Integrated Education Bill plan saw Fermanagh South Tyrone MLAs divided

Introduced on June 1 last, the Bill makes provision about the promotion and provision of integrated education.

Voting yesterday saw MLAs approve the bill, voting 49 in favour and 38 against.

Now that it has been approved, the Bill will also provide for reform and the expansion of integrated education in Northern Ireland (see panel, inset, for the nine policy objectives of the Bill).

The Bill will need Royal Assent before it can become an Act of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Jemma Dolan, MLA.

Speaking to The Impartial Reporter ahead of the Bill’s approval, Fermanagh and South Tyrone Sinn Féin MLA Jemma Dolan confirmed that her party was supporting it.

She said: “Sinn Féin representatives have worked constructively with the Bill sponsor to bring it to this point,” said Miss Dolan, commenting that the The Good Friday Agreement placed a duty on the Department of Education to encourage and facilitate integrated education.

‘Currently a demand’

“We want to build on this and see more progress made. There is currently a demand for integrated education that isn’t being met.

“It is a priority for Sinn Féin to make sure that demand is met, going forward,” she said, adding that the Bill will “help to ensure” that families who wish to send their children to integrated schools will have that choice met, and that integrated education will have the support that it needs from the Department.

“Sinn Féin will continue to give leadership and play our part in breaking down barriers across society and building a shared future for all,” she told this newspaper.

Deborah Erskine, MLA.

However, also speaking ahead of the Bill’s subsequent approval, Fermanagh and South Tyrone DUP MLA Deborah Erskine spoke of her fears for local Maintained, Controlled and Voluntary Grammar schools, and their students, being discriminated against.

She said: “Most people in Northern Ireland want to see our children growing up together, playing together and being educated together.

“I know many of our local schools bring children together far beyond our traditional narrow religious divide. Just because a school does not have an ‘integrated’ moniker, it does not prevent or preclude a positive, multicultural experience through education.”

Mrs. Erskine continued: “The Integrated Education Bill does nothing to further greater integration or better education. It is a rushed piece of legislation which is aimed at boosting one sector of our education system while disadvantaging 93 per cent of students.

‘Prospect’

“We should not have to consider the prospect of our excellent local Controlled and Maintained schools in Fermanagh and South Tyrone being deprived of a new build in future, simply because they are not part of the Integrated sector.”

She claimed that a number of parents, teachers and the wider public were “increasingly voicing their opposition” to the Bill, adding: “The Bill’s proposer admits the Bill has no recent consultation process to support its objectives, nor the new duties it mandates upon the Department [of Education].

“Such a fundamental change to how our entire education system operates should not be rushed through in a Private Members Bill without appropriate consultation and scrutiny. The proper vehicle for this is the Independent Review of Education.

“The DUP is the only Executive party to have consistently opposed the progress of this Bill, and defended those 93 per cent of children impacted by this bad legislation,” Mrs. Erskine told The Impartial Reporter.

The Integrated Education Bill has nine policy objectives, as follows:

• To place a duty on the Department of Education and other education bodies to promote, not merely encourage and facilitate, the development of integrated education. This will require the Department to ensure that resources are dedicated to the sector for this purpose.

• To require that the Department ensures proper auditing of demand on a biennial basis for integrated education in Northern Ireland by area.

• To require the Education Authority to report and publish on the auditing of demand to the Department and take account of it in budget and planning decisions.

• To establish a presumption to overarch area-based planning that all new schools should be either integrated or otherwise non single-identity schools.

• To require the development of an Integrated Education Strategy to be published six months after commencement of the Act, to report on the implementation of the Act, along with regular biennial reporting on the implementation of the provisions of the Act – a post-legislative scrutiny clause.

• To require funding to be dedicated by the Department of Education according to the remit of the strategy, to be available for the facilitation of integrated education and resourcing within the Department itself of a dedicated team for this purpose.

• To require a standardised and accredited diversity and all-inclusive module on how to teach in a truly inclusive and integrated classroom for primary and secondary schools and Postgraduate Certificate in Education for schools – in initial teacher training provided by the teacher training education providers.

• To require the Department to ensure that there is a dedicated departmental resource to help schools strengthen their ethos and to make sure all integrated schools are putting the integrated ethos at the heart of everything they do now and in the future.

• To require integrated schools to be inspected by the Education and Training Inspectorate team as part of their usual programme of inspections to ensure they are upholding their integrated ethos.