By law, schools must not shorten the school day for children who do not attend religious instruction

When parents seek to remove their child from religious instruction, many schools ignore their constitutional and legal duty to respect this right, and their legal duty to do this without shortening the school day of any student concerned.

Some schools tell parents that they can’t supervise students outside the religion class. One of the reasons that they give is that the Department of Education does not give them enough funding to do this.

However, under Article 44.2.4 of the Constitution, respecting the right to not attend religious instruction in schools is a condition of state aid to schools. Under the Education Act 1998, it is the responsibility of the Minister for Education to administer this right. Regardless of this duty, successive Ministers for Education have delegated that responsibility to schools.

Some schools inform parents that their only option is that the child will be supervised in the religious instruction class. Others tell parents that, if they want their child to be supervised outside the religion class, the parents must supervise the child outside the school. The child can be signed out of the school by the parent or guardian when religious instruction is taking place.

In primary schools, this is half an hour every day. At second level it is two and a half hours every week. The scenario is that parents are required to sign their child out of a publicly funded school, in order to exercise their constitutional right to not attend religious instruction. They may as well may tell parents, that we recognise this right but we are ignoring it.

The issue with this scenario is that it is legally forbidden to reduce the school day for students who exercise the right to not attend religious instruction. We have always known that schools simply don’t care about the rights of minorities and this is just another example.

Section 62.7(n) of the Education (Admission to Schools) Act 2018 states that an Admission Policy must:-

“provide details of the school’s arrangements in respect of any student, where the parent of that student, or in the case of a student who has reached the age of 18 years, the student, has requested that the student attend the school without attending religious instruction at the school (which arrangements shall not result in a reduction in the school day in respect of the student concerned),”

If a child must leave a school in order to exercise a constitutional right, then their school day will be shortened which is not legally permitted under the Act.

In addition, Section 6 (a) of the Education Act 1998 states that:

“Every person concerned in the implementation of this Act shall have regard to the following objects in pursuance of which the Oireachtas has enacted this Act:-

“(a) to give practical effect to the constitutional rights of children including children who have a disability or who have other special educational needs, as they relate to education.”

Schools are legally obliged to give practical application to the right to not attend religious instruction and they can’t reduce the school day for students who exercise this right.

In addition to the above, the Boards of Management under Section 15-2(d) of the Education Act 1998 are obliged in their Admission policy to ensure that the Constitutional rights of all persons are complied with.

One of the Constitutional rights of children is that:-

Article 44.2.4
“Legislation providing State aid for schools shall not discriminate between schools under the management of different religious denominations, nor be such as to affect prejudicially the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money without attending religious instruction at that school.”

If your school tells you that you are responsible for the supervision of your child, if you wish to exercise the right to not attend religious instruction, you can inform them that this is forbidden under Section 62.7(n) of the Education (Admission to schools) Act 2018.

Unfortunately schools typically get away with ignoring this, just like they get away with ignoring the rights of minorities. The reason for this is that successive Ministers for Education have failed to administer the constitutional and legal right to not attend religious instruction.

The right is reinforced by Section 7 of the Intermediate Education (Ireland) Act, 1878, which is still in place:

“7. The Board shall not make any payment to the managers of any school unless it be shown to the satisfaction of the Board that no pupil attending such school is permitted to remain in attendance during the time of any religious instruction which the parents or guardians of such pupil shall not have sanctioned, and that the time for giving such religious instruction is so fixed that no pupil not remaining in attendance is excluded directly or indirectly from the advantages of the secular education given in the school.”

You could try the Ombudsman for children if you wish to challenge the school, as you would probably be wasting your time going to the WRC. The WRC have actually claimed that it could be unfair to students who take religion if students who exercised their right to not attend on the basis of conscience, got another subject.

They are suggesting that students who take religion could have a case if students who exercised their right to not attend got another subject. In other words, students who exercise their right to not attend religious instruction must be punished for doing so, as it would be unfair to students who take religion. Sometimes you just couldn’t make these things up.

Atheist Ireland will continue to lobby for the constitutional and legal rights of students to attend publicly funded schools without attending religious instruction.