Much of discord in Northern Ireland rooted in failure to integrate schools

A century ago, the 7th Marquess of Londonderry, Charles SH Vane-Tempest-Stewart, cut quite a dash in the infant state of Northern Ireland as the new minister for education. As noted by the historian Donald Akenson, Lady Lilian Spender, wife of Sir Wilfrid Spender, who was secretary to the Northern Irish cabinet, recorded an amusing diary entry about Londonderry. He seemed to belong to a different age, wearing “a high black stock over his collar and a very tightly fitting frock coat and doesn’t look as if he belongs to this century at all”. But Londonderry was also, it seemed, a liberal moderniser, declaring of his plans for schools: “Religious instruction in a denominational sense there will not be.”

That was a bold assertion to make in a new Northern Ireland riddled with sectarian divisions. Londonderry wanted a system of state-funded elementary schools where children of different faiths could be educated together, with religious instruction catered for outside school hours. The intention was that only non-denominational schools that provided religious instruction outside the hours of compulsory attendance would be entitled to full state grants; those that opted instead for control over religious education would receive much less.

There was little prospect, however, of seeing that vision of integrated education implemented. Both Catholic and Protestant church leaders voiced their trenchant opposition to any such sharing and mobilised opposition under slogans that made clear educational trenches needed to be reinforced to guard the right of the churches to denominational control.

It was just one element of the Northern Irish divisions but a pivotal one given that it ensured most children would grow up without encountering children of other denominations

In 1936, historian Nicholas Mansergh suggested Londonderry’s 1923 Education Act was “perhaps the most significant legislative achievement of the Northern parliament”. But it was continually amended over the next decade to subvert its original intention. The thunderous protests ensured that a 1930 education act changed the procedures for appointing teachers: Protestant interests could now ensure only Protestant teachers were appointed to fully state-funded schools; the same schools were also permitted to introduce study of the Bible during school hours. Concessions were also made to Catholic voluntary schools, restoring much of the grant entitlements lost because of the 1923 Act. What emerged was thus a dual system of denominational education: Protestant state schools and Catholic voluntary schools.

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It was just one element of the Northern Irish divisions but a pivotal one given that it ensured most children would grow up without encountering children of other denominations. After the signing of the Belfast Agreement in 1998, a member of the management board of a girl’s primary school in Belfast wrote to taoiseach Bertie Ahern: “we have beautiful children who need to look beyond themselves.” Those children are now in their 30s. Surely their children and grandchildren need to be educated together if there is to be any chance of a united Northern Ireland, never mind a united Ireland?

[ North vs South: How the island’s two education systems compare ]

The Republic’s primary and secondary schools are also largely structured around religious denomination. Talk of Irish unity seems strikingly premature when this vital policy area of education is considered; the authors of a recent report by the ESRI comparing the education systems North and South note: “Remarkably, it is the first study to systematically compare the systems.” The report highlights some cross-Border co-operation, but also that “many stakeholders pointed to a low level of cross-jurisdiction policy awareness”.

The current political stand-off in the North is a reminder of the limitations of the Belfast Agreement and power-sharing rules that institutionalise the divide between unionists and nationalists

The late community activist and Labour Peer May Blood, whose funeral took place this week, was one of the founders of the Northern Ireland Woman’s Coalition in 1996 and was campaign chairwoman of the Integrated Education Fund (IEF) which supports the establishment of new integrated schools. Since its establishment in 1992, the IEF has raised and invested over €26m to increase integrated school places in Northern Ireland, from 3,408 in 1992 to 25,000 in 2022, and integrated schools from 16 in 1992 to 70 in 2022. But that still amounts to only 7 per cent of the North’s pupils.

‘Fear factor’

Blood was vocal to the end about the need for the churches to follow the lead of “courageous parents” in relation to integrated education. She became passionate about this for a simple, compelling reason: “If you get kids mixing from an early age, they learn about one another’s culture, it doesn’t become a big fear factor that then people can use to drive people apart.”

The current political stand-off in the North is a reminder of the limitations of the Belfast Agreement and power-sharing rules that institutionalise the divide between unionists and nationalists. As the 25th anniversary of the agreement approaches, there will be calls for the power-sharing arrangements to be adapted. But there also needs to be a lot more focus on giving meaning to an assertion in the agreement that Blood and her colleagues were instrumental in getting included: “An essential aspect of the reconciliation process is the promotion of a culture of tolerance at every level of society, including initiatives to facilitate and encourage integrated education.”