Thirty Years to Achieve 7 Percent

Abstract

What is my own, personal experience of encouraging integrated schools in Northern Ireland? Let me tell you three stories of parents starting different integrated schools here—the stories of three groups of Catholics and Protestants who refused to let their children be educated apart. My wife Anne and I were involved in two of these school start-ups. Then let me talk about the special challenges of running an integrated school in a segregated society. But first let me highlight some issues about Northern Ireland’s divided school system: 1. Does integrated education work? My personal experience says “Yes.” And joint research by Queen’s University, the University of Ulster, and Oxford University says that students from integrated schools are more prepared for life in a pluralist society than are students from segregated schools. In addition, research by Queen’s University Belfast shows that students from integrated schools have fully cross-community friendships that students from integrated schools tend not to have. 2. Most Northern Ireland churches, politicians, and the Northern Ireland Assembly do not actively encourage integrated schools. 3. In the 1830s, when the government was setting up the national school system across Ireland, it wanted all children to attend the same schools together. But the Christian denominations—primarily Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Methodist—all wanted to have their own schools and so a denominational system soon emerged, funded by the government. 4. There are about 1,200 primary and second level schools in Northern Ireland. 5. The religious segregation of our schools is not compulsory. It is not required by the government. It is self-selected and mirrors the British-Irish/ Protestant-Catholic identity divide within the Community. 6. Apart from about ten evangelical Protestant primary schools that self-fund, the government funds 100 percent (salaries and running costs) of the “Protestant” schools and the “Catholic” schools in Northern Ireland. 7. All schools are open to children of any, or no, religion. 8. Only 61 schools—bout 7 percent of all schools—re now formally “integrated”. All of these have been created by parents since 1981—ome are completely new schools and some are existing schools that have voted to become integrated. 9. Of the remaining 93 percent of schools, about half are attended by Catholic children and the other half are attended by Protestant children. Less than one hundred of these schools have any significant degree of mixed attendance by both Protestant and Catholic Children. 10. In Britain, Ireland, Australia, and the United States some Christian churches have created joint Protestant-Roman Catholic schools. But this example has not been tried by churches in Northern Ireland. 11. In 1989, during the Troubles period when Northern Ireland was being ruled directly by the UK government, a new law imposed on the Northern Ireland Department of Education the duty to encourage integrated education. It gives core funding to the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education. KeywordsContentious IssueIntegrate SchoolChristian DenominationDevelopment ProposalIntegrate EducationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.