If integrated education must change, what about the rest of the system?

Jack Russell’s recent article argues that integrated education must abandon the 40/40/20 aspiration and its “essentially Christian” character if it is to survive. His evidence on how young people and parents now identify is compelling, and I agree with much of his diagnosis. Extending that diagnosis beyond the integrated sector raises a wider question about where reform is needed, and I reach somewhat different conclusions on two points. Russell’s proposals concern a sector that educates 8.5% of pupils. The controlled sector is Northern Ireland’s largest sector by management type and has an increasingly diverse intake. The response to the Supreme Court’s judgment in JR87 has left its governance structure unexamined. Both problems arise from the statutory framework, and the Assembly should address them together.

What the courts decided

On 9 June 2026, the Court of Appeal, in In re JR335 and JR336 [2026] NICA 29, dismissed the appeal brought on behalf of pupils at Rathmore Primary School and Bangor Academy. Colton LJ, giving the judgment, identified a tension between two provisions of the 1989 Order. Article 64(1) requires the Department to encourage, facilitate and support integrated education. Article 92(6) requires it to refuse a transformation proposal unless the school is likely to include reasonable numbers of Protestant and Catholic pupils. The court held that where the Minister is not so satisfied, Article 92(6) leaves him no choice but to refuse. It also observed that the Integrated Education Act 2022 amended both provisions, and the Assembly chose not to dilute the second.

One part of the judgment assists Russell’s case. The court accepted that a parental majority for transformation counts as evidence of unmet demand, including where those parents belong to the area’s majority community or identify with neither. That evidence, however, cannot satisfy the separate reasonable numbers test. The court added that any more generous approach is a matter for the Assembly, or for departmental policy within the existing law.

The Minister has since used his position paper of 1 September 2026 to ask the Assembly: if integrated education is not defined by reasonable numbers of Protestant and Catholic children, what does define it? Four further refusals followed, for Ballyhenry, Downshire and Killowen primary schools, and Larne and Inver Primary School.

This bears on the sequence of Russell’s proposals. He suggests the first steps are within NICIE’s gift. The Minister’s September 2025 position paper cites NICIE’s 40/40/20 aspiration as one basis for his interpretation, alongside the intention behind the 1989 Order and contact theory. If NICIE dropped the aspiration, the statutory phrase would remain, and so would the Minister’s discretion to interpret it. Revising the Statement of Principles is worthwhile on its own terms. It cannot, by itself, make the transformation route more permissive, which would require either an amendment of the statutory definition by the Assembly or a different departmental policy within the existing law. Russell recognises this himself when he says the law will need to change. NICIE can revise its principles independently, but the full reform he proposes ultimately requires changes to the statutory framework.

The risk of a third sector

Russell’s own survey evidence shows that demand for integrated education is strongest among parents who identify with neither community, and among non-religious households. A secular integrated sector without admissions balancing might therefore recruit disproportionately from that group. Northern Ireland could then move towards a three-sector pattern: Catholic maintained schools, controlled schools retaining a Protestant character, and integrated schools increasingly serving those who are neither. The first two could become more homogeneous as “neither” families left them. Russell’s preference data cannot tell us whether that would happen, but they do not rule it out. His own view may be that the binary no longer describes the population and that reconciliation now means something broader. He may be right, although the Good Friday Agreement and the 2022 Act still frame integrated education as bringing the two communities together. Setting out that case explicitly would strengthen his proposal, since survey evidence on parental preference cannot settle it on its own.

The controlled sector

The controlled sector had 135,743 pupils in 2025/26, and Protestant pupils made up 52.2% of enrolment in controlled primary schools. In JR87, decided on 19 November 2025, the Supreme Court held that RE under the Core Syllabus, without sufficient objective, critical and pluralistic supplementary material, may breach the right to education in conformity with parents’ convictions read with freedom of religion. It also held that the right of withdrawal does not cure the breach.

Since the judgment, the response has focused on the syllabus and withdrawal, and has not addressed governance. On the standard nine-member board of a controlled primary school, Schedule 4 to the 1986 Order gives transferor nominees four seats, the largest single voting bloc. As the Supreme Court noted, statute gives these boards no express control over RE. The Education Authority’s Scheme of Management nonetheless requires the board itself to determine curriculum policy and does not allow it to delegate that function. The judgment also records that departmental inspection of RE under Article 102(7) can proceed only with the board’s consent. The body responsible for overseeing curriculum policy is therefore one on which church nominees form the largest group, while the existing governance architecture contains no independent function specifically charged with assuring Convention-compliant delivery. This governance gap is set out in more detail in a recent article in Human Rights Education Review.

The Education Inspections Bill would repeal Article 102(7), and that would help. The revised Core Syllabus, published for consultation on 1 July, changes who writes the curriculum but leaves the same boards to oversee its delivery.

The Minister’s own statement of 1 September 2026 identifies governance arrangements and collective worship as the main practical differences between integrated schools and others. The governance difference lies in board composition: on an ordinary controlled integrated board, transferors and Catholic trustees each nominate one-seventh of the members, so no church grouping forms a bloc, and the board has express statutory control over RE. Controlled grammar schools have no transferor seats at all. The law therefore already accepts publicly managed schools with a Christian character and no transferor plurality. Russell asks for church seats to be removed from integrated boards, and he notes the church influence that persists in the controlled sector. The institutional issue is more pronounced on ordinary controlled boards, where church nominees form the largest single group.

What the Assembly should consider

The first reform is a revised statutory definition of integrated education, replacing the reasonable numbers test with a requirement measured against local demography and recognising families who identify with neither community. The second is a statutory duty on controlled schools to secure RE that meets the Convention requirement of objective, critical and pluralistic provision, backed by independent oversight of RE and collective worship. The second reform should be accompanied by reconsideration of the transferor plurality in Schedule 4. The Minister has announced his intention to legislate for a new body to support controlled schools, and that legislation provides a vehicle for the second reform.

Reforming the integrated sector alone would give some families a more secular option but would leave the governance arrangements affecting the much larger controlled sector substantially unchanged. Russell has convincingly shown that the population has changed. The legislation governing both sectors needs to reflect that change.