Debate contribution: Integrated Education Provision: South Belfast

Debate contribution by Mr Paul Givan on 14 January 2025.

MLA

Mr Paul Givan

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

14 January 2025

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Adjournment

Heading

Integrated Education Provision: South Belfast

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4736944

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. I thank the Member for South Belfast Paula Bradshaw for securing the Adjournment debate and for setting its tone. It was refreshing to have the conversations that we have engaged in outside the heat of yesterday around specific decisions. Mr O'Toole has left the Chamber, but I was reminded of Paul and the conversion on the road to Damascus — it was remarkable after yesterday's commentary — because I agree with him. There are amazing Catholic maintained schools. There are amazing controlled schools. I only wish that some Members had said that yesterday in articulating their point about integrated schools. The debate today has been much more nuanced. I want to address the issues in South Belfast, and, if time permits, I will pick up the wider issues that some colleagues have touched on of integration and how my Department is developing that. Let me turn to South Belfast. As colleagues have mentioned, there are six integrated schools in South Belfast: Cranmore Integrated Primary and Nursery School, Forge Integrated Primary School, Harding Memorial Integrated Primary School, Lough View Integrated Primary and Nursery School and, most recently, Cairnshill Primary School, as well as Malone Integrated College. At the outset, I ask Members to join me, as they have done, in paying tribute to each of those schools and to integrated schools across Northern Ireland for their work in educating children and young people from different backgrounds together. In June 2024, I was delighted to approve the transformation of Cairnshill Primary School, creating over 500 new integrated places and increasing the number of integrated primary-school places in South Belfast by no less than 47%. No one mentioned it yesterday — that is the nature of the to and fro of politics — but I approved that at Cairnshill. I went to the school and met the principal. It is the only school that was found to have reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC), and it has had to go through the pretty traumatic experience of dealing with that. In that meeting, I was able to give the board of governors and the principal the news that I had approved the transformation of the school to integrated status. Demand for integrated education is a complex issue, and we see that in South Belfast. For September 2024, there were 180 applications for 165 places in the four existing integrated primary schools, but only one school, Lough View Integrated Primary School, was oversubscribed. The transformation of Cairnshill Primary School will create another 83 integrated primary-school places annually to help meet the unmet need. However, Lough View Integrated Primary School may, of course, remain oversubscribed. At post-primary level, there are places available at Malone College, where, I note, there were 129 first-preference applications for 130 places this year, indicating that demand is in line with supply. There are also integrated schools outside South Belfast that enrolled significant numbers of pupils from that constituency. Notably, Lagan College, which the Chair of the Education Committee has claimed authority on, sits in the Strangford constituency but has a large catchment area, including South Belfast, and it is regularly oversubscribed. The approval of the new mid Down integrated post-primary school aims to address that unmet demand for integrated education. We all know that parents make school choices for a range of issues. It is not simply about a choice of sector — popular high-performing schools with strong reputations in all sectors are frequently oversubscribed. Demand for a particular school does not necessarily equate to demand for a particular school management type. My Department is, therefore, committed to gathering more comprehensive evidence that will inform a detailed report on the demand for integrated education, which will provide the foundation for informed decision-making. Before I turn to the wider issue of developing integrated education, I will mention some of the accommodation issues for integrated schools in the South Belfast constituency. In recent months, as I touched on earlier, we have addressed the issue of RAAC at Cairnshill Primary School. I am delighted that all the required works have been completed. Other integrated schools in the constituency have also been prioritised for investment. Following the removal of Fresh Start funding by the UK Government, I demonstrated my commitment to Forge Integrated Primary School. Mr O'Toole is not here. He remarked yesterday that I had taken money away, characterising unfairly the outworkings of the UK Government's decisions on Fresh Start. I demonstrated my commitment to Forge Integrated Primary School and other integrated schools by moving them into my Department's major capital works programme. The project for Forge Integrated Primary School aims to provide a new-build school at the former Knockbreda High School site in Belfast. The design of the new building is progressing, and discussions are ongoing with Belfast City Council as part of the pre-application process for submission of a planning application. Last year, I was pleased to lift the pause on planning for seven of the highest-priority new-build projects announced in 2022, including the project for Malone Integrated College. The appointment of a design team for that project is now almost complete. The integrated estate has benefited from and will continue to receive significant levels of capital investment. I know that Members are particularly concerned about the development of the mid Down integrated post-primary school. My officials are taking a proactive approach to that school since approval of the development proposal late last year, and have been liaising with NICIE and the mid Down steering group. A site search has been completed by LPS, and two potential sites, including one in the Carryduff area, have been identified. A project brief is being prepared for the appointment of an integrated consultancy team to complete feasibility studies on the suitability of those two sites. My Department has never before led the capital development of a newly established integrated school, as schools previously had to demonstrate capital viability before receiving investment. Members have raised other issues specifically about those schools, and I will come back to Members on those in more detail. I turn to the wider approach to developing integrated education. Over the past 10 months, I have been out visiting schools of all types and from all sectors, in South Belfast and across Northern Ireland, and witnessed the excellent work that they are doing. In recent months, I visited Methodist College in South Belfast. Whilst it is not designated as an integrated school, it educates a diverse range of children from a wide range of community and ethnic backgrounds. Such visits have cemented my view that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to delivering a high-quality education. Education in Northern Ireland is based on the guiding principle, set out in law, that children are educated, as far as possible, in accordance with the wishes of their parents. Diversity and choice are a strength of our education system, not a weakness. Every child, every school and every sector are important and valued in our education system. They all have key roles in building a reconciled and shared society, which is a key priority for me and our Government.

Integrated education is designed to provide opportunities for children and young people from different community backgrounds to learn together, and it has an important role to play in that process. The number of pupils accessing integrated education continues to grow. Over 27,000 pupils are now enrolled in 73 integrated schools. That represents over 6,000 additional places in the past 10 years. I assure Members that I take my Department's statutory duty to "encourage, facilitate and support" integrated education extremely seriously. My officials are developing an updated integrated education strategy and action plan in collaboration with key stakeholders. A consultation on the updated strategy and action plan will be launched in the coming weeks. The updated strategy and action plan will set out a clear vision to create a vibrant and supported network of sustainable integrated schools, providing high-quality integrated education to children and young people. The vision is underpinned by five strategic aims, which are, in turn, supported by clear targets and actions. However, there is also an important question to ask about the nature and direction of integrated education and its USP in the changing world of the 21st century. The current legislation is clear: integrated education includes "the education together" of "reasonable numbers" of Catholics and Protestants. That has been a defining legal and, indeed, core principle and feature of the integrated movement since its inception. The aspiration for the main communities to each comprise 40% of an integrated school's enrolment is enshrined in the NICIE statement of principles. Those numerical targets are not arbitrary; they are rooted in a commitment to equality of status between communities within the integrated school. In keeping with the equality criterion and contact theory, that helps to create the conditions for positive interaction and an improvement in intergroup relationships. I am conscious of the time. Ten minutes is the limit.

OK. There are some other points that I was going to make but, for the purposes of —.

I appreciate that. Thank you. Hopefully that will enable me to conclude my remarks. Integrated education has achieved a balance of religious backgrounds at system level and continues to do so, yet increasingly there are new questions to be answered. If a school has overwhelmingly drawn pupils from one community, what should be the considerations for its transformation to an integrated school? If integration is now to be primarily about ethos and not about bringing two communities together, what does that mean in the current law? In turn, what does that mean for an integrated school that has children who are largely from one community background? Those are important questions for us to consider. That is why the Department is committed to conducting a wider review of the operation of the transformation process to ensure that it is working effectively. I thank Members for allowing us to talk about these issues outside of yesterday's debate. I am sure that we will also do that in other forums. That is important because, on these things, although we may not entirely find a consensus, there will not be a lot that we differ on in terms of the inclusive schooling environment that we want, which is open to all, irrespective of the official sector that it comes from. Sharing and inclusivity is something that I think that we all subscribe to. Certainly, I do, as a Minister, and I am happy to continue that conversation with colleagues in due course.

1,760 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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