Debate contribution: Integrated Education Provision: South Belfast

Debate contribution by Mr Matthew O'Toole on 14 January 2025.

MLA

Mr Matthew O'Toole

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

14 January 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Adjournment

Heading

Integrated Education Provision: South Belfast

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4736889

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I am pleased that Paula Bradshaw secured the Adjournment debate and hope that we hear from the Minister about what he is doing to support integrated education in South Belfast. Like Paula, I am not going to use the debate as an opportunity to relitigate some of what we robustly debated yesterday and in the days before that. I am sure that we will have the opportunity to do so again in the days and weeks ahead. I declare an interest as a parent of a child who attends an integrated primary school in South Belfast. Indeed, it is one of the primary schools that a Member mentioned in an earlier contribution: Forge Integrated Primary School. There is a specific issue at that school, to which I hope that the Minister will be able to speak. Unfortunately, I may not be able to be present for the Minister's remarks, because I have a pressing engagement elsewhere that involves said pupil of that primary school. The school had been expecting funding under the Fresh Start Agreement. Again, I will not relitigate this — it is an Adjournment debate, and things are a little less heated at this time of day — but, for one reason or another, it no longer has that Fresh Start funding. We have discussed the matter in the Chamber before. The school has been placed on the list of schools to receive future capital funding, but it has no certainty over when the money to build a new school will be received. It was expecting new money. Indeed, it has been told for a decade to expect it. As Paula Bradshaw said, the school also faces an outstanding challenge to secure a site. It has an agreement to move to the old Knockbreda High School site on the A55 dual carriageway, but there are outstanding issues with traffic management and, frankly, with DFI getting on with doing what it needs to do. There is an obvious solution, which should happen sooner rather than later, because that school community has been waiting for nearly a decade for the matter to be progressed. That is one issue.

More generally, integrated education provision is a hopeful and positive story in South Belfast. I am in a relatively unique position in this place: I was away for 20 years from this island and the North before coming back. While I was away, I was one of those people who bloviated and had lots of opinions about Northern Ireland and what was wrong with it. One of the things that people often talk about is our education system and the fact that kids are educated separately. There is context for that, and there are reasons and complications. However, as I said when we passed what became the Integrated Education Act, it is not normal that our education system is segregated as it is. It just is not normal. I will never be coaxed into saying that it is normal for our kids to be educated separately, as they are. Deirdre Hargey is right: there is a huge challenge around social class that I will go on to talk about. Those things intersect, which is really critical. However, we cannot kid ourselves about the role that a fundamentally segregated education system has in reinforcing the sense of abnormality between broad communal identities in Northern Ireland. It just does.

I am really glad that I gave way, because the Member is right. These debates get into the mud so quickly, and we end up looking as though we are virtue-signalling, or we offend people, or we talk around the issues. Holy Rosary Primary School is an amazing maintained primary school near me with lots of kids on free school meals and lots of kids from ethnic minority backgrounds for whom English is not their first language. It would be ridiculous if I were to say that that Catholic maintained primary somehow needs to feel guilty about the fact that it is not formally integrated. Rosetta Primary School is an amazing controlled primary that has a huge number of kids on free school meals. Talking about the aspiration to have a less divided education system should in no way be read as criticism of those schools, and, frankly, things become a bit sterile when we get into that territory. However, I think that you can acknowledge that brilliant Catholic maintained, controlled, integrated and Irish-medium schools exist while also saying, "It's not a good thing that so many of our kids are educated separately and come to think of one another as different". I am afraid that that is a reality. It is a reality that crystallises when you leave this place and you realise how, bluntly, abnormal it is. That is just a simple truth. South Belfast has amazing schools in all sectors, but there is huge demand and growing support for integrated education. Cairnshill Primary School began the transformation process last year. Harding Memorial Integrated Primary School also underwent that transformation process. Those are all good things. There is a particular pressure when it comes to post-primary schools. As has been said, Lagan College is an amazing school; it is the exemplar in many ways, because it was set up 40-odd years ago. I think that our former colleague Clare Bailey attended Lagan in the first intake. However, Lagan is oversubscribed; there are just not enough post-primary places. There are, of course, other amazing schools in other sectors in that part of the city, but many parents want to choose an integrated option at post-primary. At the minute, Lagan is the only option in the south-east of the city. Malone Integrated College is a great school in the south-west of the city. A significant amount of its intake will be from west Belfast. Those are two great schools at either end of the constituency, but, as was said by Paula Bradshaw, in the Carryduff/Castlereagh area, there is definitely capacity for an additional school. Hopefully, mid Down integrated college will relieve some of that pressure, but we need clarity about when that school will be built and completed. There is a huge positive level of support for integrated education in South Belfast. We are proud in South Belfast of our diversity in terms of the traditional identities in the North but also of newcomer communities, whom we welcome, celebrate and integrate. Deirdre Hargey was right to say that we sometimes slightly miss a trick when we talk about how our education system is divided along two fundamental axes. One is along traditional communal identities, which is in no way to diminish or criticise the amazing schools that we have in the controlled and maintained sectors. However, the system is too divided: too many kids are educated separately in that context. It is also too divided by class. We fail working-class kids at a heroic level in this society. Every serious educationalist who has looked at it has recognised that the kind of selection that we do at 11 simply fails working-class kids. I slightly got dragged off into that debate, but it is a critical one. There has been huge progress on integrated education in South Belfast. We would like to see more, so it would be helpful to hear more from the Minister about what is happening at Forge — I have declared my interest — and at mid Down, which will be critical to taking some of the post-primary pressure off Lagan.

1,249 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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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.

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