Integrated education should not be perceived as a threat to anyone’s sense of identity, but the sector needs to consider how it promotes itself across all of the community, says Roisin Marshall, chief executive of the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education (NICIE). She was talking in the latest Forward Together podcast from the Holywell Trust.
“Integration isn’t about dumbing down anyone’s identity,” she says. “It’s about enabling people to have conversations which are sometimes about not agreeing with each other, but actually learning to live with one another and learning to live with the differences that we hold as part of our core being.”
Roisin suggests that parents and their children should not feel that support for their Catholic or Protestant – or other – religious identity is compromised by enrolling with an integrated school. In fact, Roisin adds, “those are the types of people that we need and want in integrated education… if we create schools that are all about creating people who are not wanting to identify as one or t’other, well, then we’re ignoring a really important, probably the majority, if you’re really honest about it, of people who are very, very comfortable and confident in their own identity. And that’s really important.”
She adds: “We have a very specific mission: we are trying to create spaces where we are comfortable with our own identity, whatever that may be. But we’re also willing to not just respect, but also engage with, the cultural identities of others. And that goes right across all differences that there are in our society: different family blends, different needs that people have, different family make-ups.”
Roisin admits that there is probably a lack of understanding by parents whose children do not attend integrated schools about how they are managed and their objectives. And they may feel that supporting an integrated school is preventing children attending schools that they are more familiar with and which are also good.
“But, fundamentally, we are about educating children from Protestant, Catholic and other beliefs all together in one school. So we’re trying to say that educating children together is a good thing. We have to accept other people may say that isn’t a good thing, but I’ve very rarely met people who didn’t think that educating children together was a good thing.
“All schools are diverse. There’s diversity in every school, whether it’s a Catholic maintained school, or a controlled school, or a grammar school, or an integrated school, or a special school, no matter what type of school. I suppose it’s about maybe how we reach out, how we reframe what it is that we’re talking about. Most people don’t really understand the different [types of] management of schools, but they know good schools. They know there are Protestant and Catholic, grammar special. And they also know there are integrated schools.”
But if the integrated schools sector is to continue to grow it perhaps needs to associate itself more clearly with a desire to change Northern Irish society. “How do you make any changes?,” asks Roisin. “You want people to realize that they need to make that change. You want people to understand that there is a call to action. They have to do something. And the people in their own daily lives can make little changes. And we used to have that one small step campaign, which I thought was very clever. But, you know, it’s about making changes in your own life. But then on a macro level, you want government to support changes.
“So I’m a top down and bottom up, simultaneously, type person. Integrated education is certainly a bottom up movement. That’s why I think it’s so successful and sustainable because people have wanted to make changes and have owned the changes that they’ve been making.”
Roisin continues: “Our next challenge is, rather than just say we’re open and welcome, we would invite people to come to our school. Do we need to do something more proactive? Do we need to reach out in other ways?” Parents need to be persuaded to consider options beyond the ones that are obvious for them, the schools that are well known and with a specific reputation.
“You’re constantly trying to work on being a shared space. And it isn’t an easy option. It’s much, much more difficult to actually try and be genuinely inclusive of people who have very different viewpoints on how they want to live their life. But if we are truly to give our children the best educational experience, then it is about saying, well, how do I hold this position very, very dear to me and how do I hold it? But at the same time, understand that someone else may have a very different perspective on the world. And how do I live with that?
“And if we’re not teaching our children from a young age how to do that, well, then it’s not beyond the realm of possibility to say that as adults they are going to struggle with that in later life.”
This latest podcast in the second Forward Together series is available here on the website of peace and reconciliation charity Holywell Trust. It is funded by the Community Relations Council’s Media Grant Scheme.
Disclaimer: This project has received support from the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council which aims to promote a pluralist society characterised by equity, respect for diversity, and recognition of interdependence. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Community Relations Council.
Paul Gosling is editor of ‘Lessons from the Troubles and an Unsettled Peace’, author of ‘A New Ireland’ and ‘The Fall of the Ethical Bank’ and co-author of ‘Abuse of Trust’, the story of a child abuse scandal in Leicestershire. He is engaged by the Holywell Trust charity on peace and reconciliation projects.
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