The latest report into education in Northern Ireland presents a damning indictment of our educational system. The report commissioned by the Equality Commission and carried out by QUB tells us nothing new. It describes the inequalities that continue to mar our system and which condemn a significant number of young people to an underachievement which prevents them from fulfilling their potential, and impacts on their capacity to contribute to a prosperous and inclusive society.
It is a report that highlights racist and homophobic bullying. It exposes, without making explicit, the cost of segregation, both social and religious. It focuses on the continued under-performance of Protestant boys in particular and can identify such comparative failure easily because we educate our children and young people separately in segregated schools and in secondary schools perceived as second class. No one suggests there is an innate reason for this comparative underachievement; however, segregation encourages a damaging stereotyping which can only add to the alienation that contributes to educational underachievement.
The report in its depiction of racist bullying and in its description of young people’s fear of institutions they perceive to be the ‘other’ further emphasises the faults of a divisive system.
This is only the latest of such reports. We know the problems, we must find solutions which will ensure a quality education for all. We need to create in our post primary sectors the ethos which is to be found in the best of our primary schools: a balanced all ability intake representative of all social classes, a coeducational environment where boys and girls learn together, an integrated inclusive environment welcoming to both of our major traditions and to those of different faiths, of no faith and of different ethnicities. Such schools do exist, and model the type of society to which we aspire and for which we voted when we said yes to the Good Friday Agreement. There are sixty four integrated schools which are explicitly committed to this ethos of educational excellence for each child in an integrated, fully inclusive environment.
It will take good will and a willingness to prioritise the future over the vested interests of the past to make this happen. Unfortunately, education has become politicised. Party politics trump the needs of young people and the needs of future society.
It is time for an independent commission to be established which will remove the debate on education away from the political battleground and back into the classroom. The aim of such a commission would be simple: to identify the quality educational system which will liberate the talents and creativity of all of our children and which will support the building of the inclusive, prosperous and cohesive society we all deserve.
