Joint school seen as model for safeguarding Christian ethos

The first jointly-run Catholic and Church of Ireland faith school in Northern Ireland could provide a model for other rural schools that wish to safeguard their Christian ethos, Bishop Donal McKeown of Derry has said.
He was speaking to The Tablet about the proposed merger of Desertmartin Primary, one of three maintained Church of Ireland schools in Northern Ireland, with 23 pupils, and Knocknagin school, a Catholic maintained primary, with 53.

The two schools in County Derry are negotiating a future jointly managed by the two Churches, with “an explicit shared Christian ethos” and a clear policy on how RE is taught and faith services conducted, he said.
There are no schools of this type in Northern Ireland and the proposed model is distinct from an integrated school. Department of Education guidance on jointly managed church schools was published in April 2015.
Bishop McKeown said: “We are aware of the move towards keeping religion out of education and we are working on the basis that the problem for the future will not so much be religious difference as religious indifference.”

Parents of pupils in the two schools are being consulted about the merger. Staff and the boards of governors have already given their backing. Both schools have worked closely on shared education projects for 10 years.
The joint school idea was mooted at local level, led by the local clergy; “extensive discussions” have been promoted by Bishop McKeown and his Church of Ireland counterpart, Bishop Ken Good. “I hope that we can encourage it as a way forward for some towns and villages ... We want it to be part of a local desire for healing and building a shared future,” Bishop McKeown said.

Dr McKeown, a member of the Irish bishops’ education committee, said amalgamating a Catholic maintained school and a controlled (state) school, where all the Protestant Churches (Church of Ireland, Presbyterian and Methodist) have legal rights of representation, would be more complex. Stressing the difference between the joint model and integrated schools, he said the latter were “simply schools where children (who, in Northern Ireland are all classified as being Catholic, Protestant or other) have mixed pupil numbers.” “The integrated schools vary from avowedly Christian to others which seem to be much more secular. Each school is run by its local trustees and there is thus no shared ethos, other than a commitment to ‘Catholics’ and ‘Protestants’ being together in class,” he explained.