Catholic Church threatens schools closure
The Catholic Church is threatening “civil disobedience” and warns it could shut down its 44 primary schools and 19 secondary schools if their demands to have only Catholics as heads of schools are not met.
This is one of the four options the church and its head, Archbishop Peter Loy Chong, are exploring after repeated meetings with the Ministry of Education, Heritage and Arts and other officials.
The four options that the church is looking at, after a meeting held on Thursday, include:
Action Plan One - “To initiate a critical self-reflection and an organisational review on Catholic education in the areas of identity, character, quality of teachers and planning; e.g. the plan to upgrade Corpus Christi to a Catholic university”;
Action Plan Two - “To continue partnership with faith-based communities and work towards partnership with the Government. To strongly insist on a structure of consultation that would ensure trust and respect for the management of the schools. The job description is to include the following merit criteria ‘the candidate must be able to uphold the ethos and values of faith-based and community owned schools’;
Action Plan Three - “To take an aggressive and urgent stand on the Church’s request to consider faith as a merit when considering appointments of Heads of Schools”; and
Action Plan Four - Archdiocese considers civil disobedience, which would include an open-air Mass, and to close the 44 primary and 19 secondary schools.”
This was revealed through a release posted on the social media pages of the church yesterday. In Thursday’s meeting where the Archbishop invited only selected media, Education Ministry Permanent Secretary Alison Burchell informed the delegation from the Catholic Church that the ministry was open to discussions and had an open door policy.
She stressed that the ministry was committed to getting the right person in the right job, with the right qualification.
Questions were asked about the right to religion from the delegation who were informed that there was a need to separate religious freedom from the appointment as a Head of School because they are different issues and should not be conflated.