By Niall Gormley
| The Questions Would you prefer your primary school to be a co-educational school or a single-sex school? Would you prefer your primary school to operate under a denominational (religious) patron or to operate under a multi-denominational (non-religious) patron? Would you prefer your primary school to provide education primarily through the English language or through the Irish language? Current Status of Primary Schools |
| Current Status of Primary Schools | |
| Catholic | 88.4% |
| Multi–denominational | 7.7% |
| Church of Ireland | 2.9% |
| Others | 1.0 |
| Primary School Survey overall result | |||
| Total Households | 485,482 | 100% | |
| Household responded | 200,381 | 41% | 100% |
| Keep Denominational | 110,192 | 23% | 55% |
| Multi-denominational | 90,189 | 16% | 45% |
| For Denominational Schools with children already in schools | |||
| Total | 133,523 | ||
| Keep Denominational | 79,788 | 60% | |
| Multi-denominational | 53,735 | 40% |
One of education’s most culture war issues has passed a milestone with a curiously muted response.
The Primary School Survey was meant to find out, definitively, whether people, parents really, wanted religion in schools. The result is out and the reaction wouldn’t raise the heat in a fridge.
The headline news is that 40% of parents who send, or intend to send, their kids to Catholic schools, would prefer if the schools were multi-denominational. Therefore, 60% would prefer to keep their school Catholic.
The silence was deafening. Nobody seemed to get worked up. It was a Late Late Show result: there was something for everyone in the audience.
For traditionalists, it means that there’s a popular mandate to keep faith in the classroom. For secularists, it means that there’s a mandate that 40% of schools should be multidenominational, up from less than 10% today.
But what I find curious is that few people seem to have challenged the result. In fairness, few people have commented on the result, so it’s hard to judge the reaction.
The first strange issue is that around 40,000 households tried to do the survey twice and were ruled invalid. That’s a lot out of a final total of 200,000. I emailed the school survey to ask what these 40,000 had opted for but I haven’t had a response.
A fair result?
My suspicion is that the support for religious schools is exaggerated. I think I can point to some evidence for this and why this may be so.
The first issue is that the survey is not a comprehensive account of people’s opinions. While everyone got the opportunity to respond to the survey, just over 40% did so.
So while the media reported the 60-40 result, the actual result was more 60-24-16: 60% didn’t take part; 24% were for denominational; 16% were for multi-denominational.
That low participation is a problem. It means that a vociferous minority opinion could skew the results. I suspect that more religiously-minded people took part.
While there doesn’t seem to have been a large campaign to get active Catholics to participate, there was encouragement by the Catholic bishops and at local parish level. The results are out of kilter with the secularisation of Irish society. Witness the fall-off in church attendance, the rise in ‘no-religion’ in the census and the precipitous drop in Catholic weddings.
Then there is the well-documented findings in behavioural psychology, called loss aversion, where people are more motivated by loss than gain. People feel the loss of tradition greater and Catholics are bound to regret a change in the identity of schools where generations of their family have attended.
Learning from teachers
The Primary Schools Survey asked teachers and members of school Boards of Management separately about their preferences. Nearly 70% from denominational schools expressed a support for denominational status.
In 2025, the INTO surveyed its teachers and found 63% wanted secular patrons. There is self-selection in the INTO survey as well, as only 20% of teachers responded.
But the two self-selecting surveys came up with different answers. Perhaps a reason is that members of Catholic boards of management also are active in their local parishes. Perhaps teachers are younger as a group than the combined group of teachers and members of school Boards of Management.
Compulsory voting?
The survey asked people what should happen their school. Some 60% aren’t bothered. Is that credible?
Next for schools that want to change is to work with the Department on a plan, with a date of 31 October 2026.
Looking through the results for individual schools in my own county of Cavan, the overwhelming majority of schools want to maintain their current denominational status. On this result there will be practically no multi-denominational schools.
Clearly, a lot of parents didn’t take this seriously. They didn’t see this as a vote on the status of their schools.
Maybe the word “survey” was the problem. Perhaps the word should have been “decision”.
I asked Claude, the AI assistant, to go through the Cavan results. It found 11 out of 72 schools wanted to change their status. Looking at the results, some of these schools are small Protestant schools with ‘change or die’ scenarios, which could explain their willingness to change.
Some are already multi-denominational, which tells you not to put your life in the hands of AI assistants.
Catholics should make a move
One of the realities that might explain why so few parents seem to care about the ethos status of their schools is that, in many ways, schools are multi-denominational already.
The State pays the wages. The State sets the curriculum. The student body is more diverse than ever. There’s no practical bar on anyone accessing any school, except space.
The secularist’s dreaded Catholic school is 90% multidenominational anyway. The fact that 90% of people in Ireland went to Catholic schools didn’t seem to affect referendums on abortion, divorce and same-sex marriage. Most weddings are civil now.
Does it matter what the religion of the school is? Not to Irish parents. Sure it’ll be grand.
And would changing the status of individual schools be fair? If 49% of parents of a particular school wanted it to remain Catholic, is it reasonable to ignore them? No, is the answer.
So Catholics and the Catholic Church have an opportunity to do the right thing and the thing that is in their long-term interests. They should share their schools – officially (they are anyway, unofficially).
They should come up with a scheme to broaden the patronage/board of management structure and they should take serious steps so that kids don’t get religious instruction their parents don’t want them to get.
Also find a way that teachers don’t have to teach religious beliefs they don’t believe in.
Call them Catholic-led schools, Catholic-heritage schools, Catholic-plus schools or whatever.
Why can’t we all get along?
Schools should reflect the social change in Ireland and therefore more should be secular. But, properly, multidenominational doesn’t mean non-denominational. There should be room in schools for religion, including religious instruction, if parents and communities want it.
In a polarised, shouty, trolling world, if we aimed to have mutual respect rather than searching for winners, it might suit parents, communities and children (remember them) better if we all coexisted awkwardly together.
Which is the Irish way. Sure, it’ll be grand.
