Debate contribution: Education Inspections Bill: Second Stage

Debate contribution by Mr Paul Givan on 1 June 2026.

MLA

Mr Paul Givan

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

1 June 2026

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Education Inspections Bill: Second Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5582182

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Again, that is revealing of the mindset and attitude of Sinn Féin, as articulated by Mr Sheehan. It confirms what I said at the start of my speech: this is the new way in which Sinn Féin intends to operate the Executive. When Michelle O'Neill approves something being on the agenda and Sinn Féin Ministers approve its going through the Executive, that is not worth the paper that it is written on. That is what Sinn Féin has said today about this legislation and how it will now operate the Executive. The policy that has been outlined by Sinn Féin causes me huge concern for the effective administration of the Executive. I still have not got to the bottom of why it has carried out a U-turn. Is it because of Mr Carroll? It has been speculated that Sinn Féin is afraid of Mr Carroll. He is quite right to articulate the position that he holds, but is his policy dictating what Sinn Féin is now doing? Is that a concern for West Belfast? I do not know.

Let me just elaborate a little more, Mr Brooks, and then I will give way. Is it because Sinn Féin has not been able to withstand pressure from the leader of the Opposition? People have said that, in the past 48 hours, Mr Carroll came out against the Bill, the SDLP came out against it, and Sinn Féin was not able to resist the pressure. What is the reason for the change? Mr Brooks might be able to help me.

Sinn Féin is holding up the 16-to-18 legislation. That is the contradictory position that Mr Sheehan outlined. On the one hand, Sinn Féin says that legislation gets put through the Executive because it is for the Assembly to decide, but, on the other hand, it continues to block the 16-to-18 legislation drafted by the Office of the Legislative Counsel. That legislation has been sitting ready to be introduced in the Assembly for a long time. No Minister has objected to it. Sinn Féin says, on the one hand, that the inspection Bill got to the House because that is what you do — you just put it in to the Assembly — but, on the other hand, says, "Oh, no, no. You're not going to get your 16-to-18 legislation". There is a different approach. I still do not know why Sinn Féin has done this with inspection legislation. The process that I outlined commenced when I submitted a policy paper to the Executive in November 2024. People said, "It is not the right time. There is industrial action taking place". I worked to resolve that industrial action. We got pay for our teachers, which showed my support for them, and they now have pay parity with a lot of their counterparts across the water. I addressed that issue by showing my support — financial support — for our teachers, whom I deeply value. It was still not the right time to introduce the legislation, however. Sinn Féin wanted me to engage on it, and I did. Michelle O'Neill asked me to meet Caoimhe Archibald, the Minister for the Economy. I met the Minister and talked through the issues in the legislation. After that meeting, I continued to update the Executive. The First Minister asked me a series of questions to which I provided responses, and we then changed the legislation by removing the provisions to do with fines and potential court action. I had a protracted period of engagement directly with Sinn Féin, and, when the legislation was approved, there was not one word of opposition from any Sinn Féin Minister on the Executive: not one word. My party has approved legislation going through the Executive, and I and my colleagues on the Executive have said, "We're not blocking this. We are letting it go through but are indicating that we are opposed to it for the following reasons". I know that Mr Sheehan has never been on the Executive, but I have, and that is the normal way in which Ministers and parties articulate that they are opposed to legislation. If the Bill before us is so obnoxious and so intimidatory, as the Sinn Féin Members who spoke said that it is, towards the teaching profession, why was Sinn Féin silent at the Executive?

Why did it not continue to block the legislation, which it had blocked since November 2024? Sinn Féin says that it is such appalling legislation. I would never let appalling legislation out of the Executive. If I felt that legislation was that bad, I would not let it out of the Executive. I would exercise our veto. Sinn Féin has a veto, but it did not exercise it for this Bill; in fact, it engaged with me to get to the Bill that is before us today. Why the U-turn? I give way to Mr Buckley.

That is of concern. Is it because of Mr Carroll? Is it because of Mr O'Toole? Is it because of the by-election results in Dublin Central and Galway West? Is it because of Mr Sheehan personally? I do not know. He got up in the Chamber today and said, "I speak for Sinn Féin". That is duly noted. On education, he speaks for Sinn Féin. I know that he has not been on the Executive. Is that a problem for him? I do not know. Maybe the Sinn Féin ministerial team has lost the confidence of its Assembly group. If, as a Minister from the DUP, I had taken legislation to the Executive that my ministerial colleagues had approved but DUP Members behind me then dictated that I do —

— a U-turn, that would say to me that I had lost the confidence of those Members. It appears to me that the Sinn Féin leadership team has lost the confidence of rank-and-file Sinn Féin MLAs. I will give way to Mr Baker.

The arrogance — the absolute arrogance. I have not lost anything today. Do you want to know who will lose if we do not get the Bill passed? Children. Children will lose. Maybe it is of no concern to Mr Baker that we do not have an effective inspection regime to identify child safeguarding issues. He uses it as a political game. I think that the public will see that for what it is: a frenzy that that party has whipped up, claiming to speak on behalf of teachers. Trust me: Sinn Féin does not speak on behalf of teachers. The party is using that. Other Members have raised what I regard as legitimate issues, which, I trust, we will be able to address. I will seek to do that. However, there has not been one change to the Bill that Sinn Féin approved. No amount of spin and distraction, which is what it is, will change that. When you approve a Bill and engage in the Executive, the draft legislation is produced and brought forward and, for whatever reason, you are then against it, you have to create the drama. You have to throw up the smokescreen. I have been in politics long enough to know how the game works. That is what has gone on with Sinn Féin in the past 48 hours. Pat has pulled rank. He has given the order, and now we have the smokescreen that has been created by Sinn Féin. That is distraction politics. That is what you do. Maybe the real reason will come out in due course. I have not lost anything today. I fear that it is the children to whom we ought to be giving protection who could lose as a result of that. Since the Bill was approved by the Executive and introduced to the Assembly, not one iota of it has changed — not one clause, principle or word of substance. The only thing that has changed is the position of Sinn Féin. There has been much talk of workload, which I am addressing in a meaningful way. I would go further and faster if more resources were provided by the Department of Finance. Some of the 27 recommendations that were identified by the independent panel on teacher workload require resources. Do you know the pressure that I am under from the Sinn Féin Finance Minister to make cuts? "Find £600 million and cut it in your Education Department". That is Sinn Féin. We can all talk in the Chamber about workload and supporting our teachers. However, when it comes to actually implementing a process that will address workload, I am having to do that in an environment where the Sinn Féin Finance Minister is not giving me the resources that I need. The schools that I visit that want budget increases are not blaming me. They expect me to stand up and fight for them in the Executive, which I am doing. There cannot, however, be a trade-off between workload and children's safety. While I absolutely understand and agree with all the frustrations that many Members have articulated on teachers' behalf about the stressful environment that they are in and the workload pressures that they are under — that is why we are taking forward the reform of our education system, and that will take time — let us never get to a place where we trade off the frustrations about workload and pressures in our school environment with children's safety. We would not do it for our elderly people in nursing homes, the young children who are involved with social services or those who are in the early years settings that are regulated by the Department of Health and the RQIA. It would not matter how much pressure those public-sector workers were under in the health service or social services. I do not believe that a single Member would stand up and say, "No inspections are allowed in our nursing homes". They would not do it — quite rightly. You should not call for that. It would be wrong. Why is it different when it comes to education? Why is it different to trade off workload pressures with an appropriate inspection regime that helps school improvement and can help to ensure that appropriate child safeguarding measures are in place?

You do it in the face of information. You do it in the face of clear evidence that real issues have been identified.

I will ask this simple question: why should the protection of a prisoner — Sinn Féin Members are good at standing up for the rights of prisoners; some of them were in prison —.

I quoted one earlier. I hoped that I could find, somewhere in the deep recesses of Mr Sheehan's heart, his conscience, so I invoked Mr Mandela. Mr Sheehan will not listen to me, so I thought that he might listen to his good friend Madiba, but not even that will stir him up. Why should the protection of a prisoner be regarded more highly than that of a child in school? Maintaining an undisrupted programme of school inspection is key to delivering an education that meets the needs of all children. A number of Members have spoken about the importance of trusting the teaching profession and of ensuring that nothing in the Bill undermines teachers' dedication, professionalism and integrity. Let me address that point very directly. The Bill is not an attack on teachers; far from it. I should have said this at the start, but forgive me: my sister is a schoolteacher. I declare the interest in the appropriate places. I have other family members who are teachers. I benefited — as you all did — from teachers. The idea that I would somehow want to undermine and attack our teaching profession is utter nonsense, and it would only be done for the reason that Mr Buckley referred to: distraction. The Bill does not undermine teachers; it is a recognition of the critical importance of teaching as a profession and of the standards that rightly accompany that status. At its core, cooperation with inspection is a fundamental element of professional practice. Inspection is not about catching schools out; it is about helping them to improve. We talk about improvement as if it just happens on its own, but it does not. Improvement happens when we are challenged. It happens when we are seen clearly. Most importantly, it happens when we are willing to confront the truth. That is why inspection matters. It is the moment when we stop and ask ourselves this: are we truly giving every child the education that they deserve? Every child only gets one chance: one chance at a lesson; one chance at a year; once chance at their future. Without inspection — without that external lens — it is all too easy to believe that we are doing enough, when we could be doing so much more. Inspection shines a light. Inspection shows our strengths and where we must do better. It challenges complacency. It can raise expectation. It demands that we do not settle. Inspection ensures that we do not stand still. It ensures that no child is overlooked. It ensures that excellence is not an aspiration but an expectation. Put simply, what we inspect, we improve, and what we improve challenges lives. That is why I was delighted when, as soon as the action short of strike ended, principals proactively reached out and said, "Please inspect my school". They wanted to know whether they were doing the right thing; whether they could do it better; whether it could be improved. They did not fear inspection; they welcomed it. Here is the problem with the trade union approach. The trade unions and ETI engaged directly with the Department of Education and the inspectorate and redesigned the inspection process — they changed it. No more is there a publication that says, "Your school is outstanding", "very good", "below average" or "unsatisfactory". That is gone. There is no public, outward-facing criticism of any school. The inspection process was redesigned with the unions. The unions endorsed that inspection system. They welcomed it. Overwhelmingly, those who have gone through the new inspection process have said that it was a positive experience for them. My problem with the trade unions, though, is that they continue to refuse inspection during industrial action, despite the reformation of inspection and despite the fact that, as every Member in the Chamber has said, inspection is good for education and we all support it. Only last year, when industrial action was re-engaged for a brief period, what was deployed? Refusal to allow inspection.

That cannot be right. We cannot trade off inspection against frustration. Some things ought to be beyond the reach of industrial action. I contend that inspection is one of those things, because of the critical importance that it plays in school improvement and in identifying child safeguarding issues. Surely that should put it beyond the reach of industrial action. The only way to do that is to have some form of deterrent. Otherwise, it is meaningless. We are seeking to prevent the use of inspections in the way England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland have prevented it. Not once has there been a financial penalty or a prosecution in the courts, because obstruction of inspection has been taken out of the options for industrial action leverage. They do not use it. In fact, trade unions are shocked that their counterparts in Northern Ireland can deploy it. It has never happened. I do not want any teacher to ever be referred for professional misconduct. It happens, just as it does in any profession. A ruling professional body will look into the conduct of its members. We all accept that as normal and acceptable, but I do not want any teacher to go through that. I do not want them ever to be referred for non-cooperation with inspection. I never want that to happen. However, the only way that we can ensure that it does not happen is to remove inspection as part of the toolkit of deployment.

2,691 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:47 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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