The Benefits of Integrated Education

Social benefit:
Positive Social Attitudes

Recent independent research carried out by Queen’s University Belfast in 2025 indicates that Integrated Education can have a positive influence on pupils’ attitudes across three main areas:

• Building Inter-Group Relations – Evidence suggests that Integrated schools can promote social cohesion and support inclusive educational communities. Young people in these settings often experience more frequent and higher-quality interactions with peers from diverse backgrounds, helping to foster positive cross-community relationships.
• Developing Respectful Attitudes – While individual attitudes naturally vary, the study identified patterns linking Integrated Education with more positive social attitudes. Post-primary Integrated environments, in particular, were associated with greater respect for diversity and more inclusive views of specific groups.
• Social Responsibility – Integrated Education was also linked to the development of critical thinking about social issues, with these skills strengthening as young people progress through post-primary education.
  “Integrated education consistently fosters positive intergroup interactions, particularly in post-primary settings, where students report higher levels of cross-community and cross-ethnic engagement, greater self-confidence in diverse social settings, and a deeper understanding of others’ beliefs. Primary integrated education plays an important foundational role, shaping positive attitudes across community backgrounds and fostering prosocial behaviours.” Queen’s University Belfast, ‘Social attitudes and integrated education’ Nelson, J., Blaylock, D., Dautel, J., Hughes, J., Cherry, J., & Pouryahya, T. (2025).

Educational Benefit:
Preparation for Life

Integrated schools are most likely to reflect the diversity of the wider community, giving children everyday experience of learning, working, and socialising with people from different backgrounds. This helps prepare them for life beyond school, where most will study or work in mixed environments.

Integrated schools demonstrate that people from all religious, cultural and social backgrounds can work, learn and play together, successfully. It has contributed to the growing acceptance that learning together can enhance an educational experience, adding value to a child’s education.

Schools across all sectors have recognised the benefits of educating children and young people together, as evidenced by the growing number of schools who participate in shared education initiatives. Expanding Integrated Education would reduce reliance on additional programmes and funding to bring pupils together.
Instead, learning together would become a normal and everyday part of school life.

Economic Benefit:
Effective and Efficient

There is increasing recognition that our divided education system contributes to duplication and an overprovision of schools. Maintaining separate school systems based on religious or cultural background places significant financial pressures on government and many local communities. Having too many schools with too few pupils can make ineffective and inefficient use of limited resources and place further strain on education budgets. The risk to local communities is the loss of local education provision altogether. Integrated Education can offer a potential solution by helping to sustain local schools in communities where maintaining separate structures is no longer affordable or viable.

The Independent Review of Education (2023) suggested that up to 177 schools in Northern Ireland could be potentially reconfigured on a jointly managed community basis. The IEF is committed to undertaking independent research to explore what such a model might look like and to assess the potential costs and benefits of such an initiative. Ultimately, however, cross-community amalgamations and mergers will require political leadership and commitment to be taken forward.