Stephen Goss: Northern Ireland is still perpetuating division and worse we are doing so within the education system | Conservative Home

Dr Stephen Goss is a freelance historian, lectures in history and politics in London, and is a Conservative councillor in Reading.

‘There are schools in existence where children of different denominations work together and play together, and who will assert that this assembly is anything but beneficial for all concerned?’

These are not platitudes from a current advocate of integrated education in Northern Ireland, but the words of the Marquess of Londonderry, speaking on the first reading of his Education Bill at Stormont on 14th March 1923. The first Northern Ireland Education Minister sought to introduce to the new state a secular, integrated system of education. Unfortunately, over a century later we still have segregated education

Under Londonderry’s plans all state schools in Northern Ireland were to be integrated and without overtly religious identities. Part 5, Clause 28 of his Bill stated that all government funded schools ‘shall be open to children of all religious denominations for combined literary and moral instruction… [and] the times at which religious instruction is given shall not form part of the times during which any child is required…to attend school’. The Education Minister sought to introduce non-denominational schools with a secular curriculum, provision for religious teaching being made after the formal school day had concluded.

No doubt aware of potential clerical opposition to such plans, Lord Londonderry also said during the first reading of the bill in the Northern Ireland House of Commons, ‘do not let it be said that [the] churches…are now…the stumbling block in the way of an ideal system owing to a determination to segregate their flocks and create from birth a division when union is essential’. Londonderry was attempting to persuade the churches to support the measure so as to avoid driving a wedge between the communities in Northern Ireland at a time when the new state was still attempting to firmly establish itself.

The failure of the government to meet the demands of the Protestant churches for substantial amendments to the bill before it was enacted led to an intense public campaign of opposition. The Presbyterians, Anglicans, and Methodists adopted a united front, and with an election nearing, Northern Ireland’s first Prime Minister Sir James Craig gave in. On 13^th March 1925 amending legislation was enacted providing for compulsory Bible instruction and a role for the Protestant churches in the appointment of state school teachers. The Catholic Church, unwilling from the very beginning to permit any sort of state intervention in its schools, became all the more averse to doing so as this Protestant agitation continued – and proved successful.

One hundred years later over 90 per cent of schools in Northern Ireland are still segregated by religion. Integrated education in Northern Ireland was specified in the 1998 Agreement as ‘an essential aspect of the reconciliation process’. Yet in effect, very little has been done. Northern Irish politicians waxed-lyrical about the importance of integration for decades – First Minister Peter Robinson asserted in 2010 that:

Our education system is a benign form of apartheid, which is fundamentally damaging to our society. Who among us would think it acceptable that a state or nation would educate its young people by the criteria of race with white schools or black schools? Yet we are prepared to operate a system which separates our children almost entirely on the basis of their religion…And then we are surprised that we continue to have a divided society.

Despite all the talk and promises it took until 2022 for the Northern Ireland Assembly to pass the Integrated Education Act – which, notably, was a Private Member’s Bill. It expanded the definition of integrated education as schooling together of:

• Those of different cultures and religious beliefs and none;
• Those who are experiencing socio-economic deprivation and those that are not; and
• Those of different abilities.

Three years later, the Department of Education has published Vision 2030 – A Strategy for Integrated Education. It defines five priorities to help realise that vision:

1. Increased access to Integrated Education.
2. High-quality support services for Integrated Education. Ensure schools have the services they need (e.g. governance, professional support, legal/HR).
3. Development, maintenance and protection of the Integrated Ethos.
4. Increased public knowledge and understanding of Integrated Education.
5. Increased school collaboration and a more shared society.

Fluffy prosaicisms.

Lack of HR services are not the impediment to integrated schools. Priority Three is noble-sounding abstraction in place of meaningful policy. The public are acutely aware of and understand integration – more than two-thirds of parents want their children to be educated together. The progress towards these will apparently be tracked using a set of indicators updated annually.

Despite the legislative requirement for amalgamating different cultures and religious beliefs and none, Vision 2030 does not address religious education (RE) as integrated schooling is increased. There is a statutory requirement that schools in Northern Ireland provide RE. Part III, Articles 21-22 of the Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1986 mandate teachers to provide non-denominational RE ‘based on Holy Scriptures’ and daily collective worship in all schools except nurseries and those that are integrated.

A few weeks ago the Supreme Court ruled that the RE and collective worship provided in a Northern Ireland primary school breached the rights of a pupil and her father under Article 2 of the first Protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Court decided that the statutory right of parents to withdraw children from RE was not an adequate safeguard, since it placed undue burdens on families, risked stigmatising pupils, and exposed private beliefs. It emphasised that while Christianity may remain the central focus of the curriculum, RE must be delivered in an objective, critical, and pluralistic manner, and collective worship must respect freedom of belief.

In response, DUP Education Minister Paul Givan circulated a letter to school principals asserting that the statutory requirements on RE and collective worship still stood, but the Department would issue ‘legally sound’ guidance how both should now be reformed. It will be particularly interesting to see how the Department of Education manages to square the circle of a legal requirement for a daily act of Christian worship (not challenged in the ruling) which is also ‘objective, critical, and pluralistic’.

The Supreme Court has – rightly – acknowledged that:

Christianity is the most important religion in Northern Ireland. It is within the Department’s margin of appreciation in planning and setting the curriculum for the greater part of religious education to focus on knowledge of Christianity.

The judgment should be taken not as a constraint but as a catalyst. By insisting that religious education be objective, critical and pluralistic, the Supreme Court has opened the door for a genuinely shared system. Those of us who believe Christianity is objectively true should have no qualms about other religious beliefs being taught alongside it – provided the curriculum is genuinely pluralistic. Instead of patching guidance onto a ‘benign form of apartheid’, the Department of Education should return to Lord Londonderry’s 1923 Bill.

Requiring shared schooling of all children and providing for, but placing RE outside formal school hours, remains the most coherent model ever proposed for integrated education in Northern Ireland. A century later, and now with statutory and judicial obligations, the Department finally has the opportunity – and the duty – to finish the work Londonderry began.