Workers’ Party representative for Whitehall and Glasnevin, Jimmy Dignam, has welcomed the news that an Educate Together Secondary School is to open in the area in September.
Dignam stated,
The announcement by the City of Dublin Education and Training Board and Educate Together that the new school will be co-located in the building currently occupied by Plunket College on the Swords Road in Whitehall is welcome news for parents in the area whose children have been attending Educate Together primary schools and who have been seeking a secondary school with a similar ethos for some time.
Clonturk Community College will open for the 2016/17 school year, with an intake of 75 first year students, according to the City of Dublin Education and Training Board, who will be patron of the college.
Dignam said there was an urgent need to push ahead with the removal of religious control over education, saying,
The increasing number of children attending Educate Together schools across the country is indicative of the demand for an education that is not overseen by religious authorities. I strongly believe that education should be taken out of the hands of the Catholic Church and other religious groups, and that all schools should have a secular ethos.
Dignam concluded,
It is clear that parents are no longer satisfied with religious bodies having oversight of their children’s education. The right to refuse a child’s enrollment in a school on the basis of their religion or lack of religion is totally unacceptable in 21st century Ireland. The Labour Party promised change on this issue and it is past time that we saw progress on it.