It is interesting to see how the concept of an “area” is developing; John O’Dowd is to initiate a survey of families living close to the border to see if they would consider including a school in the Republic as part of their local provision. Similarly, more children from the Republic could attend schools in Northern Ireland –a welcome boost to the enrolment in some cases.  Of course, this would mean sending your child to a school with a different statutory body, a different curriculum and different exam system – not necessarily undesirable, and some families already do this.  But for parents in Northern Ireland, given that the Republic’s Education Minister, Ruairi Quinn, has pledged to overhaul schools and the Leaving Certificate system, no-one really knows what they would be signing up for.

One aspect of that overhaul is represented in the recent report on patronage and pluralism in the Republic’s primary schools.  It describes a changing society with a “greater diversity of religious belief systems and the more multicultural composition of the population. There is also a minority of about 10 percent who declare themselves as having ‘no religion’. There are also parents of denominational beliefs who prefer a multi-denominational education for their children.”  This has resonances beyond the border and indeed throughout much of the world: we are all living in increasingly diverse communities, and all required to develop a more global outlook.

The panel drawing up this report began by inviting submissions on three key themes – the first being parental demand for increased diversity in education.  In Northern Ireland, parental demand for greater diversity and integration has been evidenced many times in a range of research.

“It seems fair to conclude” says the report, “ that there is a widespread awareness of the need for changes in school patronage, there is a readiness among key partners for change and the time is well due for the responsible agencies to seize the opportunity to plan for satisfactory action.”    Interestingly, the report mentions the early struggles of the Educate Together movement for multi-cultural schools, where campaigning parents, like their counterparts in Northern Ireland’s integrated education movement, struggled against statutory inertia or outright opposition to their aims.

Overall the aim of the report on patronage seems to be to offer a diverse menu of schools, but the document goes on to state, “There is an educational and social dividend to be gained from all the children in a rural setting, village or small town attending school together.”

The Stand Alone school (ie the sole primary school in a rural area – meaning parents do not have a choice of management type unless they are willing for their children to travel some distance) “should be an inclusive school open to children from differing religious or secular belief backgrounds, from a range of ability and special educational needs, from many cultural and linguistic backgrounds, from the Traveller and settled communities and from all socio-economic backgrounds.”   From the IEF’s series of community conversations in rural areas in Northern Ireland, it seems this is what the majority of parents would want from a local school. A single school which truly serves the whole community would make economic sense and answer social needs.

School budgets are squeezed on both sides of the border, and employers everywhere are looking for a qualified and aware workforce. There is an onus on both Education Ministers to use scarce resources wisely and for the best academic and social outcomes. As John O’Dowd looks across the border in his overview of education, will he also take on board the latest report’s commitment to diversity, and to reflecting the wishes of parents?

Nadia is principal of a school in Israel where Jewish and Arab children play and learn side by side. When it opened there were demonstrations outside, and staff are used address the conflict in the region as it is reflected in the classroom.

Marinko teaches English and German to children aged 11-14 in Vukovar: his school enrolment is around 99% Croat.  He says teaching tolerance in a school without diversity is an uphill task.  For the past eight years he has been working with an NGO to establish a mixed, integrated school.

 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.”

September 2011 saw the start of a new chapter in my life with integrated education as I was accepted into Lagan College for lower 6^th. Another first day at a new school, a feeling that I know all too well – but I’ve learnt that it’s all in the thinking behind approaching something new –  “If we all did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves.”- Thomas A Edison

Quickly settling into sixth form (studying Psychology, ICT and Geography) I’m so happy I made the choice to go to Lagan.  I’ve met the best set of friends that I hope I will have for life. In the seven months that I have now spent at the college I have been placed 8^th in Ulster for schools show jumping.  Lagan shows such passion for all sports and tries to accommodate requests for teams.  I think this is part of the definition of integrated for me, to understand and consider other sports no matter your faith or background. Most sports are in teams from rugby squads to the team between a horse and rider.

Another outcome of my time at Lagan so far is raising money to help a school in Sierra Leone to show that we are not only excited about the new build of Lagan but that we also want to help a school that doesn’t have as much as we do. So far we have raised £2500 through school concerts and Christmas activities.

Finally I am very excited about my up and coming visit from our linked school in Albany, New York State.  I will be hosting one of the students and I am very excited about this. I love to learn about other lifestyles both within Northern Irelandand across the world.

Today we went along to Sperrinview’s wonderful outdoor sensory garden to meet up with our friends from the other classes & to have a visit from ‘Exploris Aquarium’ in Portaferry with their touch tank. First the children all had their snack outside in the garden & enjoyed exploring the grounds before going in in small groups to see the touch tank.

 

There were starfish, scallops or clams, crabs & sea urchins for the children to hold & touch & look at. There was also a shark’s egg! It was a lovely activity for all the children to access – whether they understood English or they were visually impaired or in a wheel chair.

This was another wonderful opportunity for the children & staff to play alongside each and we are all looking forward to meeting up again in 2 weeks time when we all head to the ‘big forest’ at An Creagán.

But for many – even those without any particular religious commitment -  there seems to be a tradition of forgoing for Lent.  Maybe I’m just excusing my gluttonous, slothful nature, but self-denial seems rather unproductive and almost self-indulgent when so many people nowadays go without not out of a sense of noble sacrifice but because they have no choice.  I’m glad to see various charities urging the public to give something rather than give something up.

One thing we can give is our voice.  We can and should be involved in decisions over the future of education in Northern Ireland.  Sure, it’s frustrating when so many opinion polls show a wish for change and in particular for sharing and integration, yet we see no major moves on the issue from the Executive.  How often do we have to say it?  Perhaps at this time of crisis, with the promise in the draft Programme for Government of an advisory group on sharing, we have an opportunity for our voices to be heard at last.

Schools are already giving up on “luxuries” like substitute teachers to cover sick leave. Educational trips are falling by the wayside as those funds which once subsidised the hired coach are needed for the bread-and –butter work of the classroom.   What is next on the list – books? Sports?

It is frustrating that if we had tackled excess earlier – not in the sense of lavish furnishings or treats for children, but in the sense of over-supply – we could be much more comfortable now.  The sensible use of resources would have prevented many of the problems we currently face. Anxiety is festering in many communities over potential school closures; anxiety which is compounded by a lack of transparency over future plans for education. If a school is considered for closure, the overriding criterion should not be the level of enrolment at that school nor even its academic record – the quality of the alternative offered must be at least as important.    We need to be given sight of the overall plans for each area, of how the budget allocated for each child will be used to get the best education for everyone, of a vision for sharing which brings young people together for economic, social and educational reasons.

The IEF’s series of public meetings (“Our Children, Their Education”) have been varied and lively so far; it’s good to see the turnout even on wet, dark evenings.  It’s great that in the face of uncertainty and underfunding, parents and teachers are not giving up.

Trevor Lunn MLA and Marie Cowan, Chair of the IEF Board of Trustees, seen pictured with pupils from a recent PACT project in Holywood.

By Marie Cowan, Chair of the IEF Board of Trustee’s

There is at last a growing acknowledgement among politicians, officials and wider civic society that sharing within and between schools represents good value and good practice. It is expressed in the draft Programme for Government, with its acknowledgement of collaboration in education as a crucial element in a shared future.

The Integrated Education Fund has been pioneering sharing between schools of all management types for more than a decade.    We are very proud of the work done by schools of all types under our Promoting a Culture of Trust (PACT) scheme since it was first launched by Senator George Mitchell and supported by the Northern Ireland Fund for Reconciliation twelve years ago.   We continue to be grateful for continuing support from donors.

There are many organisations running programmes which bring our young people together.  A brief conversation with staff, children and parents who have experience of any of these projects will reveal how much participants enjoy and learn from the links formed.

In many cases the contact continues after the individual grant ends. When we launched our latest round of grants, one principal commented that “The IEF PACT scheme has been the springboard for our vision for the local school community. Both schools are committed to maintaining these links in the future.” 

The sheer number of schools in Northern Ireland willingly engaged in cross-community contact shows that people do not want to continue working in isolation.  The draft Programme for Government promises an increase in the number of opportunities for children to participate in such projects.  I hope this Executive is ready to step in at any point and pick up the reins because the system for sharing between schools at present is ad hoc and fragile.

Many of these schemes can only be planned from year to year because that is how a budget dependent on philanthropic funding must work. 

Will the Executive put money where it has pledged support in principle – will there be a continued, practical commitment to maintaining and increasing sharing between schools, I wonder?  It would be a sensible use of money; sharing is an investment in a harmonious future. 

We should be working towards an education system where children learn, play and grow together in properly resourced schools, in state-of-the-art buildings. An education system that focuses on the best academic and training outcomes but also on the social dividends of collaboration.  An education system that prepares young people for the global market place. We may all use different language;  whether we call it integration, sharing, collaboration – the goals, the outcomes are the important things.

The draft Programme for Government acknowledges that the status quo in education is neither sustainable nor desirable. There is also an implicit acknowledgement that the work of organisations such as the Integrated Education Fund has been and continues to be valuable.  I am confident that the planned advisory group on sharing will not ignore the years of experience of people setting up and working in integrated schools, nor the experience – more than a decade – of organisations linking schools through programmes like PACT.

The Integrated Education Fund is also initiating discussions which engage communities,  politicians and education professionals in exploring new models of education. It’s up to political leaders to find the will and courage to make decisions – easier if they know they are reflecting  the wishes of the community they serve. 

So I challenge our politicians to focus on what is important and to create a new vision of Northern Ireland’s schools, to bring children together to grow in mind, body and spirit, rejecting traditional divisions. We are calling on the Minister for Education and the Executive to make decisions which make financial sense and – most importantly – which offer the best learning and social outcomes for all our children.

I can think of nowhere that a local priest will get a warmer welcome than an Integrated primary school because it is recognition of the work we Catholic teachers are doing. 

I view my position as one of great responsibility for the young Catholics in my care. Each day I work with them to enhance their lives in spiritual and emotional ways in an environment that both acknowledges their faith and the faiths of others within the class. By giving the children the opportunity to discuss their faiths and backgrounds, we are acknowledging that we all have a right to participate freely in society. Surely this is one of the most obvious ways of developing the ‘whole person’?

My experience has taught me that many of the Catholic teachers in Integrated schools who are preparing children for their Sacraments are having to work harder, longer and show more dedication than their colleagues in maintained schools because we feel we have to prove ourselves to the outside community. Without the support structures that every maintained school has, our children are always prepared exceptionally well for their Sacraments and their moral responsibility to the world.

I frequently encounter critics who assume that all Catholic children in the Integrated sector are the product of lapsed Catholic parents. In my time, I have come across as many devout parents in the Integrated sector as I have in the Maintained. Think, when Mass attendance is at an all time low – are all of these missing people the parents of children in Integrated schools? I doubt it!

On the other hand, there are cases where Catholic teachers in Integrated schools are doing the job that a priest should be doing. We are reaching out to those parents who have, for whatever reason, fallen out with the Church. We give the families continued access to their faith and offer them the chance at reconciliation.

In fact, what is particularly galling is seeing the provision made for children who attend controlled schools but only receive once-a-week tutorial lessons in preparation for the Sacraments. I wonder why these children receive ‘fluffy religion’ but are treated much better than those Catholic children who are taught by Catholic ‘certified’ teachers! Could it be that the issue isn’t education of the child but control of the child?

What is also disappointing in this address is that Bishop McKeown has always struck me as being a reasonable person, willing to see beyond the Church system and recognise the changing face of Northern Ireland and the needs of its people.  Yet now it seems he is advocating a continuation of segregation when the opinion polls and statistics show that Northern Ireland’s parents want integrated education for their children but are frequently denied the chance for access due to the political carve-up between the Boards and CCMS.

An integrated system also seems to be perceived as a threat by a vocal minority of teachers  in Maintained schools.  This  was revealed  to me when first introduced to a teacher from a Maintained school. On hearing that I was teaching in an integrated primary school her response was ‘Oh, you’re the Token Taig’.

Insulting, but it only reinforces my faith in what I do. With my Catholic colleagues in integrated schools, I am in the classroom  every day working to prepare the children for a better, more tolerant, Northern Ireland. We are secure in the belief that we’re doing the very job that all people should be doing – reaching out and helping to make the world a better place.

To read Bishop McKeown’s World Peace Day address please click here.

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.

You may think, if there have been a few attempts and we still don’t have integration as the norm in our schools here, it just isn’t wanted.  The numerous surveys and opinion polls on the subject suggest otherwise; and the video albeit briefly gives us an idea of where the holdup has come from. In each case, politicians who have tried to introduce a new, shared system of education have faced opposition from the establishment – church and state authorities of various hues for once singing from the same hymnsheet: teaching “our” children with “their” children would be disastrous, blasphemous, dangerous; an affront. 

When Lagan College eventually opened thirty years ago, the first planned integrated school in Northern Ireland, it was not due to a parliamentary initiative but to parents working hard together.  The financial and educational risks those parents took paid off; last weekend saw Lagan College’s open day full to overflowing, even though much of the school is currently a building site (the school, after thirty years of more campaigning, will finally get a new purpose-built facility open in summer 2013).

Of course there have been schools which taught children across the community; schools set up in mill towns  to educate the workers’s children, for example  It did not make economic sense for the mill owners to found two schools, and presumably there was more likely to be a harmonious and productive workforce if difference was respected but not over-emphasised.

But there again, these schools were set up by private individuals or companies, not the government. So it’s been down to grassroots action and determination.  Basil McIvor as education minister struggled to introduce integration but worked with All Children Together to achieve the beginnings of what we see today.

As Tim McGarry says, history is important… I didn’t study history myself after the age of fourteen or so, something I regret; but one thing I think we can learn from this video is that major progress happens in spite of vested interests, and because of grassroots efforts. Progress is often slow; in some cases this is necessary as there are circumstances where change can’t be introduced with brutal speed if ordinary people are to buy into it.

But the IEF is starting or, no – continuing – the work for change with public meetings and community debates, devised to give voice to parents and teachers as well as to politicians and civil servants. These are conversations, not rallies; all views and experiences are important and are welcome. Tim McGarry urges us to keep one eye, and one eye only, on the past – these meetings should focus our minds on the future. Let’s hope that in planning our future the Executive listens to what is being said.

 Go to http://www.ief.org.uk/community/ to see the video.

(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.

The premise behind the establishment, just over 30 years ago, of integrated schools was that in bringing children together with others of all beliefs, cultures and backgrounds from an early age, in an environment where those aspects were nurtured and respected, we could develop the whole person.  The idea was to bring together, not dilute, the many facets of belief within a school with a stated Christian ethos. 

I am intrigued to read that Bishop McKeown says his sector’s schools support the whole of society – whilst acknowledging that they segregate children. Subscribing to the theory of a shared future sits oddly when many of the pupils emerge from the Catholic school system having had little opportunity of knowing a large proportion of the local community. When some then go on to study at a denominational teacher training college, what practical experience have they had of meeting “the other”  – therefore, how are they equipped to educate the next generation for a pluralist and shared society?

It saddens me that at a time when the Catholic Church is encouraging receptive ecumenism, which entails us learning from other denominations and faiths so as to reach a better understanding between people in the world, this sort of statement from a respected Bishop is being repeated.  A paradox indeed.

THE commitment to greater collaboration in the Programme for Government and in recent political speeches is encouraging. It is essential that the integrated education movement contributes to any consultation on sharing. I would expect the experience of integrated schools to be taken seriously by anyone mapping out a shared future for Northern Ireland.

There has been a focus recently, from politicians and the media, on sharing projects between schools, as an example of how we can work together across traditional divides to enhance the education experience of young people. Clearly the prevalence of programmes and projects like this are firm evidence that most people want to look beyond traditional divisions and reach out to the rest of their wider community. Opinion polls consistently show that when it comes to education, the majority of people want to see their local schools welcoming everyone, cherishing diversity and promoting inclusion.

Yet if the Executive is planning to promote sharing between schools, it is missing a vital opportunity to encourage cohesion whilst saving money. There are about a thousand projects promoting cross-community collaboration between schools, but very little of this activity is currently funded by the state. These schemes, apart from the Entitlement Framework for post-16 courses, operate outside the normal everyday life of the schools, and need targeted support. At present most are dependent on charitable funding. This cannot last forever; indeed many of the current schemes promoting sharing in education have a specific lifespan. Will statutory funding be found to maintain the work, in these times of budget cuts so severe that schools are already making cutbacks? We are not making progress towards a shared future, but relying rather on an artificial, temporary measure which barely begins to address the needs and wants of communities ready for collaboration and diversity.

The economic crisis means we literally can’t afford to move slowly on this; we have to find ways of sharing not specific activities but resources, spaces and time. The sixty-two integrated schools provide models for the way forward.A truly integrated system is sustainable and progressive, offering a rich and stimulating educational environment where each child’s identity is welcomed and cherished. Short-term schemes which mask divisions without demolishing them, take us only a short way towards where we want to be.