Northern Ireland’s parties are putting their interests before integration

The decision of Paul Givan – Northern Ireland's education minister – to block the transformation of two schools to integrated status last week rightly prompted disappointment and frustration. It also raised questions about the Stormont executive's commitment to fostering the mixed education of children from across the country's Catholic and Protestant communities.

Bangor Academy, the largest school in NI, and Rathmore Primary School had applied for integrated status but were denied, purportedly on the grounds that they could not enrol sufficient numbers of children from Catholic backgrounds. This directly contravened huge parental support at both schools, the recommendation of Givan's own department, and a statutory duty to "encourage, facilitate and support" the expansion of integrated education, as set out by the Integrated Education Act.

Such a justification is illogical on many fronts: not least because schools are able to attract pupils from across Catholic and Protestant backgrounds far more effectively once integrated. But most importantly, Givan's rationale casts integration as a 'numbers game', the purpose of which is to immediately create well-balanced student populations. This utilitarian approach entirely disregards the inherent value of integrated education as an ethos: one which transcends the ideology of segregation by socio-religious identity, and could achieve greater social cohesion in a post-conflict society.

Givan's refusal is just one part of a pattern of reluctance to support the growth of integrated education by his party, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). When the Integrated Education Act was proposed by Kellie Armstrong MLA, of the Alliance party, the DUP went so far as to use a petition of concern – a mechanism created during the peace process to provide protections for cross-community decisions – to try to prevent it from being passed.

However, the DUP were not alone in criticising the bill. Sinn Féin, the most prominent Irish nationalist party in the country, also demonstrated antipathy, with their former education minister John O'Dowd claiming that integrated education was damaging to Irish identity, and that the segregated education system in NI was originally supported by the Catholic church as a way to "keep Irish identity alive in a partitioned state". Though his party eventually voted for the bill, O'Dowd had made a flagrant admission of a political will to leave religious privilege and segregation unchallenged, because of its role in maintaining identitarian politics.

The dual education system in NI is both byzantine and dysfunctional. Controlled (de facto Protestant) schools' boards of governors reserve places for nominees of Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist churches, while Catholic trustees appoint governors to the board of every maintained (de facto Catholic) school. The overseeing bodies for the respective sectors – the Education Authority and the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools – also have clerics on their boards.

Governing bodies are responsible for maintaining the ethos of their schools, and the denominational influence wreaks havoc on the quality and consistency of education. This has recently been illustrated by the NI's Court of Appeal upholding a previous finding that religious education is "not conveyed in an objective, critical, and pluralistic manner", and by the necessity of an Alliance motion to introduce a standardised, inclusive relationships and sex education curriculum. A 2023 Independent Review also found that "the administration of education is unnecessarily complex and leads to fragmentation" – including significant costs sustained by the duplication of provision between the two sectors.

Despite the obvious flaws in the current system, the DUP and Sinn Féin remain evasive of – or at least apathetic to – expansion of integrated education. Both have supported shared education projects, which facilitate Catholic and Protestant schools to share certain lessons or spaces for a limited period of time, over integration. While shared education can be seen as a pragmatic way to increase contact between children across communities, it has been described by researchers as "leaving the divided system untouched and unchallenged". Although schools involved in shared education may appear to be embracing a progressive approach, children remain in different, segregated schools - preserving the dual system and sectarian status quo.

Matthew Milliken, researcher into NI education, noted in a 2022 report for the University of Ulster that the dual system serves to "enshrine self-replication and solidify community separation". The key unionist and nationalist parties, while residing on opposite sides of the great schism of Northern Irish politics, have a shared interest in resisting the introduction of a single, integrated education system in the country. When children and young people cease to be divided by community, the segregation of NI can no longer be as effectively perpetuated, thereby removing such parties' political raison d'être. Until politicians on both sides become willing to prioritise the rights and education of young people over their own electoral goals, integrated education will remain stymied by vested, sectarian interest.

Image: The 'peace wall' along Cupar Way in Belfast.