Integrated Education will be the norm in Northern Ireland as families demand freedom of choice: Sean Pettis
The new boss of Northern Ireland’s Integrated Education says he has no doubt the shared schooling will inevitably be the norm in Northern Ireland.
Sean Pettis says colleges such as Belfast’s hugely successful Belfast Met, plus the determination of supporters behind Scoil na Seolta in East Belfast act as a powerful driving force.
And two months into the role as CEO, he says he is quietly confident in integrated education’s ability to grow and thrive to meet the expectations of parents and pupils.
He told Belfast Live: “It is simply the way forward. I feel it is inevitable. and there will come a time when people look back on education here and wonder why children were not always educated together.
“We only have to look at colleges across the country, colleges such as Belfast Met, to see how well young people mix when they are educated together.
“Integrated education offers choice, vital choice where once there was none. Parents and children have the ability to choose now and we have a growing list of schools waiting to transform to the integrated education model.
“So there is a lot of good news around the subject and of course there are a lot of challenges too, not least financial.”
Mr Pettis says funding to NI Council for Integrated Education (NICIE) from the Department of Education has effectively decreased by 50% in the last 10 years given increasing costs and inflation rates.
He explained: “Our budget in 2013/14 was £683,000 in the budget from the Department. In 2024 that figure dropped to £630,000. And 10 new-build integrated school projects were put on hold in February with £150 million previously available from the Fresh Start Programme for new build shared education campuses and integrated schools, withdrawn.
“But we won’t be deterred. We have 73 integrated schools in Northern Ireland looking after about 30,000 of our young people and the desire from other schools to transform and for new schools to be created is vast.”
Yet the shared education offered by integrated education is still a step too far for man.
Most recently, a row erupted over plans for a new integrated Irish medium school to be established in East Belfast.
Under the guidance of language rights activist Linda Irvine, Naíscoil na Seolta opened as a pre-school in 2021, and as Scoil na Seolta, it is now planning to admit its first P1 pupils.
Linda, an Ulster Irish speaker and supporter of the Gaelic revival, is the project leader of the Turas Irish language project which aims to connect people from Protestant communities to their own history with the Irish language.
And according to the school’s board, it has had expressions of interest from over 100 families to send their children to the school planned for the old Orangefield site off Castlereagh Rd in East Belfast.
Plans for the Irish medium school were “causing polarity and volatility in the community,” according to Loyalist Communities Council’s David Campbell.
The chair of the LCC told the Education Minister Paul Givan, that there was a lack of support for an Irish medium school in east Belfast which was ‘causing polarity and volatility in the community’.
However the school has reported interest from 100 local families and has identified a proposed temporary site on Montgomery Road in the Castlereagh area of Belfast.
Dad Sean Pettis said the row is based on myth.
He explained: “Children are the most important people in the world, they hold the promise of the future and there is nothing polarising or threatening about children playing or being educated together.
“It is not about making everyone the same, it is about recognising that each of us is an individual and that we have been brought up in different places, in different traditions and that only adds to life and experience, it does nothing to take away from it.
“The situation over Scoil na Seolta is an example of how people want choice and they are asking for choice, supporting the idea of choice. It’s all about choice, freedom to choose, the ability to choose what’s right for you.
“As time goes on, as generations make their own decisions, the choice will widen and integrated education will become the norm as it should be. Children should not be divided, they should be helped to learn from each other, learn about differences, learn about unique aspects of communities and faiths and histories. Denying them this chance and this choice is just wrong.
“So we have a lot of work today, we have money to raise and schools to create and we will continue as we started in 1972 ahead of the opening of Lagan College in 1981. we know what success feels like, we have 73 very successful, happy schools and we pls to continue to build on those numbers."
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