Debate contribution: Integrated Education Provision: South Belfast

Debate contribution by Miss Deirdre Hargey on 14 January 2025.

MLA

Miss Deirdre Hargey

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

14 January 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Adjournment

Heading

Integrated Education Provision: South Belfast

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4736885

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I thank Paula for securing this important debate and for discussing the issue in South Belfast. It is clear that forward planning to meet school pressures, especially for nursery and primary places, is essential. We recognise that challenge in an area such as South Belfast. Our schools do an excellent job despite the pressures and challenges that they face. We know that all schools should be open, inclusive and safe environments in which all our children can learn, develop and enhance their outcomes, no matter their religion, social class, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation. Sinn Féin worked with other parties in the Assembly on, and supported the introduction of, the Integrated Education Act in the previous mandate. The Good Friday Agreement places a duty on the Department of Education to "encourage and facilitate" integrated education, That has been enhanced to include a duty to:

"support the development of integrated education".

Sinn Féin is a champion of integrated education, but, when we look at the issue, we often find that the main focus here is on religion and religious integration, be that through the media, debates, campaigns or, indeed, endorsements. I understand the need to look at integration in the context of the history and legacy of the conflict and to look at the divisions that resulted from it. Those divisions had an impact on our communities and our people, resulting in children being taught in different schools on the basis of their religion. If we are looking to have true integration and better outcomes for our children and young people, which is what we really want, we need to acknowledge that it is on the basis of social class that people are consistently failed and segregated. Indeed, all the education outcomes show that those who come from a certain social class are impacted on more than those from other social classes. That is demonstrated in an area such as South Belfast, which is stratified on the basis of social class. Integrated education has to be a key component of the types of schools, the type of society and the types of outcomes that we want for all our children: all of them, not just some. That has been reflected in wider debates in the Chamber that have looked at division resulting from conflict. It is easy to look at issues where there are hardened interfaces, but it is often about invisible barriers related to social class, which depend on where a person lives. We hear about those barriers when pressures are debated in the Chamber, whether they are pressures in our justice system, our healthcare system or our education system. Segregation by social class is factored into all those areas of work and impacts on citizens from lower social classes or working-class backgrounds. If we are serious about integrated education providing better outcomes, we need to look at that. There is no doubt that the biggest division in our education system and in outcomes from it is along the lines of social class. I want to work with other parties to advance integrated education, as we did in the previous mandate. I want to see more support for it. We have excellent integrated schools in South Belfast. When one meets their boards of governors and their young people, as many of us South Belfast MLAs did last year when we got together in some of the primary-school settings, one sees the drive of teachers, boards of governors, parents and, importantly, children. We want to enhance integrated education, but, in doing so, we need to make sure that it is integration in its truest form, which should include children from working-class backgrounds. I am happy that the topic has been brought to the House for debate, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister says. His contribution will hopefully expand on the subject of integration to look at social class, at working-class communities and at children. I hope that we can continue to work together to deliver better education outcomes for all our children and young people.

677 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:50 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

Disagree with this assessment?

Classifications can be challenged. A person reads every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.

Challenge this classification