Brothers to pull out of the North
Separate trust of lay people will be set up to take over schools
THE Christian Brothers are to end their direct involvement in Northern Ireland schools in addition to schools in the Republic.
A separate trust - also run entirely by lay people - will be given responsibility for the Northern schools.
At present the Brothers run three grammar, two secondary and three primary schools in the North.
As disclosed in the Irish Independent yesterday the Brothers are handing over their schools in the Republic to the Edmund Rice Schools Trust (ERST).
An update on the new arrangements will be outlined to principals of more than 100 Christian Brother secondary schools from all over the country next week.
The annual two-day conference in Dundrum, Co Tipperary, will be briefed on the roll-out of the process which starts with the issuing of a charter to all schools from September.
ERST will be both a civil legal entity and a canonical Church entity. It must have the approval of the bishops to act as a provider of Catholic schools.
It must also have the approval of the Department of Education and Science to act as a provider of schools recognised by the State in accordance with the Education Act (1998).
The civil legal entity will be a company limited by guarantee with no share capital.
It will be governed by its memorandum and articles of association. The company will be set up by its first members, called the Subscribing Members, and they will register ERST in the Companies Office.
A number of Charter Implementation Officers will be appointed to assist in the implementation of the Charter at school level. It is intended that each schools will establish a Charter Promotion Team, representing all the partners in the school community.
Next week’s meeting will be opened by Bro Michael Murray, Province Leader of St Helen’s Province. He will give a presentation on how the Brothers intend to restructure three provinces into one - St Mary’s and St Helen’s Provinces in Ireland and the UK province will be merged.
The setting up of ERST, the Northern Trust and a separate one for the UK, in addition to the amalgamation of the Provinces, is a watershed in the Brothers’ 200-year history.
They were at their peak in the Sixties with 947 teaching Brothers in secondary schools in the Republic - now there are only 18.
Apart from those teaching in schools, there are other brothers involved in St Helen’s Education Office where the director is a lay person, Conor O’Brien; while the project manager for the ERST is Brother John Heneghan.
He said the Brothers were not severing their involvement in education as they would continue with the Marino Institute and inner-city education projects.
Meanwhile, figures show that there are about 50 principals of voluntary secondary schools who are either priests or members of a religious congregation.
Official Department of Education figures show that there are about 660 religious and priests teaching in primary and secondary schools out of a total teaching force of 50,000.
About 300 of these are in primary schools and the remainder in second-level schools.
John Walshe
