The initial Department of Education strategy for Integrated Education has been declared unlawful in the High Court, which has allowed an application for judicial review brought by the Integrated Education Fund (IEF).
The initial Department of Education strategy for Integrated Education has been declared unlawful in the High Court, which has allowed an application for judicial review brought by the Integrated Education Fund (IEF). The Court has declared that strategy, as published by the Department of Education on 26 April 2023, was published in breach of section 9(2)(e)(ii) and (iii) of the Integrated Education Act (Northern Ireland) 2022 as this strategy did not include targets and measurable benchmarks in accordance with the requirements of the legislation.
The case against the Department was brought by the IEF, an independent charity which works to support the growth and development of Integrated Education in Northern Ireland.
IEF Statement
The IEF welcomes the decision of the High Court.
The IEF did not want to take this legal action against the Department. We want to work constructively with them and will continue to do so. But this strategy, coming so soon after new legislation in 2022 was critically important, setting the direction for the Department on implementing the legislation as required by law.
Setting targets and benchmarks should be a cornerstone of any strategy and action plan but they were missing in this strategy, which would have had significant and substantial consequence for future delivery.
Now the Department has finally published a revised strategy on 11 June 2025 the focus must be on its full implementation. For example, one of the commitments for the Department to fulfil is measuring and acting on parental demand. No matter which metric or measure is used, the gap between supply and demand for Integrated Education remains vast and therefore significant action is now required by both the Department and the Education Authority to address this.
Whilst regretful that a legal challenge was necessary in the first place, the IEF believes the legal process secured significant improvements to the original strategy, these include an increased implementation budget from £50,000 in total to £50,000 per annum, recognition that the results of parental ballots in schools on Transformation to Integrated status should be part of measuring parental demand and potential additional recurrent funding of £65,000 per annum for the Council for Integrated Education (NICIE) to help assist implementation. It is unlikely any of these changes would have happened without the intervention of the IEF supported by Public Interest Litigation Support (PILS) through which assistance the IEF were able to secure the representation and expertise of Brian Moss from Worthingtons Solicitors and Steven McQuitty KC. We now need to ensure the Department is to be held to account on the application of the new strategy.
