Debrief

Maddy Bridgman, IEF Press Officer, says it’s time to do things differently.

We have – you have – until 26 October to submit a response to the Area-based plans for post-primary education. Perhaps the best response is to sweep the lot aside and make fresh suggestions. The Minister has asked for “innovative and creative” solutions to the challenges facing the education system: challenges which include constrained budgets, surplus places, the need to improve and maintain academic standards and the need to train pupils for jobs in an evolving technological landscape. And, surely, the need to address the current narrow and segregated nature of the school experience which we currently offer to so many young people.

The proposals on the table from the Education Boards are not inspiring – in fact in many instances there is no definite vision, but a vague pledge to consider options or keep an eye on developments. And where the Boards do offer anything concrete for stakeholders or the wider community to really assess, they have so often played a numbers game, basing predictions for future demand on current realities. This means the only model considered is the one we currently have; if there is no integrated school in an area now, then there is none in the projected delivery of education for that area. This betrays a complete failure of imagination and a lack of awareness or understanding of the widespread parental demand for integration.

Indeed, the concept of cross-community education seems to have been widely sidestepped, in spite of the explicit requirements of the terms of reference for the planning exercise.

John O’Dowd recently stressed “The terms of reference require the boards and the CCMS to engage actively with the other school sectors and their representative bodies.  The plans will report the extent of that engagement, and I will consider the appropriateness of the level of engagement when I assess the revised plans following the consultation.” Yet recently at a public meeting to discuss the plans, it was admitted that even the Board and the CCMS had had little discussion in some areas.

So – perhaps fortunately – it’s been left to the wider community to come up with real alternatives (such as the innovative “Cradle to Career” campus being suggested for Coleraine).  It’s up to us to think of how we want this and future generations to grow up, and to envisage who will be learning next to whom, in what sort of a building and under what kind of an education system.

There is one question on the online consultation form asking respondents to say which sector “represents your general interests” –trying to force everyone into boxes or silos. It also, again, asks people to align themselves somewhere within an existing pattern of education delivery.  And if, for example, you were unable to get your child a place at an integrated primary, but you are intending to apply for a place at an integrated second-level school, which sector do you choose?

It’s surely time we shook ourselves free of the limitations of the existing system – it’s the only way we can truly envisage a new future. Any proposals based on a minor tweak of the pattern of provision we have now are short-sighted and wrong-headed, missing a major and rare opportunity to design something better. As the man said, if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.

Says  Kirsty McManus, Assistant Director, CBI Northern Ireland

The future of our education system is of as much concern to CBI Northern Ireland members as it is too many of the other stakeholders in society. If we want to see prosperity and growth in the medium to long-term term, then it is vital that we have a workforce that is suitably prepared for the economic challenges and growth opportunities that lie before us.

For business, both indigenous and potential foreign direct investors, the skills base is something that underpins the potential success of any economy. We have long held the view that this skills base must not solely be made up of those with academic qualifications but rather must promote a mixture of people with qualifications across the spectrum.

With this in mind we have, like you, had our eyes cast recently towards the proposed area based planning system in primary and secondary education. To us, this provides both opportunities and risks.

The CBI is supportive of rationalisation of our schools estate. In our Time for Action report of September 2010, which focused on public sector reform, we called for significant re-engineering in the education sector. We strongly believe that duplication of resources can and must be driven out of the system, especially as we appear to be falling deeper into a period of public sector fiscal retrenchment. We cannot afford to again shirk the need to significantly alter our schools estate.

There is clearly now an opportunity for an enhanced role for integrated education. The costs of our divided society are manifest. Estimates of up to £1 billion per annum have been put against the cost of running duplicated services in Northern Ireland. Leadership is now required to address this and to redirect the education-related savings to that which is more important than buildings – an education system that supports all our young people towards achieving their potential and allows Northern Ireland to truly market itself as somewhere that is open for business.

We were encouraged by the establishment of the Shared Education Advisory Group by the Education Minister in June. However there here lies a risk.

The expectation remains that the Education Minister will push on with schools estate reform between now and Christmas. Given though that the Minister’s group on integrated education will not report until early 2013 there remain questions as to how much of a role integration will play in the proposed new landscape. For us, there will be little point in reforming the schools estate without actually tackling the divisions that underpin it.

None of this of course takes into account the education system that is presently provided. We believe there has to be an increased focus on STEM subjects as well as a renewed push on pupils’ employability skills given employers increasing concerns at skills gaps. The CBI also takes the view that a much better cross-departmental careers advisory service has to be created given the apparent inadequacies of today’s.

Our education system requires significant and urgent change. It is incumbent on our Education Minister that he ensures integrated education plays a significant part in that change.

 The walkout by the Alliance party from the CSI committee reflected a growing sense of frustration and discontent across Northern Ireland at the lack of action when it comes to the idea of a “shared future.”

It seems to be a pattern from politicians –  fine words about community cohesion but ultimately resorting to managing division rather than erasing it.

We need shared housing, shared public areas and genuine sharing of all services. The role of education – bringing young people to learn, play and grow together from the earliest years – cannot be underestimated.  Overall the picture of political progress in dealing with the core issues of division and segregation in Northern Ireland is one of abandoned pledges and broken promises.

The Programme for Government contained a commitment to set up an advisory committee on sharing, by April this year. I have heard no more about it – is it meeting in secret and refusing outside submissions, or does it not yet exist? The latter seems more likely.

The only step towards a single education system – the Education and Skills Authority – has been set up but isn’t functioning; it is merely a money pit at a time of constrained budgets.

The area-based planning underway for education is still rooted in a segregated structure, with a mere glance at cross-sectoral sharing.

Yet  politicians speak about cohesion and a shared future.

First Minister Peter Robinson has expressed his wish for a single education system. In autumn 2010 he said “We cannot hope to move beyond our present community divisions while our young people are educated separately…”

Indeed the DUP’s election pledges in 2011 included “establish schools as shared spaces” and “require school development proposals to demonstrate that options for sharing have been fully explored”.

The DUP’s manifesto wasn’t alone in this.

The SDLP were committed to “transforming society by ending segregation in housing and education”.

Meanwhile the UUP was advocating “organic collaboration, sharing of facilities and/or the merging of schools into Community Schools” and “promoting shared education as a contributing factor to a shared future”. More recently the party leader Mike Nesbitt said “We should recognise you learn more from those with whom you have differences”

Sinn Fein Education Minister John O’Dowd has said he can’t argue with the principal of children going to school together, and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness likes to remind us that “The first decision I took as minister of education was to establish two integrated schools in Belfast. I’m all for it.”

A report from the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister in 2008 concluded: “Those who live apart in segregated communities have, for the most part, also studied apart and now work apart…contact should be considered part of the solution.”

Four years on from that statement, around 21000 young people in Northern Ireland study together in integrated schools:  successful contact is evidently possible.  Those schools have been set up through grassroots campaigns and not through statutory action.  Why are our elected leaders, sharing discussions and an Assembly on a cross-community basis, paralysed when it comes to delivering a shared future to the people who elected them?

The DUP pledged to establish a commission “harnessing international expertise to advise on a strategy for enhancing sharing and integration within our education system.”

Given the inertia in government, isn’t it time for just such a commission to step in?

 Ljuljjetta works for the campaign organisation Nansen Dialogue in Sarajevo, which was set up to promote reconciliation after the wars in the Balkans.  Schools in this region are segregated three ways and divisions are so deep that though there are shared schools, pupils attend in shifts according to their ethnic background and their paths don’t cross. She wants to see a truly integrated integrated school in Srebrenica.

These three, and others from Eastern Europe, Cyprus and the Middle East, gathered in Belfast recently, joined by principals, teachers and founding parents from integrated schools in Northern Ireland.  The conference on integrated peace education provided a platform for sharing experiences and discussing challenges and best practice; but it also shone an international spotlight on integrated education in Northern Ireland.

Mary Roulston (Millennium IPS); Nadia Marinko; Peter Mccreadie (Formerly Priory IC)

 

Thirty years after the establishment of Lagan College the founders and principals could empathise and advise over the processes and pitfalls in setting up a new type of education in a context of conflict, but the situation in Northern Ireland also showed that after three decades of successful schools, integration is not yet the norm and has been allowed to flourish thanks to the efforts of campaigning parents and the financial support of philanthropists.

 

That said, the conference was a source of encouragement for the delegates I met.  As Luljjeta says,

 “I welcome the opportunity to gain insight from other delegates.  You can feel very isolated when you are trying to motivate parents and the government has no interest in changing things.”

There are a few additions to the IEF website this week – I’ve been watching the “history of sharing” video in the Community section.

Thanks to Tim McGarry’s unique presentation style the film is amusing. I started writing this on Burns’ Day and it strikes me that perhaps the only honourable response when we (anyone), in the Scottish Bard’s words, “see ourselves as others see us” is to laugh.    But the video isn’t just a joke – it gives a brief roundup of various attempts over nearly two centuries to eliminate segregation from the education system on this island. (more…)

By Anne Odling-Smee

(As featured in the Irish News 18th Jan 2012)

I am a Catholic who served for 12 years on an Education and Library Board and have also had the privilege to be a governor for many years of both controlled and integrated schools.    I was dismayed – though, in honesty, not very surprised – by Bishop Donal McKeown’s comments,  quoted in the Irish News earlier this month.  In an article headlined  “Bishop: diluting religion in schools is unfaithful to God”, His Grace suggests that controlled or integrated schools teach only “fragmented information”; the implication is insulting and ignorant and certainly does not accord with my experience.   The article takes the Bishop’s address for World Peace Day as a challenge to supporters of a single education system, and quotes him as saying:  “The Holy Father is clear that education affects the whole person, and means leading young people to move beyond themselves, and leading them to a reality, toward a fullness that leads to growth.”   Many would agree with His Holiness; my issue is that the Bishop, or perhaps the Irish News, seeks to give the impression that there is only one type of school which offers this. Yet all schools in Northern Ireland include religious studies in their teaching and a Christian element in their governance – and certainly maintained schools are not the only establishments to teach and discuss justice and peace as the Bishop also implies. It would be difficult to find a school of any type which did not have as its aim the development of the whole person. (more…)