Debrief

By Karin Eyben, Integrated Education fund

Shared education or shared out education? Which will best serve the needs of our children’s future?

That was a question raised at Sustaining Schools, Sustaining Communities, an event organised by Rural Community Network and the IEF in Ballyronan, on the banks of Lough Neagh. (more…)

We’ve been told that this election was finally about the real issues – education, health, jobs, transport….although the low turnout suggests the voters are sceptical about the possibility of change. (more…)

By Malachi O’Doherty

The findings of the Mori poll into attitudes to Integrated Education are astonishing.The easy assumption about how Northern Ireland works is that most people prefer things as they are. Parents choose the schools to send their children to, and if their choice is sectarian, then the presumption must be that they are sectarian, that a priority in education is that children should be raised uncontaminated by the influence of the Other. (more…)

It now looks like publication of the Executive’s anti-sectarianism strategy will be delayed until after May’s Assembly election.  A draft Programme for Cohesion, Sharing and Integration (CSI) was put out to public consultation last summer.  That discussion document was itself the product of two years bickering between political parties, in particular Sinn Féin and the DUP. (more…)