Ireland’s education system should resist ideological capture and short-term novelties, the National Conversation on Education has been told by an agency of the Catholic Bishops.

In a submission, the Catholic Education Partnership suggests starting the conversation with a focus on purpose, offering that education should be “ordered to ordered to the flourishing of the person and to the common good”.

This means a focus on “the kind of person it helps to form: truthful, resilient, compassionate, and capable of responsibility”.

This involves adopting an integral vision of the person with a definite ethos.

It underlines that “Ethos matters as education is never value-neutral, and when values are unnamed, they are imposed without accountability”.

By contrast, a “transparent statement of ethos builds trust with parents and enables respectful dialogue”.

It added that education “should pursue an integral humanism, rooted in the dignity of every child, honouring parental primacy, supporting real plurality of ethos, and investing in teacher formation and leadership.”