THE Church can review its pioneer role in education and launch into a new mission. Its characteristic commitment and dedication can be used to help the State cater for the needs of the most deprived.

The Church is currently at crossroads where its mission in the field of education is concerned. No-one will contest the important role that catholic schools have played especially at secondary level when the State sector was unable to meet the demand for secondary education. There are many people, especially women, including numerous non-catholics who would not hesitate to attribute the success of their careers or personal lives largely to the type of education they benefited from in catholic schools. For non-catholics the critical element was not religion of course, but access to complete education, social and emotional support in periods of crisis, pastoral care, a family atmosphere and discipline.

These schools were, however for a long time, very inaccessible to large numbers of children including those of the catholic faith. Some of those admitted who came from less fortunate or cultured families faced enormous difficulties to integrate school life and felt very left out and marginalized for the best part of the last century.

One cannot therefore completely overlook this sector?s failure to address the problem of the deprived whether they were catholic or non-catholic. Although the school did provide opportunities for a very few poor students to move up the social ladder, it was essentially an efficient instrument for the building up of an elite. On the whole the main concern of secondary catholic schools was to dispense quality education and ?good breeding?.

This however in no way suggests that the quality of education dispensed in the State sector was inferior. However, due to administrative pressures and greater focus on the purely academic aspects of education in the State sector, less importance was given to pastoral care, arts, music, sports etc. It will take a long time before State schools emerging now, succeed in incorporating a ?comprehensive? approach to the educational project. For quite some time, greater attention will inevitably be given to educational disciplines such as science and technology, especially information technology.

In some ways, what is happening reflects the changes that are occurring in our social structure as a whole. Several important things have happened recently. The country has moved away from its agricultural vocation and, after a brief period of successful export-oriented industrialisation, is now preparing to leap forward into the cyber age. In order to achieve this, government has rightly invested massively in education, building new schools and giving greater importance to science and technology. It will take time before the returns are felt but the infrastructure is in place. One of the main assets of the country is human resources and not an iota of human intelligence and competence can be wasted.

Integrate the system

There can be no place any more for the ?sponsorship? of special groups, less still of an elite whatever the religion. Only affirmative action in favour of the poor can be justified not only on human rights grounds or for the sake of greater stability but to increase the pool of educated human resources badly needed by the economy. To survive as centres of educational excellence within the current national education strategy, catholic schools must fully integrate this new system and accept to be run on the same principles as the State sector to benefit from State funding.

Until now, catholic schools catered very efficiently for the development of an elite for both the public and private sectors of the economy. Control of admission on the basis of specific criteria, reassured middle-class parents that their children would rub shoulders only with their social peers. The country has changed. Even parents seem to have moved with the times (except perhaps a handful still living in the 19th century); most are less likely to be worried by this ?social class? dimension of the problem. They just want their children to benefit from good education.

The admission procedure in the last two years showed that the great majority of parents were more or less satisfied with the possibility of getting their children into a State school in their region. Those who still wish to opt out of the State system and who can afford to do so, get their children into the growing number of prestigious private schools. In the years to come, catholic schools may lose their high reputation and mark of educational excellence and may find themselves dangerously marginalized.

If catholic schools opt to retain control over the admission procedure on the ground of religion, they will inevitably have to opt out of the system and become fee- paying schools. This will hardly resolve their difficulties as large numbers of catholic parents seeking confessional education for their children will probably be unable to pay hefty fees.

One way out would be to charge fees on a means-tested basis and make the more fortunate pay for the less fortunate and retain 100% control over admissions. It is likely that for a few years to come there will be parents, including numerous non-catholics, who would be prepared to pay very high fees to be admitted in catholic schools. This might be a way to retain religious specificity and remain as centres of educational excellence. Since only a very small number seems to be affected by the current legal situation, there would be need for only a couple of fee- paying catholic schools to cater for them. Affluent catholic and non-catholic parents could in this way subsidize the poor while allowing the maintenance of that sector?s specificity.

Closer access at grass-roots level

The long-term vision and vocation of the catholic educational sector should however be re-examined as the Church can surely play a more critical and significant role than to run a couple of fee-paying schools. The catholic education sector has in the past played an important role as one of the main sponsors of a much needed elite before and immediately after Indepen-dence. The needs of the country have changed. It is most probable that, in the coming years, the State sector will have developed far enough to cater for most children?s educational needs.

There is, however, one group of children requiring special support which the State may not be able to provide and where the catholic church could play a leading role. There is just about over 10% of the population living in the more deprived regions of the country, mainly the suburbs of our main cities, crying out for assistance and greater access to education and many of them happen to be catholics.

The accidents of history have created a situation where the large majority of those who have difficulties to integrate the educational sector, happen to belong to the catholic church. And the way forward for them is through education. But for these children to succeed, their whole environment must be cared for. The State is making attempts through the ZEP schools to address this problem but the Church can have closer access to the whole community at grass-roots level and adopt a more integrated approach to education. There is still a formidable level of commitment and dedication in confessional schools which could be redeployed to cater for the needs of these deprived children.

A little effort on both sides

It is difficult to understand in this context what the Church is waiting for to forge a new partnership with the State to fight poverty and exclusion in the most deprived regions of the country. Had there been a minority of catholics among the deprived, it would perhaps have been more difficult for the church to retain its specificity and the confessional nature of its intervention. It should be mentioned that this delicate balance is maintained in other parts of the world where there is a minority of catholics. A notable example is India, where the church has succeeded in playing an important role in both education and poverty alleviation even if the large majority of the poor they cater for are non-catholics.

The relationship between the State and religion is always an uneasy one in most parts of the world. With a little effort on both sides, a stable relationship can be achieved and maintained. There are even chances that, in the present context, an agreement on a common platform to fight poverty might give a leading role to the Church again and strengthen the StateChurch relationship.

The State and the private sector can and must provide funds and technical know-how but this is not enough. What is missing is the necessary level of commitment and dedication, a grass-roots integrated community approach and, more importantly, a new pedagogy more suited to these regions. The Church could play a leading role in this daunting challenge facing the country as whole.

Ella