The Convention on Education was opened by Minister for Education Hildegarde Naughton last weekend. She said we needed to “cherish the best of what we do well and have courageous conversations about what we don’t do well”. As a middle-aged person who came to teaching in recent years, I know there is so much we need to cherish in our education system and the dedication, professionalism and kindness of colleagues and school leaders. But we must find the courage to address the stranglehold of religion, particularly Catholicism, and the religious discrimination that permeates the entire system.

The convention is to run over four weekends in 2026. There were more than 5,000 applications to take part and, from them, 150 delegates were selected from groups comprising children, parents, school employees and education stakeholders. Ultimately, the convention will issue recommendations that will inform the Department of Education’s long-term strategy to 2050 and beyond. If the elephant in the room – religion – is ignored yet again, it will be hard to take the process seriously.

About 90 per cent of Ireland’s taxpayer-funded primary schools are controlled by the Catholic Church. “Courageous conversations” are certainly necessary but are they possible?

Section 37 of the Employment Equality Act allows schools to take action “which is reasonably necessary to prevent an employee or a prospective employee from undermining the religious ethos of the institution”. Legislation is generally supposed to be crystal clear but both the transgression and the consequences are unsettlingly vague in this case. What does it mean to undermine religious ethos? What happens if I do this? Many believe it means teachers can face termination of employment – so they are not too keen to find out where the boundaries of permissible conduct lie. In effect, this law is not meant to be applied in court – it is about ensuring omerta.

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The chilling effect of Section 37 is very real. I am representing the organisation Education Equality at the convention, and numerous teachers have contacted me to express their strong misgivings about the dominance of the Catholic Church and their fear that speaking out could see them fired. This is outrageous in the context of a convention that depends upon freedom of expression from education professionals. How courageous do our conversations need to be? Do we have to put our livelihoods on the line?

In her address, Naughton noted: “the experience of school has not been what it should be for many young people”. This is certainly the case for many non-Catholic young people – sometimes children from minority ethnic groups or with foreign nationalities, sometimes not.

Children have a constitutional right not to attend religious instruction at school but this right is simply not upheld. First, their parents are expected to actively request to opt their children out of religious instruction. This initial process is off-putting and made unduly complicated by many schools.

Then the reality of “opting out”, which I’ve written about before in these pages, kicks in. It means sitting alone in the classroom during the daily half-hour of faith formation doing non-curricular busy work, and absorbing the entire lesson regardless. It means being herded with the “others” to the back of the hall when the priest visits to give a talk. It means sitting at the back of the church as the class attends Mass during school hours. It means being left out of countless school activities that are tied to religious holidays. And during the Communion and Confirmation years it means all of the above, for hours on end, for weeks at a time.

Parents should not be required to request that a constitutional right be respected. It is also very wrong that the State takes absolutely no role in overseeing whether or how this right is upheld. When pressed on the issue, successive ministers invariably gave the same response: that it is up to individual schools how they do this. This is just cowardice.

The obvious solution is simply for sacramental preparation and faith formation to take place outside school hours on an opt-in basis.

Naughton quoted the poet and philosopher Paul Valéry in her speech: “All great undertakings do not consist of doing again what others have done before”. This surely means finally ditching the school divestment process. This scheme has been policy for successive governments for 15 years and yet has been an abject failure. Ireland has more than 3,000 primary schools, but only a handful have changed patronage. The few schools that are not under religious control got there through long, hard campaigns by local parents – not divestment. Divestment and Balkanised patronage are also morally questionable – does anyone honestly think it is a good idea to silo four- and five-year-old children into different schools on the basis of religion?

Segregating and othering children at school based on religion is deeply wrong – and teachers should be free to say so. The convention must recommend that religious faith formation take place outside school hours on an opt-in basis for those who want it, not be imposed on everyone.

Paddy Monahan is a teacher, Social Democrats councillor and policy officer with Education Equality

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