Debate contribution: Integrated Education Provision: South Belfast

Debate contribution by Mr Nick Mathison on 14 January 2025.

MLA

Mr Nick Mathison

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

14 January 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Adjournment

Heading

Integrated Education Provision: South Belfast

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4736924

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate, and I thank my party colleague for securing an Adjournment debate on the topic. My colleagues and others have spoken in detail about the South Belfast-specific issues. I do not pretend that I will be able to add much to that. However, at the outset, I want to put on record my support for growing integrated education in South Belfast. I hope that we will get a positive update from the Minister in that regard. As it turns out, a few issues in the debate have crossed over into my constituency. I am very pleased about that. Yes, we house Lagan College in Strangford. Maybe not everyone is aware of that, so I will get that on to the record. There has also been progress on mid Down integrated college. I am very hopeful of hearing a positive update on that from the Minister. We know that two sites have been identified. Wherever the college ends up, I know that it will certainly serve many of my constituents as well. I want to put on record my appreciation for the unbelievable levels of work, vision and ambition of those parents to get that school established. That is no small feat. They deserve immense credit. I look forward to that developing. Recently, I visited Blackwater Integrated College on a couple of occasions. That school is bursting at the seams. It certainly cannot wait much longer for the school project to be developed. Much has been said about integrated education in the past week. I hope that the debate can be a positive reset and that we can get the discussion on to a more positive footing. It is really important that, whatever we think of the decisions that have been taken over the past week, in the context of the debate, we remind ourselves of the three really important duties that the Minister has in that space, which have been mentioned already. They are:

"to encourage, facilitate and support integrated education";

to

"take steps to ascertain the demand for integrated education",

and

"to aim to meet the demand".

There may well be differences of opinion about what an integrated school is, particularly about that notion of "reasonable numbers", but, this evening, we are talking about whether the provision that is available in South Belfast meets the demand. The Integrated Education Act is clear about that. I am looking forward to a response from the Minister that is mindful of the context of those duties. Hopefully, we can move away from some of the party political stuff and get on to the pragmatic discussion of how those legal and statutory duties can be met. I want to pick up on a couple of other issues that were mentioned in the debate. I will put it out there: I am looking forward to hearing what comes from the Minister on growing the provision in South Belfast. David Brooks asked what it is that makes a school integrated. People will have different views on that. The Integrated Education Act provides a clear definition of that. For me, the critical bit is the intentionality. Across my constituency, there are schools that are open, welcoming and diverse spaces. I am not here to criticise any sector in the education system. Every single principal whom I meet, every school that I visit and the teachers in them work at absolute capacity to deliver the very best education in the most nurturing environment that they can for the children in their care. We need to get behind the integrated sector and support its growth — not to the detriment of anybody else — because of that intentionality of ethos; the intentionality of bringing people together from different community backgrounds, different faith perspectives and different socio-economic backgrounds; and the intentional attempt to bring those children together in the classroom.

I agree, up to a point, that schools in many sectors provide great examples of a really diverse offering and a welcoming school community. I do not think that anybody is suggesting that any school is closing its doors to anybody. I am not suggesting that. However, the next level of integration is the explicit intentionality. For me, that is the key point. I will speak to some of the issues that Mr Buckley raised earlier about the diversity that exists in the school system. In many scenarios, there is still segregation in the majority of our schools. I am not saying that that is intentional. I am not suggesting that anybody is trying to segregate the system. I am saying that that is the reality. Some examples of real mixing that were highlighted in debates this week do not represent the norm. The academic research that Ulster University produced says that 93% of children still attend schools that are largely segregated along religious lines. That is a pretty big number. For 69% of our schools, the research uses the phrase "strongly segregated", and 47% are almost entirely segregated. That is not to suggest that anybody is trying to engineer a system that segregates children. It is a product of our history and of our conflict, but that does not mean that we should not set our ambitions higher to do more to address that segregation.

I appreciate that time could beat me here, but I understand the point. The key point that follows from it is that, when you make the decision to transform into an integrated school, you are making a decision to go on a journey to try to address that segregation. There is an intentional decision that recognises that and says, "We do not want to continue in that segregated context". We need to move beyond headcounts. It is not about counting numbers in different communities. It is about creating school environments that have intentionality when it comes to creating diverse and inclusive spaces. Again, I am not here to bash any sectors, but I believe that integrated education plays a critical role in that process. I wanted to speak on those points, and perhaps an Adjournment debate gives us an opportunity to have a debate in a different context, which takes some of the heat out of it, but that is not to take away from my colleague's debate. We are here to hear about what is going on in South Belfast, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about that.

1,082 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

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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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