The Patronage System in the Irish Education System

Running head: EDUCATION
Education
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1EDUCATION
Part B
The patronage system in the Irish education system has not been able to meet the needs of
the modern society. As a result of the globalization, most nations have to adopt the
multiculturalism within their society (Rougier and Honohan 2015). From the beginning of the
17th century, the education system in Ireland was mainly dependent on the Catholicism. The
historical background of these schools should be discussed to get a better overview about this
whole scenario.
The scenario is more important since most countries have become very much
multicultural and multi ethnic. One of the main issues that have been seen in the recent months is
the fact that some children in the neighborhood have been rejected from their schools because of
their religious affiliation. As the purpose of education is teach students about all important things
about society and history, it is not at all justified to reject them just because of their religious
affiliations (Rougier and Honohan 2015). The influence of the churches in numerous schools has
definitely worked as a backdrop in the recent times. Therefore, it is completely an injustice over
the children.
The modern society in Ireland has seen a rise in the population of different ethnicities
with different religious backgrounds. If this practice goes on in the future, the students of Ireland
will be largely deprived of the education regarding other cultures, ethnicities and religions that
exist within the society (Hyland and Bocking 2016). However, some contrasting views have
been presented here as well. When the parents wanted to admit their children to these schools in
Ireland, the management of a school like St. Oliver Plunkett’s School stated these parents that
the staffs of the school wanted to remain under the Church patronage system.

2EDUCATION
It is because a change in this system would surely result in large scale implications (Faas,
Darmody and Sokolowska 2016). They also gave their opinions in favor of not bringing the
change within the school. They mentioned the facts that the First Penance, First Holy
Communion and the Confirmation would no longer be taken care by the school. They also added
that a change in the church influenced patronage system would surely hamper the way the school
management is run. The financial support from the churches would be stopped as well. Other
things that could suffer are the resource allocation systems for the school and recruitment process
(Anderson, Byrne and Cullen 2016).
Amidst these problems, an array of criticism has been faced by the makers and
controllers of this system. The rule that pervades within the primary schools in Ireland should be
abolished indeed. This is because the children would not be able to learn a range of things from
their school syllabus at all (Hyland and Bocking 2016). This will hamper their growth of
knowledge when they will face the international competition. Many advisory groups within
Ireland have mentioned that this practice should be abolished very quickly in order to save the
children.
In this way, those children would not be able to learn anything except for the Church and
Christian proceedings (Anderson, Byrne and Cullen 2016). The incremental change should be
brought upon in this scenario to bring improvements in the scenario. The recommendation is
always there to abolish this method of preaching Catholicism within the primary education in the
schools. This Rule 68 should be abolished because children must learn the multiculturalism
within their syllabus so they can mix with other children of their age and interact with them
irrespective of their religion and caste (Faas, Darmody and Sokolowska 2016).