homework pass rules

Differentiated Teaching

Why I stopped giving homework passes & my students loved it!

For years (literally, like 7 of them), homework passes were my go-to reward. Had a birthday, I gave you a Birthday Pass.

Did something above and beyond? I rewarded you with a pass.

Get the picture? It was pretty bad…or good, depending on your viewpoint. About a year ago, I had an epiphany.

As I am sure you know, there is a plethora of research on homework.

There are those in the Alfie Kohn camp , who argue homework has no educational purpose. Then there are those who suggest that without it, there just isn't enough time in the day to build all the necessary academic skills.

However, neither of these camps actually swayed my decision. Keep reading to find out why I no longer give homework passes & what I do instead.

What you'll find on this page:

Why I stopped giving homework passes

So why did I give up on passes?

While they weren't causing any major issues, they also weren't serving any purpose. In fact, they were working against my goals.

I stopped giving these passes because it gave the impression that I didn't see the homework as purposeful or valuable.

Why am I giving it if I am willing to let you skip it?

A homework pass tells students that homework doesn't matter. They can skip it on a whim just by trading in a ticket. Some students used these appropriately – when they forgot an assignment or had a busy night and couldn't quite finish. However, most did not.

Homework passes tell students that the assignment itself is a punishment.

Instead, I want my students to be getting value from their assignments…perhaps even (GASP!!) enjoying it.

How do I handle things now that I quit giving homework passes?

At my campus, homework is required for all students starting in first grade so eliminating homework wasn't an option. While I may have wanted to, it just wasn't a choice for me. Instead, I decided to take a different route.

I decided to incorporate choice . I believe that choice is one of the biggest transformational factors we can incorporate into our classrooms. So the first thing I did was change the assignments to give students options.

For me, this came in the form of homework choice boards, which we called Homework BINGO .

Homework choice boards offer me the opportunity to differentiate while being sure students were practicing the essential skills required by my school – like math facts and consistently reading at home.

When I introduced the new homework format, the students LOVED it! It was the first time they felt like they had any control over their school assignments.

How do Homework Choice Boards work?

I knew homework should focus on practicing skills that students have already learned. Many students don't have a parent to help them with homework, and they don't need to be trying to master new skills without support.

I also don't want to set families up for added stress because they aren't available to help as much as they would like. It just isn't great for building home-school relationships , you know?

That's why I set up the assignments in each square of the choice board to be something they should already know how to do independently.

Reading, writing, math – the basics. I knew if my students continued to build on the basics at home they could do the more challenging tasks at school more easily.

I created the options on the Homework BINGO boards to be familiar but to push students slightly out of their comfort zone. For example, about half of the squares on the board were reading and writing activities, but each square is different.

The option in one square might be 15 minutes of reading about a famous person.

Another square is reading a book of your own choice. They are both reading, but now the students have options and parents can be in control of differentiating based on what works for their lifestyle.

I did the same thing for writing, math, and spelling (all our required homework components).

So what are the rules of Homework BINGO?

I urge the students to make a variety of choices in order to earn BINGO each week. However, I do not make this a requirement. Instead, each student must finish 10 of the 25 squares.

I offer an incentive for those earning BINGO – a chance to earn line leader the following week. Since this is a pretty hot commodity in my classroom, I get many students trying to enter the competition.

Regardless of whether they get BINGO, students have their choice board signed by an adult and return it on Friday. That's it! I pass out a new board on Monday, and students glue it into their take-home journal and we start the process again.

And what do your students and parents think about it?

You wouldn't believe how many students describe their homework as fun!

And the parents?

Let's just say I get a LOT less parent communication about homework now.

Over the years, I've heard it all.

“You give too much homework.”

“Can you give us some extra assignments? We need more homework.”

With the Homework BINGO boards, parents can differentiate for their children. The ball is in their court with how much homework to give beyond the minimum expectations.

I even get comments during parent conferences about how much they like the homework and how they see their children challenging themselves to try something new.

Definitely not something I ever imagined happening.

My replacement for homework passes – Choice Boards

Of course, I still have rewards in my room. I've adjusted them so they don't undermine the joy of learning as the passes did.

Popular choices these days include:

• Shoes off math – a carry-over from my own 2nd-grade teacher, Mr. Hammer, who was WAY ahead of his time
• Use markers or crayons instead of pencils on an assignment
• Flashlight reading

Basically, I have decided to give other choices that are exciting to the students. The funny thing is, I don't miss homework passes…and neither do my students. My homework process is smoother, and my students are interested in participating.

Want to try the BINGO choice boards in your classroom?

Want to give this differentiated homework option a try? It is currently available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

You can get Homework BINGO here .

It contains weekly homework sheets aligned with a September to May school year. Each week has a slightly different set of options that go with monthly themes and holidays.

Homework BINGO is also editable to allow you to align tasks to your unit plans and practice your students need to be successful. This means you can provide differentiated homework menus to fit your classroom each year.

I'd love to hear more about homework in your classroom. Do you still use homework passes?

Looking for more articles on how to differentiate for your students?

Check out the links below:

• 5 simple strategies to support struggling learners in science & social studies
• How to differentiate reading for struggling learners

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The Magic of a Homework Pass for Classroom Management

I surprised all of them this morning with a HAPPY NEW YEAR homework pass. I rarely hand out paper homework passes because I am trying to cut down on my class’ paper consumption. This year students have received only three paper homework passes Welcome Back, Birthday and Happy New Year. 

Students get so excited when they get a homework pass. The majority of my students do not use them. They like to collect them throughout the year to see how many they can collect and not use. I taught some of my current students last year in my 7/8 split. They asked me on the first day of school if their homework passes carry over. 

Do you use homework passes in your classroom? What is your procedure? Please share your ideas in the comments section below.  Try reward passes in your classroom. Find this resource on Shopify CAD and Teachers Pay Teachers USD .

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1 thought on “The Magic of a Homework Pass for Classroom Management”

K-Hope you are feeling better soon! I love the idea for the passes! I don't do this because I expect homework to be done and I give students plenty of time to get it finished and handed in on time. I do use something similar to you though..I stopped having a prize box this year and I have a set of cards…I got the idea from PINTEREST..and I laminated them. Things like, Special Supply Box, Specialty Seating, Wear a Hat in Class, Wear your IPOD in class. The kids LOVE it. I keep track of them in a method similar to yours…but I do hand out the pass…the kids love picking one out and then they have to submit it when they want to redeem it. I guess I don't worry too much because I laminated them, so they will get used again and again. This has motivated my students much more than the regular "pull something out of the prize box" and it has cost me next to nothing! Get better soon!

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Should we ease grading and homework rules? Dangers lurk.

Experienced teachers say that could cripple all-important learning in class..

Along the bumpy return to normalcy in our pandemic -battered schools, I see an interesting movement to ease grading and homework requirements. Many educators have been promoting such changes for years, but more education writers like me are beginning to notice.

That’s often not a good sign. We journalists like to portray new stuff as exciting in part because that increases our chances of getting prominent play and attracting readers. There is a long list of movements we once publicized — such as New Math, open classrooms, Whole Language, No Child Left Behind — that did not live up to expectations.

A recent Los Angeles Times editorial sums up the latest movement well. “Schools have stuck to an outdated system that relies heavily on students’ compliance — completing homework, behaving in class, meeting deadlines and correctly answering questions on a one-time test — as a proxy for learning, rather than measuring the learning itself.”

The big handicap for journalists as well as everyone else in the discussion is a lack of useful data on how many teachers use these allegedly worn-out methods and what are the measurable results. I asked four experienced public school teachers in southern California, northern California, Texas and Virginia how they handled grading and homework and what they thought of the notion that the old ways were wrong.

In some aspects, the four teachers are in sync with the suggested reforms. None of them assign much homework, except as a way to complete work begun in class. They don’t emphasize one-time tests.

How to recover from our school disaster: Top curriculums, training and resolve

But when making sure everyone is behaving in class, they are firm traditionalists. Class time to them is vital because, in their minds, the give-and-take between students and teachers during those precious hours is the essence of what they do.

Mark Ingerson, a social studies teacher at Salem (Va.) High School, said, “You are kidding yourself if you think you have any control over what happens once that child leaves your class. … So my sole focus has been maximizing every single second of class so it results in student mastery of skills and knowledge.”

The best teachers I know do their best to make sure everyone contributes every day, even if they have to insist that the most reluctant students answer questions and keep up with the discussion.

D’Essence Grant, an eighth-grade English and language arts teacher at the KIPP Academy Middle school in Houston, said, “My content requires meaningful conversations about the text to help support text comprehension and character development. Grading these conversations and pushing students to articulate their thoughts helps prepare students for college and beyond. Making claims, supporting claims with evidence, and listening, building and challenging other student claims verbally is just as important as writing them on paper.”

Mary Stevens is the English and language arts department chair at Marshall Fundamental Secondary School in Pasadena, Calif. Enrollment at that school is by lottery. Seventy percent of the students are from low-income families. “I mostly only assign the work and/or reading we didn’t complete in class as homework,” she said. She doesn’t like the phrase “behaving in class.” She said “it has negative connotations for students. I center responsibility, hence productivity, and try not to frame my expectations around outdated ideas such as behavior.”

Greg Jouriles, a social studies teacher at Hillsdale High School in San Mateo, Calif., noted reformers’ argument that homework “discriminates socioeconomically and racially” and might be “unfair to students with household obligations and no quiet place to work.” He said that “while all of these factors carry weight, I don’t see a problem with some homework or why practicing academics isn’t as worthwhile as practicing extracurriculars, to which students will devote hours and hours. Most of what I grade is based on what happens in class.”

He said: “I disagree with the people who say time and practice and repetition don’t matter, that once a student exhibits a skill, they’ve achieved a standard. If that were the case, a basketball coach would end practice after each player made one free throw. Teachers face the ongoing challenge of making the homework they assign as engaging as extracurriculars.”

His argument suggests a weakness in the push for mastery learning, which is part of the new thinking on school work and grading. Each child, reformers say, should get a grade of completion once they have mastered a skill or subject. That leaves open the possibility that schools could dumb down the definition of mastery to make sure everyone graduates on time.

Author of teacher bestsellers warns against flawed social justice concepts

The traditional approach to grading — assessing every paper and assignment, giving zeros for work not turned in — has been abandoned by many teachers and their districts in the past two decades. Ingerson said he dropped the tough approach in 2004 because he found “many students just got destroyed” by his grading sledgehammer.

“I had students scoring advanced on the Virginia Standards of Learning tests, but had a D in the class … because of missing notebook checks or homework assignments,” he said. His intense class discussions make sure that all his students know the material, or realize he is going to be hovering over them until they do.

Many teachers I know don’t see any difference between the mastery learning embraced by the new movement and what they do with traditional grading. They use zeros to motivate students but erase those horrible marks when they see improvement. They have assignments and class discussions every week. They repeatedly let students know how they are doing. The emphasis on mastery is obvious in the way they teach. They don’t see the point of disposing of the grading tools they have.

We will be hearing more about this new movement to promote learning. If changes are made, we will need as usual some reliable measure of how much students know and understand.

I don’t see how we can do that without challenging and independently graded tests, such as Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate, to ensure assessments are accurate. SAT and ACT exams appear to be fading away. I never liked them because they were not tied to classes where our teachers could make sure every student was engaged every day.

We need some measure of learning we can trust. The latest educational buzz words may suggest otherwise, but we have learned enough during the pandemic to know that if productive class work is not happening for everyone, we have to do something about that.

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Creative perspectives on education and classroom management, get work done by playing homeworkopoly.

November 7, 2010 Teachnet Staff Classroom Decor , Downloads , Games 8

More bulletin board art is located at the Teachnet Classroom Decor page

Download Game Board with street names. Download Game Board without street names (make up your own for your city) Download Chance Cards (includes blank cards for making your own)

Homeworkopoly Instructions

Homeworkopoly is a fun way to encourage children to do their homework! Here are some basic instructions, but feel free to use your own judgement and change things around to suit your class needs. We have tried to leave off negative things such as “Go to jail” in order to keep this experience as positive as possible.

In order for a student to play the game, he or she must complete their homework from the night before and hand it in to the teacher. This is how the student moves around the game board. If the student does not have their homework finished, they don’t get their chance to shake the die and move for the day (with exceptions, of course). Throughout the year, day by day you keep the game going. By starting at the beginning of the year everyone gets into it and by the end of the year everyone is doing their homework regularly. Listed below are detailed instructions for Homeworkopoly…

1. To make game tokens, print off our education clipart, write a student’s name under the picture, then pin on the board. Rolling the die before starting will spread students around the board, if you like. 2. Game pieces may be tacked directly to the board, or outside the board to preserve the playing field. 3. Depending on what version you have chosen to print off the web site, you may need to write in the street names. This can be fun for your students as well. If you choose to laminate the game board pieces you could let the children rename the streets periodically. 4. Using one die will slow their travel around the board. 5. Print the “Chance” and “Community Lunchbox” cards and cut them out. There are extras if you have other ideas to use for them. Just write them in! (If you have business card holders, these would work great for holding the cards up on your bulletin board for easy access.)

Getting Started

1. When a student brings in any homework from the night before, have them go over to the board, roll the die and move. Each student will do this in the morning when their homework is handed in if they have done the assigned homework. 2. The students will continue to do this throughout the year. It never has to end. 3. Deal with special spaces as the students land on them. 4. Having a rotating “Game Show Host” to keep check on the board as students move will make your job easier.

Special Spaces

* MYSTERY PRIZE – When a student lands on this space, they can pick a prize from a pencil box or maybe the teacher could have little grab bags with the mystery prize in them. * BRAIN BINDERS -Printable, foldable paper puzzles that range from very easy to very challenging. * GAME SPOT – The game spot is used for playing games from your own classroom. * FREE HOMEWORK – The student gets a free homework pass for the night when landing on this space. (Usually not a problem with happening too often, if so, check it out. Watch closely when moving around the board.) * TAKE A SEAT ON THE BUS – When a student lands here, they go to the yellow square diagonally across the board and sit there. When on this square, the teacher can have this student read to the class aloud, do problems on the chalkboard, or pass out milk, for example. These are just a few examples of what the student could do, feel free to use your own ideas. * GO – When passing go, the student may receive a little prize, such as picking a piece of sugarless gum or little trinket out of the pencil box of goodies, whatever the teacher thinks is an appropriate prize.

Last but not least…Enjoy! This board is made to accommodate your changes. Please send us your comments, questions or suggestions by email.

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This sounds like a good idea!

Instead of making playing piece from clip art use a pictures of each student to make the pieces. This will keep the students from getting confused about what there piece is or the issue were you have 3 students with the same firt name! and its cute:)

I LOVE this! My room has NO wall space though. Would it be possible to get a smaller version of this? I tried to resize it on my own, but I guess it’s protected and won’t let me. Thanks!

I use clothpins with the students’ names on it (written with a permanent sharpie) for children to use as their “pawn” (play piece). It is easy to use if the board is on a table or fixed to the wall!

If you download and open the PDF file in Adobe reader, you can resize it by choosing ‘print multiple pages’. It will reduce it for you by putting more than one page on each sheet when it prints. I had the same problem so I chose 4 pages per sheet and managed to fit it on my teeny tiny wall.

I found a flipchart of the board on Promethean Planet. Considering our local fire marshal is really being a stickler for the amount of wall space we have covered this year, the flipchart is a good option. It is also a good way to handle multiple classes like I have in high school as well as avoid students messing with the markers from another class.

What a great idea! Because neither I have walls, I’ll use it on the floor, kids love that, and the teacher 2!

I would also love a smaller size for n individual student. Any possibility for this?

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Using Gamification to Ignite Student Learning

Gamification taps into the power of noncompetitive play and students’ desire to improve their skills.

In the business world, gamification is used in customer loyalty programs for credit cards and memberships: Spend money and invest time in the business’s app and products to earn discounts and status upgrades. Everyone benefits at their own pace.

In education, gamification is intended to transform traditional lessons into an enhanced learning experience where students choose to explore and practice content, earning badges and status benefits. These might seem extrinsic, but the true rewards come from the students’ internal drive to study content, gain depth of understanding, and master material that leads to badges, achievements, and status.

Success comes not from the rewards, but from how the learning journey is crafted for students to travel. Combining game mechanics with intentional exploration of aligned content will result in students’ participating willingly.

3 Keys to Quality Gamification Experiences

1. Every student can reap the rewards of badges, achievements, and status by completing all required tasks. Gamification provides powerful experiences that are noncompetitive play to facilitate learning. Students invest time in and outside the classroom to complete the challenges, such as doing extra readings, video viewings, and practice activities. The more time spent and/or content consumed can only improve depth and breadth of students’ knowledge and skill mastery. Such investment by all students is time well spent and should be rewarded with badges and work-related status.

Limiting access to awards to just one winner or the top finishers undermines the underlying intent of gamification: all students growing content knowledge and skills through active participation. It’s more important to have as many students as possible benefit at their own pace and build learning and self-accomplishment. Allowing only a few to earn rewards demotivates students who either believe that they cannot compete or experience frustration at having invested time toward the goal, only to fall short because someone else edged them out. When the focus is on who wins, learning by all becomes the biggest loser.

2. Gamification offers renewable status and privileges through self-directed learning. Some say that giving out rewards for doing work creates the wrong type of motivation, whereby students become more focused on the treats and prizes than on the learning. This issue is dependent on a combination of the type of work students must do and the rewards that are earned. Gamification uses badges and achievements to encourage students to complete meaningful tasks that improve their content knowledge and skill levels. The tasks must align with the curriculum expectations.

Status and privileges earned should relate to empowering student agency about their approach to learning. The following are some examples:

• Study passes: Choosing where they sit or access to study in the hallway, library, or other school locations can be a powerful reward. For specific lesson activities, students earn the right to pick their work environment and choice of partner. In the latter case, they can only choose from students who have also completed this badge.
• Homework passes: When students have invested additional study time into a subject, they may not need to do additional formal practice. This pass is only good for the current unit. Or they earn the ability to complete a comprehensive study packet that covers all material to be addressed and bypass some of the standard homework.
• Opting out of a test: Similar to curriculum compacting, this enables students to complete alternative work. The tasks are specifically aligned to the unit outcomes and give students a different way to show their learning. Students complete a badge where they demonstrate strong organizational and self-discipline skills.

All such badges and achievements must be renewed each marking period or semester. Once earned, these statuses are privileges that can be removed if abused. If they are lost, students may reapply by completing the tasks toward earning back the status, which demonstrates responsibility and accountability.

3. Gamification promotes goal setting and student agency. If we want students to own their learning, they need opportunities to choose the badges and achievements they want to complete. Renewable options empower students to explore which options appeal to them. There should be a series of tasks that composes the badge or achievement, including some options where they can choose the pathway that appeals to them.

For example, earning a homework pass might include readings, videos, and skill practice from which they choose from a list of what to complete. The study pass may require a written or recorded reflection about the importance of acting responsibly when in the hallway or study location outside of the classroom. The power of options empowers students to make the best choice that suits them and holds them accountable for their choices.

Gamification can have a greater impact on learning than even its cousin game-based learning. Whereas a game can have a valuable impact in one lesson activity, gamification done well is infused throughout the entire lesson and/or unit of study. It maximizes participation because everyone can win.

Gamification empowers students with the ultimate in choices when setting goals for what badges and achievements they want to complete, which leads to learners building skills for self-reliance and self-control. You can explore more mechanics for implementing gamification here . Game on!

Layla Henry- Fancy Free in 4th- Blog

Fancy Ideas for the Everyday Classroom

Seasonal and Holiday Homework Passes

July 21, 2013 By fancyfreein4th

I don’t know about your class, but my students always love getting homework passes. I hand them out for every major holiday and use them an incentive.  I generally allow them to use homework passes for 1 assignment, to buy them an extra day for when a project or their AR points are due.  Last year I would forget to make a homework pass or find one online and then I had to make some really quickly and they were not cute or worded the way I wanted them.

This set has 9 slides of owl themed homework passes for you to give to your students on various school holidays or seasonal activities including:                                                          

This set is only a buck and it will serve you all year. Hope your kids think these homework passes are a hoot!

July 21, 2013 at 9:30 pm

Very cute will be adding those to my cart! LeAnn 4thgrade4ever.blogspot.com

July 21, 2013 at 11:05 pm

Looks great!! ~Brandee Creating Lifelong Learners Follow me on Bloglovin'

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A campaign for secular education

Homework Pass ruling has lessons for the state, school boards, principals, and teachers

A recent case at the Workplace Relations Commission has found that Yellow Furze National School in Meath discriminated on religious grounds against a family that had no religious belief. The school claimed at the WRC that the case was unfounded.

Most schools are unable to recognise religious discrimination when it is staring them in the face, because they do not recognise it in the same way as they would recognise discrimination on other grounds.

They still believe that the religious ethos of a school takes precedence over the rights of minorities to not attend religious teaching, to respect for their convictions, and to not be discriminated against while accessing the education system.

Also, teacher training colleges are failing to tackle religious discrimination because of the influence and control that the Catholic Church still has over teacher training.

In this case, the school did not accept the fact that a homework pass is a ‘benefit’ and that students from minority backgrounds who are opted out of religion cannot get that ‘benefit’ unless they act against their conscience and attend religious services.

This case also supports religious minorities, as schools cannot refuse to give a child from e.g a Muslim family a homework pass for not attending Catholic religious services or any type of religious service.

Discrimination on the grounds of disability

Imagine if a school gave homework passes to students who took part in a race organised by the school for their sports day, and it refused to give a pass to a student who could not take part because of a physical disability?

The school would recognise immediately that this was discrimination and unfair, and it would of course give the student with the disability a homework pass. The other parents in the school would recognise this immediately as well.

But when it comes to religion it is a different matter. The discrimination flies below the radar, and the hurt that families feel because of this treatment is simply disregarded.

Discrimination on the grounds of religion

The WRC Decision stated that:

“The Complainant as an atheist, was not in a position to attend the ceremony and therefore was not awarded a homework pass.” The school – “ It maintained that all children from 3 rd to 6 th classes, regardless of religion (or none), are invited and welcome to participate in, and are all encouraged to give of their time for the benefit of others, including singing in the choir for those children receiving a sacrament. In this regard the school choir traditionally provides the music for the Ceremony on an annual basis. The Ceremony always takes place on a Sunday and not during the school week. The Respondent submitted that all children are to participate in both the practice for the Ceremony and the Ceremony itself.”

All children are invited and welcome to attend and “to participate in” a religious service. If they don’t take up that invitation they get punished by not getting a homework pass! That is just coercion.

To ensure that as many students as possible attend catholic religious services outside school hours, the ethos of the school is given precedence over the Constitutional right of minorities to not attend, and the legal obligation of the Board of Management to respect that right and promote respect for the diversity of values and beliefs in a democratic society.

What does this policy say to children?

The school did not take into account what such a policy teaches children. The policy teaches children that you get rewarded for attending Catholic religious services and that, if you are not from a Catholic family and you don’t attend, you get punished by not getting a homework pass.

Children value homework passes. They see them as a reward. If you are not eligible for that reward, you are being punished. There really was no appreciation or understanding of the hurt caused to the child.

It is not possible for a parent to explain away this discrimination, as the facts speak for themselves. Sometimes children see things more clearly than adults.

Telling him that he could attend Catholic religious services if he wanted to get a homework pass didn’t make sense to him as his family was not Catholic.

Clear religious discrimination

The WRC decision also stated that the school said that:

The Respondent’s Code of Behaviour (the Code) provides that all children who engage in positive behaviour such as participating in extra-curricular activities and/or events for or on behalf of the school will receive a “reward” for their doing so, particularly if the activity in question takes place outside of school hours.

The school ethos is that attending Catholic religious services outside of schools hours is seen as ‘positive behaviour’ even for minorities and not attending is punished by refusing to give a child a homework pass. That ethos is in your face religious discrimination and the fact that the school thought they were inclusive says an awful lot about our education system and the treatment of minorities.

The WRC Decision stated that:-

I note the Respondent, by maintaining it is appropriate to award a benefit to children to attend a religious ceremony, does not appreciate this action had an adverse effect on students who are not of a Catholic faith.

It is really difficult to understand how they could not appreciate this discrimination. But many teachers live in a bubble. They never question, and are not taught to question, behaviour that has gone on for so long that it has become part of the culture.

It is left to individual families to challenge this discrimination on their own. It is no wonder that change is so slow. Minority families just go along with this behaviour as it has become part of Irish culture, and challenging it means challenging Irish culture.

The influence of religious ethos

The Supreme Court has recognised that a religious ethos will influence minority students to ‘some degree’ if parents choose to send their child to that school. In schools with a Catholic ethos ‘to some degree’ has morphed into open religious discrimination.

Why? Because successive Ministers for Education have failed to recognise their positive obligation to give practical application to the rights of minority parents and their children in the education system.

It is not in the common good to continue to turn a blind eye to the hurt that minorities have to put up with in the education system.

The problem with teacher Training

Teachers do not understand the right to freedom of belief if they think that minorities can attend a Catholic religious ceremony or be punished for not attending.

Teachers who work in Catholic schools are trained to see their role as a missionary one. They are legally obliged to uphold the ethos of the school and they are trained to do so. The purpose of a religious ethos is to influence and there are no Department of Education guidelines on the degree of that influence.

Students teachers are not trained to take on board the fact that they cannot discriminate in relation to any benefit provided by the school or any other term or condition of participation of a student in the school.

The Equal Status Act doesn’t give them the right to evangelise minorities, the lack of statutory Guidelines as to the degree of ‘influence’ of a religious ethos on minorities enables this discriminatory behaviour.

Responsibilities of Boards of Management

The WRC stated that:

It is acknowledged that school is entitled to establish and adhere to its religious ethos, but in so doing it cannot disregard its obligations under Section 7 of the Act by discriminating in relation to the access of a student to any … benefit provided by the establishment… and any other term or condition of participation in the establishment by a student . The case within refers to the reward of a homework pass for the attendance at a church ceremony, and by way of the Complainant’s religious beliefs he could not avail of the reward.

The terms and conditions of the opt-out from religion have up to now been put in place by Principals and teachers, even though it is the legal responsibility of the Board of Management.

Under the Education (Admissions to Schools) Act 2018, the Admissions Policy drafted by the Board of Management must give detailed arrangements for those not attending religious instruction. That Admissions Policy must be given to parents and published on the website of the school.

Hopefully, Boards of Management will realise their legal responsibilities under the Equal Status Act and the Education (Admissions to Schools) Act and ensure that the Catholic ethos of the school respects and promotes respect for the rights of minorities and does not discriminate on the grounds of religion. Schools must:

“ operate in manner that it does not discriminate students who are of a different religious belief, or of no religion, in relation to the access of any benefit provided and in any term or condition of participation in the establishment by a student” (WRC Decision)

It is time that the State moved to give practical application to the rights of minorities in the education system and to insist that school boards, principals, and teachers respect these rights.

The State absolving itself of that responsibility enables private bodies to discriminate on religious grounds against minorities and to evangelise their children into a Catholic way of life.

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WRC rules that ‘homework pass for mass’ is religious discrimination

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