I will give a brief overview of Integrated Education and how it has developed over the past 38 years. Founded in 1981 by a group of parents in response to the challenge of community conflict and a religiously divided school system in Northern Ireland, Lagan College was the first integrated school in Northern Ireland. Beginning with just 28 pupils, Lagan College is now the most oversubscribed school in Northern Ireland.
By 1987 there were seven newly established integrated schools and the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education, NICIE, was formed as a charitable organisation to co-ordinate efforts to develop integrated education and to support parent groups through the process of opening new schools. The 1989 Education Reform (Northern Ireland) Order enabled NICIE to support existing schools to grow and to promote integrated education.
In 1992 the Integrated Education Fund, IEF, was established as a charity to provide a financial foundation for the development and growth of integrated education in Northern Ireland. The IEF mandate is derived from the expressed demand of parents and individual schools who seek integrated education for their children and pupils.
In 2014, there was a landmark High Court judgment which compelled the Department of Education in Northern Ireland to fulfil its legal duty under article 64 of the 1989 Education Reform (Northern Ireland) Order and the commitment in the Good Friday Agreement “to facilitate and encourage integrated education”. Not only did the judgment rule that the Department needs to be alive to its article 64 duty at all levels, including the strategic level, but it also outlined what an integrated school is striving for, namely “to achieve an equal balance in relation to worship, celebration and exposure to both faiths … reflected in its constitution … and the [school’s] board must strive in its ethos to achieve this”. For these reasons, an integrated school seeks to achieve religious balance among its pupils and its board of governors.
Since then the Department of Education has recognised its legal duty and agreed more than 25 school development proposals, DPs, providing in excess of 1,500 additional places in integrated schools in recent years.
This growth has been further enhanced by the Stormont House Agreement and Fresh Start agreement capital commitment of £300 million to 23 existing integrated schools, of which three capital projects have been completed and one is under way, with the rest due to be completed by 2025.
In terms of community and parental empowerment, no integrated school has ever been planned by the Government, yet despite this there are now more than 24,000 pupils attending 65 integrated schools, and demand for integrated school places continues to grow. The funding crisis in the overall education system means that the focus for growing the number of integrated schools and school places is on supporting existing schools in transforming from non-integrated to integrated status rather than on building more new schools.
To support and fulfil the wishes of parents for integrated education, the IEF has raised money from a range of funders, including individual donors and trusts, to help empower parents seeking to transform their children's schools. This parental engagement campaign was launched in 2017. The IEF and NICIE acknowledge and thank the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for its support for this initiative and its ongoing commitment over the past 15 years to NICIE and the IEF in supporting integrated education through its reconciliation fund.
The parental engagement campaign uses a range of tools, including a dedicated website - www.integratemyschool.com - to encourage parents to register their support for their school to transform to integrated status. This bottom-up approach is also supported through outreach and direct engagement with parents, communities and schools. The success of this campaign is highlighted in a survey by the polling company LucidTalk, which shows that awareness of the process of transformation rose from 8% in 2012 to over 40% in 2018.
NICIE continues to provide practical support to encourage schools to take this step and then works with them through the process, which can take up to two or three years. In the past 40 years, we have had 20 schools transform. Since the launch of the parental engagement campaign in 2017, we have had six more schools taking the first steps on the journey towards integrated status by holding successful parental ballots on transformation.