February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The early fall weather is calm and sunny, just when anyone with children can no longer take them away to the beach — because school has started.
For some school children, there are new schools to go to — unusually, this year sees seven new integrated schools opening in Northern Ireland, with little celebration, but nonetheless this is a quiet and significant triumph.
Integrated education has always been seen as one of the long-term solutions to the deep sectarian divisions in Northern Ireland. The underpinning principles of integrated education is that by bringing Catholic, Protestant and children of other faiths, or none, together in a shared learning environment, they can learn to understand, respect and tolerate their differences.
Today, 90 percent of high school students attend schools that are at least 90 percent of one faith, Protestant or Catholic.
The seven schools, which opened their doors a little more than a week ago, are scattered throughout the North and range from primary schools to a secondary level college.
They are Armagh Integrated College, Armagh; Drumlins Integrated Primary School, Ballynahinch, Co. Down; Phoenix Integrated Primary School, Cookstown, Co. Tyrone; Roe Valley Integrated Primary School, Limavady, Co. Derry; Lir Integrated Primary School, Ballycastle, Co. Antrim; Groomsport Integrated Primary School, Co. Down, and Glencraig Integrated Primary School, also in County Down.
This represents the biggest increase in integrated education in its 23-year history as an ongoing experiment in Northern Ireland.
Broadly supported by most political parties and also by the British government, integrated education has not always been welcomed in Northern Ireland. But parents are being increasingly won over, says Tina Merron, director of the Integrated Education Fund, one of two agencies tasked with exploring ways for new integrated schools to come into existence — existing schools become integrated more often than entirely new schools being created.
One of the objections to integrated education is how religious education is taught. But, says Merron, the long-since agreed standard Northern Irish education curriculum on religious education is what’s taught, and that was agreed on in consultation with all four major churches: the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, and the Methodist Church in Ireland.
“We don’t deny religious education,” Merron said. “Ultimately parents want the best for their children,” she added, noting that it seems the best judges of education are parents.
In a 2003 survey, 85 percent of parents in Northern Ireland agreed with the idea of integrated education, according to a survey cited by Merron. As the peace process came into existence, integrated education received further boosts, financial and otherwise. It remains one of the most hopeful long-term solutions to the underlying causes of the Troubles. One of the policy’s biggest supporters in recent years has been the former Northern Ireland secretary of state Mo Mowlam, who welcomed the new schools last week.
“Children from different traditions and cultures playing and learning together is an essential part of securing a peaceful future,” Mowlam said.
One of the criticisms often aimed at integrated education has been that it is the policy of the Alliance party, those well-meaning, open-minded individuals who would be the type of person for whom integrated education would already be appealing. In the ghettoes, Protestant and Catholic, where integrated education might work its slow-burning transformation, no one wanted it.
Not so, says Merron, pointing to the success of at least two integrated schools in Belfast that are situated in areas of high working-class unemployment and at times, violence.
The first integrated school, Lagan College, opened in 1981 with just 28 pupils. Today there are more than 17,000 children in integrated education. The seven new schools bring the total number of integrated schools in Northern Ireland to 57.
“It is a long-term solution,” Merron said. “But remember, it’s not just about the students. Parents meet at the school gates and soon you have a school community.”
The two Northern Irish agencies that fund and support integrated schools are the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education (NICIE), a voluntary a (www.nicie.org.uk), and the Integrated Education Fund (IEF), a charitable trust providing a financial foundation for the development and growth of Integrated Education in Northern Ireland (www.ief.org.uk).