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The story of the integrated schools in Northern Ireland
Fionnuala O Connor
 From
in-depth interviews with parents, teachers, pupils and many others
– friends as well as enemies – award-winning journalist
Fionnuala O Connor writes a vivid account of the first two decades
of this quiet revolution.
She sought out ex-pupils with memories of makeshift classrooms and
pioneers from the early days of risks and effort, when schools were
started on a wing and a prayer and kept going by parents cleaning
toilets and driving minibuses. Today’s teachers describe different
struggles but are well aware of the differences between the integrated
and the two much bigger education sectors.
The deeply ingrained divisions in Northern Ireland do not spring
solely from segregated schooling, but there can be little doubt
that children sent to separate schools on the basis that some are
Catholic, others Protestant, will later find it easier to fear and
demonise each other.
In 1981 a group of parents and supporters decided to tear
up the pattern of division and open a school that would welcome
Protestants, Catholics, children of all faiths and none. They were
sure that contacts between schools, often slight and for years only
notional, were no substitute for sitting side by side each day in
class.
The history of organised integrated education’s first two
decades is marked by the effort of challenging what much of society
long accepted without question. Enemies have been plentiful and
varied, from the loyalist paramilitaries who threatened that first
school to the more genteel churchmen who met appeals for help with
coldness and hostility.
Twenty-one years later, efforts to break down barriers and encourage
links between schools is established government policy. Integrated
education has become an accepted and now formidable part of the
education system, which puts the other sectors on their mettle.
Separating children according to religion will never again go unquestioned.
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The Author
Fionnuala O Connor was born in Belfast. She regularly comments on
politics on radio and television and is the Economist's Northern
Ireland correspondent. Her book "In Search of a State: Catholics
in Northern Ireland" (Blackstaff Press 1993) won the Christopher
Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize and the Orwell Prize. In April 2002 she
produced "Breaking the Bonds: Making Peace in Northern Ireland"
(Mainstream, Edinburgh), a series of political profiles one reviewer
credited with 'devastating insightfulness,' another with 'brutal
honesty.'
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