Twenty-five Years On, Northern Ireland Kids Still Learn Apart

Belfast, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 31st Mar, 2023 ) :"There's a place for everyone to learn together and have fun," sing the pre-school kids in one of only two kindergartens that bridge Northern Ireland's Catholic-Protestant divide.

Twenty-five years ago, the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement ended three decades of armed sectarian conflict.

It urged a "culture of tolerance at every level of society", stressing the importance of mixed education and housing.

But today, Northern Ireland's two largest communities still largely lead separate lives.

Some 90 percent of children are taught in segregated schools. Only 70 schools out of a total of just over 1,100 are officially integrated.

Bangor Integrated Nursery School, on the UK-ruled territory's eastern tip, is one of the two outliers at kindergarten age, for children aged three and four.

"We talk about diversity and equality and respect and inclusion," school principal Pamela Algie told AFP, as the children went noisily about their play-based lessons.

"And we also don't shy away from difficult issues, like talking about race, talking about religion, talking about our cultures," she said.

The school was mainly Protestant and is marking its first academic year with full integration, following approval by the education authorities, after 97 percent of parents voted in 2019 to make the change.

Integrated schools are eligible for extra funding provided by the UK government in London, although education policy is generally set by the devolved administration in Northern Ireland.

To earn integrated status, schools must have 40 percent children of Catholic origin, 40 percent Protestant, and 20 percent from other backgrounds.

Trina Zellie, 39, who works in banking IT, enrolled her two small daughters at Bangor Integrated.

"We want them to have the chance to not just develop their English and literature skills, and their mathematical skills, but to develop their own interpersonal skills," she explained.

It was only in 1981, during the worst of "The Troubles", that Northern Ireland acquired its first integrated secondary school for pupils aged 11-18.

And only last year did the devolved parliament at Stormont pass a law to actively encourage more schools to make the shift.

The legislation was supported by pro-Irish and centre-ground parties, but opposed by pro-UK unionists, who argued it was a distraction promoted only by middle-class and secular parents.

The main unionist party has been boycotting the Stormont assembly for more than a year over a separate dispute, concerning post-Brexit trade.

History teacher Lorraine Clayton worked for years in segregated schools before joining Priory Integrated College, a secondary school in Holywood on the northeast edge of Belfast.

"It's all about your academics, getting your grades," she said of the segregated system.

"But there is nothing about preparing the students for the outside world, nothing about teaching them the history of Northern Ireland." Clayton's students are testament to the integration ethos.

"If we don't start moving on and be more progressive, we're just going to be stuck in a cycle of religion, religion, religion," said Anna McKittrick, 18 and a Protestant.

McKittrick's Catholic classmate Charlie Durham-Crummey, also 18, said: "I hope our generation can do something in politics, take the lessons." Short of full integrated status, schools in Northern Ireland are also encouraged to pursue "shared education".

If a segregated school lacks teachers for a particular language or sport, it can partner with one from the other side of the religious divide in the same area.

In 2019, according to pre-pandemic figures compiled by the Stormont government, more than 87,000 out of Northern Ireland's 350,000 schoolchildren were enrolled in "shared education" programmes.

The Stormont government wants to raise that to 80 percent of the total in the coming years.

That may be more achievable than full integration across the school system. Why has progress been so slow in the years since the Good Friday Agreement was signed on April 10, 1998? "Probably because you've got your hardcore, your two separate, segregated communities," explained Emma Hassard, spokeswoman for the Integrated Education Fund.

"Money is another factor," she said, noting that the Stormont government is legally mandated to provide more than other UK administrations, across the religious divide, integrated schools and special education.

"That is a huge financial burden."