiously neutral tone was opposed by all Church representatives and an amending act was passed in 1925 which authorised local education authorities to require their schools to provide ‘simple Bible instruction’. This was to be non-denominational and non-cathechistic in its teaching. Whilst the Act did not directly endow the Protestant denominations, the Catholic authorities nevertheless, interpreted the government’s intention to be the provision of a broadly Protestant form of both religious and academic education in schools that accepted state funding, since simple Bible reading without any form of clerical interpretation was contrary to Catholic teaching and religious practice. It was also, they felt, antithetical to their idea of an education which was to be couched and taught in an all-embracing religious ethos.

The success of the Protestant clerics, through the political agitation of the United Education Committee of the Protestant Churches, in directly threatening the new and fragile government in alliance with the Orange Order, is an early example of the power of the Protestant Churches in establishing a state funded system of schooling which in effect endowed their religious beliefs and a more general Protestant-British ethos. This was further strengthened in the 1930 Act by effectively ensuring that only Protestant teachers would be appointed to those schools which transferred to the state through the appointment clauses of the act. These devolved authority to local school committees which recommended shortlists to the regional committee for a final decision.

By 1930, it was also clear to Protestants and Catholics alike that ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• 1 Historical Background to Education in Northern Ireland
• 2 Schooling and Identity
• 3 Structure, Power and Policy
• 4 Policy in Practice
• 5 The Policy Process: Interviews with Policy Makers
• References
• Index