In most other parts of Europe, and further afield, a shared public education system is the norm; however, in Northern Ireland, for various historical reasons, the primary and secondary education system has become organised and publicly funded on what is in effect a religiously segregated basis.

The current integrated education movement has been existent since the late 1970s. Since the opening of the first integrated school, Lagan College in 1981, the popularity and demand for integrated schools has grown enormously.

Northern Ireland Life and Times Surveys have consistently demonstrated that there is support from significantly over 60% of the population for the existence and choice of mixed schools. In some polls support approaches 80%. Similarly, polls demonstrate a popular understanding that integrated education can improve understanding and good relations. Support comes from an overwhelming majority of both Protestants and Catholics for this choice.

Today, there are 39 integrated primary, and 19 integrated secondary schools.

On a regular basis, the existing integrated schools are over-subscribed, leading to many parents and children being disappointed that they are denied access to this mode of education. In 2005, around 500 potential pupils had to be turned away.

Since 1989, the Department of Education has had a legal obligation to encourage and facilitate the development of integrated education, yet in 2006 barely over 5% of Northern Ireland's schoolchildren, approaching 20,000 pupils, are educated in integrated schools.

There are also some pupils, who attend controlled, voluntary or Catholicmaintained schools, who are from a different background to the dominant ethos in the school. Whilst this is significant in itself, the numbers remain relatively small. Only around 5% of students in state schools are from a Catholic background, while the figure is much less with respect to Protestant children in Catholic schools. Overall, only around 30 of the c.1250 schools in Northern Ireland have more than 10% of their students from the respective 'minority' tradition.

In a deeply divided society, integrated education exposes children from different political/religious/cultural backgrounds to each other at an early age.

While it is important not to overstate the contribution that integrated education can make to the creation of a stable and peaceful society in Northern Ireland, it does play an important role in breaking down barriers between children or even avoiding these barriers being erected in the first place. Integrated education can foster trust across the traditional divisions and build respect for diverse cultures. There is a critical mass of academic research building up which indicates that integrated education has had a positive effect on the attitudes and relationships built by young people who attended integrated schools.

The education system in Northern Ireland is experiencing huge financial pressures at present, as well as going through a process of significant change.

There is a very slow awakening to the problems of the over provision of facilities and how changing demographics and falling schools rolls are creating a substantial surplus of school places. There are approximately 50,000 spare places in existing schools, constituting well over 10% of capacity.

There are gradual pressures towards mergers/closures of schools within existing sectors, but these are likely to be fought on the ground, and whilst the Alliance Party welcomes the recent review of education provision, announced by the Secretary of State, as an opportunity for the Government to take a strategic overview of all sectors, without an active commitment to integration as part of this process, the path of least resistance could lead to realignment within sectors, entrenching segregation further.

Northern Ireland has the highest level of spending on education per capita in the UK, but less is actually delivered in direct investments in each pupil than anywhere else.

Clearly, far too much money is being eaten up through over-administration, and the over provision of partially empty buildings. Budgets are becoming skewed and, with too much money locked up in capital, the pressure for cuts falls on teachers, pupils, transport, teacher and pupil support and special needs.

Many of these problems can be traced to the duplication of goods, facilities and services as part of an overall segregated school system. A major solution to this problem would lie in the rapid expansion of integrated education.

In the March 2005, Shared Future Framework Document, the Government finally recognised the futility of trying to manage a permanently divided society, and agreed that the only viable way forward for Northern Ireland was through the creation of a shared and integrated society; however, there is very real danger that the Department of Education is working in an entirely different direction. The Department seems to treat integrated education as part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

Integrated education is treated as just another brand of education, alongside controlled, Catholic maintained, and Irish-medium education.

In most of the rest of the world, an integrated public school system is regarded as the norm, and the other variations in education provision as deviations from this. By contrast, it is much more encouraged and even celebrated at the nursery, and higher and further education levels.

Feeling the pressure to draw in the wagons to protect schools with falling enrolments, the introduction of integrated schools is viewed by some as a further threat or, at best, a distraction.

In effect, the Department has taken a value judgement to protect what are, in effect, segregated schools rather than to work to both the spirit and the letter of a Shared Future.

It is inconceivable that the Government would force Catholics to attend statecontrolled schools or Protestants to attend Catholic-maintained schools if these were the only local options available; however, recent announcements by the Minister indicated that surplus places in other sectors was viewed as a valid reason to refuse children the right to be educated within an integrated ethos, highlighting the fact that their preference is not afforded the same respect as those who choose a segregated option.

Currently, there is no real mechanism for the strategic development of integrated education - neither the Department of Education nor Education and Library Boards seem to do it. Both transformation and new build schools depend upon parental/local initiative.

This means that the development of integrated education tends to be both piecemeal and ad hoc. Arguably, there could be major gaps in provision that go unaddressed for some time.

The provision of integrated education should be linked to efforts to develop and maintain shared space. The building of new integrated schools to service new housing developments can help to anchor a mixed local population. To date, education issues have been pretty marginal within the Government's Shared Future policy at present.

In the March 2005, Shared Future Framework Document, there are little specific policy proposals on education as a whole, and nothing on integrated education other than a restatement of current policy.

While there is a positive acknowledgement of the costs of maintaining a divided education system in the Shared Future Framework Document, it is unclear if there is any meaningful strategy to follow-up upon its implications.

'The exercise of potential choice is central and both integrated and denominational schools have important roles to play in preparing children for their role as adults in a shared society.
'There is a balance to be struck…between the exercise of this choice and the significant additional costs and potential diseconomies that this diversity of provision generates, particularly in a period of demographic downturn and the falling rolls…
'It is recognised that major investment is required across much of the school stock and in rural areas, especially where pupil numbers are falling. In this regard, the work ongoing to review educational estate delivery mechanisms which it is proposed should be across all sectors is extremely important.
'Greater sharing in education means exploring new and innovative ways of sharing these scarce resources responsibly into the future.

Alliance believes that there are a number of steps that can be taken by Government to further develop integrated education in Northern Ireland.

Ten-Point Plan

Alliance recommends the adoption of the following ten-point plan to expand the provision of integrated education in Northern Ireland, in line with demand:

1. Government should set a minimum target of 10% of children being educated in integrated schools by 2010.

   It is important that the duty to encourage and facilitate the development of integrated education is turned into practical targets. This target would involve adding another 1% per annum to the levels of children in integrated schools. This 10% target should be subsequently revised upwards.

2. The duty on the Department of Education to encourage, not merely to facilitate, the development of integrated education should be extended to Education and Library Boards, and the new single Education Authority established under the Review of Public Administration.

   At present, Education and Library Boards and their mooted successor body have no responsibilities to develop integrated education. To date, ELBs have been purely reactive with respect to the development of integrated education.

3. Both the Department and other Education authorities should have a duty to strategically plan for the future provision of integrated education, including identifying where additional provision needs to be situated.

   Currently, the development of integrated education is ad hoc. It is in the hands of parents to create new schools, or for individual existing schools to hold ballots on transformation. The development of integrated education is not managed. Consequently, there may be a serious under-provision of the choice of integrated schools in some areas, and potentially an over-provision in others. NICIE could play a central role in strategically planning the expansion of integrated education. Responsible bodies should conduct 'community audits' to assess where there are gaps in provision.

4. Where new schools are being built in Northern Ireland, for example to service new housing developments, there should be a presumption that they shall be integrated.

   There is an urgent need to provide more mixed housing in Northern Ireland, in both the public and private sectors. New build housing should be created and maintained as integrated. The schools that service these new housing developments should reflect this basis. Furthermore, given the current financial pressures experienced from running a segregated school system, there are powerful fiscal arguments for creating new schools on an integrated or otherwise shared basis.

5. Government should encourage the transformation of existing schools to integrated status and review the current procedures to make this easier.

   It is unrealistic to expect the necessary growth in the provision of integrated education to come entirely from new build schools. The development of integrated education must take into the account the existing schools estate. However, there are also dangers through the transformed route. To date, only controlled schools have transformed; no Catholic schools have gone down this route. As the viability criteria for transformed schools are more relaxed, with the requirement to show the ability to achieve 10% from the minority tradition in the first year intake and 30% overall inside 10 years, there is a prospect that proportionately more Protestants could end up in integrated schools.

6. Government should reform and relax the criteria for the creation and maintenance of integrated schools, giving recognition to those children of mixed, other or no religious background.

   In one sense, it may be sufficient to argue that all children should have access to education with an integrated ethos. However, the current approach to integrated schools needs viability criteria in order to ensure that schools are sufficiently representative of the community, and that children benefit from being exposed to those from different backgrounds.

   At present, both new build and transformed integrated schools have to meet viability criteria first to receive and then to maintain government funding. In essence, this means that the numbers of pupils who are categorised as either 'Protestant' or 'Catholic' cannot fall below a certain level lest the school becomes 'unviable'. Those pupils who are categorised as 'other' or come from ethnic backgrounds do not really count in this approach. This system creates a pressure for pupils to be categorised according to the minority religious/communal designation in order to help make the school viable. In essence, the growing proportion of people who may be perceived to be making a positive choice to move away from traditional (divisive) labels are constrained from doing so. This creates a particular problem for those pupils coming from mixed marriages or mixed relationships. The system is contrary to the broader ethos of A Shared Future.

   The current approach to viability criteria is becoming particularly antiquated given the large numbers of new immigrants coming to Northern Ireland. Their children do not fit into the traditional labels, and where there are particular concentrations of such children, the current viability criteria can become particularly absurd.

   One immediate solution, rather than trying to prevent the smaller communal/religious background falling below a certain level, would be to impose a percentage threshold over which those from the larger communal/religious background could not pass. This would give space to people to define themselves as they wish without jeopardising the viability of the school.

7. Government should give formal recognition to the contribution being made to the process of reconciliation by 'mixed' schools, those with a mixed enrolment but no formal integrated status.

   There are a number of voluntary grammar, state-controlled, and Catholic maintained schools that do have to varying degrees mixed enrolments, and significant numbers of children from different backgrounds to the traditional ethos of the school. While these schools maintain particular ethos and are not formally integrated, they are playing an important role in breaking down barriers and exposing children from different backgrounds to others.

8. Government should encourage existing schools to share facilities and ultimately campuses.

   There is much that can be done to encourage sharing in education, short of the creation of formal integrated schools. Integrated and single-identity schools should not be regarded as separate poles, but rather places on a continuum with a range of other policy options in-between. In some circumstances, there may be powerful financial and economic reasons for existing schools in pooling their physical and other resources, including shared campuses and comanagement. In doing so, maximum opportunities should be provided for children to mix and interact with one another, in particular within extracurricular activities.

9. Government should oppose any creation of any perceived 'right' to a guarantee of public funding for segregated schools, as this could forever entrench segregated schools and frustrate the process of integration.

   It should be up to the democratically-elected legislators to determine the nature of the education system in any society. The current system in Northern Ireland has developed due to a number of historical factors; however, this is hard and fast rule that dictates that a divided society needs to have separate schools for different sections of the community. European and international human rights norms with respect to divided societies and rights of minorities, only imposes duties upon states to reflect diversity within the education system. This can be delivered either through providing for religious education, teaching diversity through a single school system or the provision of separate schools. The longterm future of Northern Ireland's education system should be placed in the hands of the Assembly. It would be wrong to constrain this choice through protecting the current system within a Northern Ireland Bill of Rights, as has already been suggested by some, far beyond what is required under current human rights norms.

10. Government should advocate the de-segregation of teacher training courses and facilities, and the familiarisation of integrated education policies and practices in such institutions.

    Education is the only field in Northern Ireland where professionals are trained separately from one another. Even where teachers work in a segregated school system, there is no underlying rationale as to why they should be trained separately.