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Educate Together

Educate Together
Educate Together Logo.jpg
The current logo, in use since 2013
Motto Learn Together to Live Together - No Child an Outsider
Founded 1984; 33 years ago (1984)
Type Educational
Registration no. CHY 11816
Location
  • Ireland
Services
Key people
Mission To ensure that parents have the choice of an education based on the inclusive intercultural values of respect for difference and justice and equality for all.
Website educatetogether.ie

Educate Together is an educational charity in the Republic of Ireland which is the patron body to "equality-based, co-educational, child centred, and democratically run" schools. It was founded in 1984 to act as the patron body for the new multidenominational schools that opened after the establishment of the Dalkey School Project. As of December 2016, Educate Together is the patron of 81 national schools in the Republic of Ireland. In 2014 three Educate Together Second Level Schools opened in Dublin 15, Drogheda and Lucan along with the first Educate Together school outside Ireland, in Bristol in the United Kingdom. In joint patronage with Kildare and Wicklow ETB, Educate Together opened another second-level school, Celbridge Community School, in 2015.

Educate Together has its roots in the Dalkey School Project founded in the 1970s. Before multi-denominational education, some of those involved in education in Ireland, such as Aine Hyland, Michael Johnston and Florrie Armstrong, questioned the denominational nature of the system and the need to have students of different faiths in different schools. This group of educationalists and parents established the organisation with the stated aim:

“To develop and support in Ireland the establishment of schools which are multi-denominational (i.e. with equal right of access for the children of Catholic, Protestant and other parents, and with the cultural and social background of each child held in equal respect), co-educational and managed under a system which is predominantly democratic in character, wherever and whenever there is viable local support for such a school.”

The organisers of the school met opposition from a conservative Catholic group that circulated a leaflet in the Dalkey area alleging that the new school was "atheistic", "divisive", "hostile to religion" and "a precedent for major trouble in other areas".

As of 2016, the majority of primary schools in the Republic of Ireland are owned by religious communities (or boards of governors). Of the 3,200 primary schools in Ireland, only 2% are multidenominational.

The Dalkey School Project was founded in 1975. The school opened at the start of the 1978–79 school year in temporary premises with Florrie Armstrong as the school principal.


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