United Nations is asking Ireland about the right to an alternative to religion class in schools
Atheist Ireland will be attending the 92nd session of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva later this month. This UN Committee will be questioning Ireland, and we have made a joint submission with the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and the Evangelical Alliance of Ireland. You can find ...
The state should not allow Catholic bishops to segregate schoolchildren by religion
The Irish Times got documents under FOI that show that the Catholic Bishops are concerned over the ability of Catholic primary schools to keep their ethos. The reason for this concern is because publicly funded Catholic schools can no longer give preference to children from catholic families. You can find ...
Catholic schools foster relations with God when teaching Relationships and Sexuality education
The Minister for Education, Norma Foley, still has no plans to amend the Education Act 1998 to guarantee that relationship and sexuality education will be delivered in an objective, critical and pluralistic manner and not through religious ethos of schools. Atheist Ireland has made submissions to the National Council for ...
FOI document shows Catholic bishops reversed Department of Education’s support for parents’ rights
Atheist Ireland has obtained, under the Freedom of Information Act, notes of a meeting between the Department of Education and representatives of the Catholic Church in 2018. At that meeting, the Department told the Catholic Church that ETB schools must respect the constitutional rights of parents for their children to ...
New primary curriculum framework does not address rights of nonreligious families
There is an Article in the Irish Times today “Primary schools to teach foreign languages as religion time cut under new proposals” by Carl O'Brien regarding a new Framework for the Primary school curriculum. It is to be published in 2023 by Minister Norma Foley. As usual this document addresses ...
ETBI contradicts Department of Education about multi-denominational status of schools
The recently published Document from Education and Training Boards Ireland, ETBI's Patrons' Framework on ethos, states that ETB schools are multi-denominational. This includes the Non-Designated Community Colleges and Designated Community Colleges. Specifically, the Ethos Framework states that: "ETB schools are state, co-educational, multi-denominational" As always the ETBs are not clear or transparent ...
Atheist Ireland letter to Comptroller and Auditor General December 2022
Atheist Ireland wrote this letter to the Comptroller and Auditor General on 5 December 2022. [pdf-embedder url="https://www.teachdontpreach.ie/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/AI-to-CAG-Dec-2022.pdf" title="AI to CAG Dec 2022"]
Atheist Ireland asks NCCA to recommend change in law for senior cycle SPHE
Atheist Ireland has made the following submission to the NCCA Consultation on the redevelopment of Senior Cycle SPHE. 1. Overview 2. Why legal change is needed 3. Constitutional rights of parents 4. Legal route to course being taught through religious ethos 5. Catholic Church Guidelines on teachers upholding their ethos ...
Parents, not church or state, have the right to provide religious and moral education
The Catholic Bishops wrote to the Dept of Education in 2018, in relation to Circular Letter 0013/2018 issued by the Department of Education. This Circular obliged ETB schools to give students another subject if they exercised their right to not attend religious instruction. It recognised that schools should offer students ...
The state must protect the constitutional right to not attend religious instruction in schools
The Department of Education interferes in the Constitutional rights of parents through the NCCA second level Religious Education course. This course seeks to develop values in students to enable them to see the relevance of religion to their lives and relationships. When parents seek to exercise their Constitutional right for ...