All the authors of the GRACE report pictured at the launch. Addressing the annual meeting of the Joint Managerial Body, the umbrella organisation for faith-based secondary schools in Ireland, Professor Eamonn Conway of the University of Notre Dame Australia said that three out of ten teachers under 29 years of age report not “witnessing” to Catholic ethos at all or doing so only to a limited extent.
There is an urgent need for a co-ordinated “whole sector approach across primary, secondary and tertiary levels to re-position Catholic education confidently here”, according to Fr Conway. “A surprising number of teachers are still open to an intelligent articulation of the Catholic faith but need to be provided with attractive opportunities both for personal spiritual formation as well as continuing professional development.”
Professor Conway was responding to a recent report by the ESRI that identified schools as workplaces where staff are increasingly experiencing work overload and burnout, and which, according to Professor Conway, is evidence that the technocratic paradigm which Pope Francis warns against is taking hold even in Catholic schools.
This, he said, “devalues human beings, sees only technocratic solutions to every difficulty and must be resisted above all in Catholic educational contexts.”