Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement díospóireacht -
Thursday, 27 Jan 2022

Engagement with Integrated Education Fund

Chairman

Our engagement today is with representatives of the Integrated Education Fund. I welcome Ms Tina Merron, chief executive, Mr. Peter Osborne, director and Mr. Paul Collins, head of public affairs and advocacy, of the Integrated Education Fund.

I must read this note on privilege to all witnesses who come before us. The evidence of witnesses physically present or who give evidence from within the parliamentary precincts is protected pursuant to both the Constitution and statute by absolute privilege. However, witnesses and participants who are to give evidence from a location outside the parliamentary precincts are asked to note they may not benefit from the same level of immunity from legal proceedings as a witness giving evidence from within the parliamentary precincts and may consider it appropriate to take legal advice on this matter. Witnesses are also asked to note that only evidence connected with the subject matter of the proceedings should be given. They should respect directions given by the Chairman and the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should not criticise or make charges against any person, persons or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to that person's or entity's good name. So that our witnesses will understand, we read that at every meeting and there is nothing unique about reading it today.

I invite Mr. Collins to make his opening statement.

Mr. Paul Collins

I thank the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement for inviting the Integrated Education Fund to present to it about the work of the fund and the current progress and challenges for the integrated education movement.

Before I begin our presentation, the Integrated Education Fund, IEF, would like to thank the political parties that supported the current Integrated Education Bill before the Northern Ireland Assembly. We would also like to thank the Department of Foreign Affairs for the financial support fro its reconciliation fund and encouragement over the past 20 years to help grow the integrated education movement in Northern Ireland.

As the Chairman said, Mr. Peter Osborne is a director of the Integrated Education Fund, Ms Tina Merron is chief executive of the Integrated Education Fund and I, Paul Collins, am head of public affairs and advocacy at the IEF.

We would like to begin with a quote from a young woman who was born at the time of the Good Friday Agreement and who has benefited from an integrated education at both primary and secondary level. The lady is Tara Curran. Ms Curran is a past pupil of New-Bridge Integrated College, Loughbrickland. This is what she says:

It's not just about bringing Catholics and Protestants together; Integrated Education is far more than that. It is the bringing together and the teaching of people from all abilities, all religions, all sexualities, all genders, all interests, and personalities. It prepares young people for their way forward no matter where they go in the world.

Ms Curran's words echo the views and experiences of many current and past pupils of integrated schools over the last 40 years since the first integrated school, Lagan College, opened in 1981.

It is 24 years since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement and yet, despite the best intentions of that agreement to promote integrated education, in Northern Ireland we live in a society that segregates the vast majority of our children at four years of age. We have a system that has created groups of young people who are divided into two tribes, who have no knowledge of the other. Many young people have no opportunity to make friends, learn and play together with those from other denominations or, indeed, those of no denomination.

At the time of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement there were 41 integrated schools in Northern Ireland. Today, 24 years later, there are 68 schools. There has been roughly one additional integrated school every year in that time. All integrated schools in Northern Ireland were set up by the actions of parents coming together and no integrated school was planned by a government. Twenty per cent of first-preference applications to integrated schools are unsuccessful due to the oversubscription for school places in integrated schools. Many more pupils are denied the opportunity of a place in an integrated school because there simply is not an integrated school in their area. If you do not have an integrated school in your area, you do not have a choice.

There is a statutory duty on the Department of Education under the Education Reform (Northern Ireland) Order 1989 to encourage and facilitate the development of integrated education. However, there is no government strategy for growing the number of integrated schools.

The Department of Education’s measurement of demand for new schools is based on the number of existing schools. This maintains the status quo and hence allows no opportunity to measure demand in areas where there are no integrated schools. In areas where there are too many unfilled school places in too many schools, the approach to area planning for schools considers either closing schools down and bussing pupils to the next nearest school of that sector or schools merging within their own sectors. The option of schools merging across sectors to create new integrated schools that could serve the whole community is not even considered. This poor approach to area planning can be illustrated in the Ulster University transforming education research, which was supported by the IEF. This showed that in 32 separate communities there are 64 primary schools, where there is only need for 32 schools. There is no meaningful cross-departmental working to address the need for a less segregated society involving the shared housing programme of the Department of Communities, the Department of Justice, the Department of Finance, Department of Health and Department of Education.

Thanks to the actions of parents across Northern Ireland, integrated schools are now providing places for 25,000 pupils. Over the past 30 years, the IEF, which is a charity, has invested £26 million in grants to try to meet parental demand for integrated education and support the development and growth of integrated schools. For a new-build school, this means the parents starting the schools and then the parents and the fledgling school, with the support of the IEF, having to provide evidence of future demand. There has been no new-build integrated school for the past 15 years. New integrated schools are created through the democratic actions of their parent communities voting to change their existing non-integrated school through the legal process of transformation, to integrated status. Four more schools transformed to become integrated in September 2021, with another set to join the family in September 2022. Other schools are also on this journey, with one awaiting government approval to become integrated. Two more have recently held parental ballots overwhelmingly in favour of transformation and 30 more schools have expressed their interest in becoming integrated.

The Northern Ireland attitudinal poll by LucidTalk in July 2021 showed 71% of Northern Ireland people questioned in this survey believed that integrated education should be the model of education throughout Northern Ireland. Some 73% said if their child’s local school proposed to become an integrated school, they would support this.

The Integrated Education Fund has been working since 1992 towards a Northern Ireland where children from different traditions learn and play together in the same classrooms, in the same schools, and where there is a respect and celebration of religious and cultural diversity. The IEF is an independent charity dedicated to the development and growth of integrated education in Northern Ireland. However, there are challenges. It is undoubtedly true that there are many good schools and many dedicated and professional teachers across Northern Ireland, as well as many other school staff and governors who work tirelessly to support schools. However, the education system within which those dedicated staff work is, through no fault of theirs, seriously flawed. The skills shortages and the failings of the current system are evidenced by the following Northern Ireland statistics. We have the lowest proportion of working adults with a degree and the lowest rate of adult literacy in the United Kingdom. In 2017, nearly 17% of 16- to 64-year-olds had no qualifications, compared with 8% of all UK residents. Alongside these figures, there is the deeply segregated education system with around 90% of pupils in Northern Ireland educated in schools that identify with a single tradition or denomination. Only 7% of Catholics attend controlled, that is, mainly Protestant schools and just over 1% of Protestants attend Catholic-maintained schools. Education has an important role to play in reconciliation and the way it is delivered should never get in the way of people from different backgrounds being educated together and getting to know and understand one another. There are close to 50,000 empty desks in schools across Northern Ireland and upwards of £95 million per annum is wasted on duplication. It is estimated that over £1 billion has been spent in the last decade on bringing young people together in various cross-community initiatives to correct the negative consequences and prejudices resulting from their experience of segregation at school.

However, against this background there is hope for the future as evidenced by the following. Attitudinal polls, micro polls at a local level and parental ballots all show that the vast majority support integrated education. There has been an increase in the number of integrated schools being pushed forward by schools, parents and the IEF, and the integrated education movement. The Integrated Education Bill, a Private Members' Bill introduced by Kellie Armstrong, MLA, has gained cross-party support and is now entering its final stages in the Northern Ireland Assembly. Chris Lyttle, MLA, has proposed a Private Members' Bill to remove the exemption of teachers from fair employment legislation. The setting up of the independent review of education under the “New Decade, New Approach” agreement may be able to address the need for systemic change in the education system. The IEF-supported Ulster University's Transforming Education papers, which gained significant media attention by putting a spotlight on key issues which impact on the delivery of education in Northern Ireland. The IEF and Ulster University developed the future schools project, which helps put communities and schools to the forefront of the area planning process, thereby enabling parental choice locally.

I thank the committee for providing us with the opportunity to present today and we would be happy to take any questions.

Chairman

I thank Mr. Collins for his very interesting and analytical presentation of the facts. The most important thing he identified is how the future can be influenced to the benefit of everybody.

The rotation of political parties is Fine Gael, Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil, SDLP, Alliance, Independents, Aontú, Sinn Féin, Labour and the Green Party, and they will have seven minutes. I would like each group to identify who will speak. We should try to keep it to questions. I will not interrupt anybody.

Senator Emer Currie

I cannot see anybody on the screen but I hope they are listening. I thank the witnesses for the presentation. I would like them to go through the funding. I get the sense that they feel that the funding model is inequitable in terms of integrated schools. I ask them to expand on that. They are saying that the parents are driving the development of the schools. What are the barriers, both from a parental and a political point of view, to achieving balance in the education system?

Ms Tina Merron

I will answer the question on the funding model. Getting the schools established in the first place is the issue. The Department of Education does not have a strategy to start up new integrated schools; it is left to parents. We provide support to parents if they wish to consider either their school transforming, which is one method, or establishing a new school on a greenfield site. A lack of strategy, which is left to the Integrated Education Fund and our sister organisation, the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education, NICIE, is the key missing element. Once a parent group establishes, they face various challenges. They need to get a certain number of pupils and a religious balance. All of this is supported by us and by NICIE.

There is little support from the Department of Education. When it has a development post that can go to the Department, the Department will often insist on proof of evidence. For example, the only way to prove there is demand for an extra P1 class in primary school is actually to establish it. That way nobody can argue that the demand exists because the pupils are in the seats. We would fund the additional P1 class, a teacher and other costs until that proof of demand is established. The funding gap and the lack of strategy from the Department of Education are key issues.

Mr. Peter Osborne

The Senator has asked a very apt question. Ms Merron has provided an answer based on the current models. We need to recognise the step before that. The model of funding for education in Northern Ireland in itself wastes a considerable amount of money.

The system of education needs to look at itself and at how it approaches the provision of education. Mr. Collins talked about how there are 50,000 to 60,000 empty desks. That leads to approximately £90 million worth of duplication. That money does not necessarily need to be spent. The really important thing to note is that we spend hundreds of millions of pounds a year to bring young people and children together to compensate for the fact that the education system keeps most of them separated. Only 7% attend integrated schools and most of the rest of the children are educated in almost completely single-identity schools.

With regard to the issue of the funding model, it is absolutely appropriate to look at where we are now and at how we can get a more level playing field to support integrated schools. The fundamental question is actually one of recognising that the current model wastes a huge amount of money and that not tackling the issue of segregation through schools, where five-year-olds are separated and live separate patterns of life, requires us to spend hundreds of millions of pounds trying to bring them back together to try to understand each other a little bit better. In many ways, that is a more fundamental question than that of correcting the current model, although that is also important.

Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill

Here as much as anywhere else, you cannot talk about integrated education without recognising Baroness May Blood. I have a question about the committee report on the Bill from the Northern Ireland Assembly from November 2021. I will refer to two things in particular. Note 18 states that officials from the Department talked about concerns that "the Bill may elevate the Integrated Education sector above others, limit parental preference". What are the witnesses' views of that as a response?

Later in the report, there is a note about diversity that already exists within the other schools sector, the controlled schools sector. I have spoken to teachers who acknowledge that there is diversity there. I would like to get the witnesses' perspective on that as well. I am not trying to advocate for any response the Department has presented but I am aware that there is some diversity. How much is there?

In its note, the Integrated Education Fund talked about the Private Members' Bill proposed by Chris Lyttle which aims to remove the exemption of teachers from the fair employment legislation. I do not understand the specific impact of that. Will the witnesses explain it to me?

Ms Tina Merron

Does Mr. Osborne want to come in on that or would he like me to?

Mr. Peter Osborne

I do not mind either way. Ms Merron can go ahead and Mr. Collins or I will come in afterwards.

Ms Tina Merron

The report talks about the Department of Education's concern that this puts integrated education on a higher level of preference. The bottom line is that there is an Education Authority and another statutory body for Catholic schools. Integrated education does not have a statutory planning body. There is no strategy for integrated education. As a result, we believe that this would just put integrated education on an equal footing with the other bodies. That would allow for a lot of lost time to be made up. It should also be remembered that one of the reasons we want this Bill to go through is to help meet parental demand. There is a lot of parental demand but children are not getting into integrated schools. If there is not an integrated school in your area, you do not have the choice.

Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill

Ms Merron does not need to convince me. I just wanted a response to the comments of the Department.

Mr. Peter Osborne

I know we have a brief amount of time but I will answer on the other part of the question. The official Department of Education figures show that, in the Catholic-maintained sector, 1% of pupils are from a Protestant background, while in the controlled sector, 7% of pupils are from a Catholic background. The education that goes on in all of those schools is largely superb. I am quite sure that most, if not all, of the teachers and everybody else involved are doing a fantastic amount of terrific work not just in the educational development of the young people under their care, but also in their spiritual development. We certainly are not criticising the quality of teaching or the commitment of teachers but, when there is 1% from a Protestant background in one sector and 7% from a Catholic background in the other, the fundamentals of supporting a reconciliation process and the systemic separation of children and young people from the age of five have not been addressed, despite the Good Friday Agreement having been agreed nearly a quarter of a century ago. Something can be done to bring them together outside of school hours and something can be done through initiatives like Shared Education but, in some ways, it is like throwing a bucket of water over a stone. It dries up and you would not know that some of that contact had happened. We want to see more systemic change and children and young people being educated together in the same classroom. That is not happening in other sectors in the way that we would want.

Chairman

I have been working it out and we can give speakers another couple of minutes if we wish because some people could not make it today. Approximately two minutes are gone already. I apologise for that. I will call on the Sinn Féin speakers, Deputies Conway-Walsh and Tully. We will give it eight minutes. I am trying to be fair and make sure that everybody gets in.

Deputy Rose Conway-Walsh

I find this very interesting. I welcome the opportunity to discuss this issue. I am my party's spokesperson on higher education so I have an interest in that area but, if we do not get things right at first and second level, we are failing. Some of these figures are quite astounding with regard to the lack of progress. Some progress has been made, however. Today is an opportunity to look at how to progress further and at how we, as a committee, can help in that. Nobody would argue that bringing children and young people from different backgrounds together through the education system represents a positive change for our society and that it helps to promote diversity and respect from a very young age. We all completely buy into that model and see its importance. It is also important to avoid the waste Mr. Osborne spoke about. He stated that £92 million is being wasted as a result of the existing funding model.

I am interested in teasing out the model. Has it been perfected? Have all integrated schools been successful? Will the representatives talk us through that? It was said that is all parent-led. How many children are needed in an area? What happens from there? Have there been any failures in areas where the model has been tried but not been successful or has it been successful across the board? Is there a geographical concentration of integrated schools or are they spread across the board? How is the balance achieved with regard to bringing communities together and ensuring parity of esteem and that everybody feels equally respected in terms of their identity, traditions and so on?

Deputy Pauline Tully

I welcome the witnesses. It has been a very interesting conversation. To get some perspective, it was said that there are 68 integrated schools. Are there both primary and post-primary or secondary schools included in this figure? How many schools are there in the North? Am I right to say that there are just fewer than 1,000? If that is the case, 68 integrated schools out of 1,000 is a very low proportion. That is a pity because it is a model we all welcome.

It was also said that a poll indicated that 71% of respondents favoured integrated education. What was the size of the sample? How reflective is that figure of the attitude within the communities? Under the New Decade, New Approach agreement, it was indicated that there should be an independent review of education. Is that going to happen? If it is, is there any indication of when?

Mr. Peter Osborne

I cannot see other people on my screen.

Chairman

We can see Mr. Osborne.

Mr. Peter Osborne

I will make a couple of comments in response. I am sure Ms Merron and Mr. Collins will have things to add. I welcome the questions and the fact that, over many years now, this joint committee has been looking at aspects of policy in these areas, including issues in respect of integrated education and education as a whole. These areas are covered by the Good Friday Agreement. It is really important that an eye is kept on the models and that advice is given to policymakers in the North as well as in the South as to how the Good Friday Agreement can continue to be advanced in these respects.

It probably has not advanced as much as it should have done. I will ask Mr. Collins and Ms Merron to talk about the integrated education model.

One thing the committee should look at in the context of the independent review of education, which has just started and will probably take a year or so before reporting, is how area planning works in Northern Ireland. Area planning is based largely on planning for the two different types of education system, and that is a real difficulty. If we had more time, we would go into research done by Ulster University on isolated pairs of schools. The authors of the research looked at villages throughout Northern Ireland where there was a controlled school and a maintained school within a mile of each other. They found 32 pairs, or 64 schools, in villages where the two different schools were within a mile of each other. Of those 32 pairs, in the case of 26 at least one if not both of the schools are below the threshold for sustainability in a rural area, which is 105 pupils. It is therefore very possible that in the next five or ten years one or both of those schools will close. The area planning model will not immediately recommend looking at planning for those schools in the village together. One might assume that they would look at amalgamating schools to ensure there is a school that survives in the village and ensures that the demographic mix in the village survives as well. The area planning model will look more to how, if one of the schools has to be closed, children from that school are bussed to the nearest school within that system, which may be five or ten miles away, in another village. Quite apart from the fact that this adds to the cost of bussing pupils to schools that are not the closest to them, which I think is about £81 million a year, involving about 130 million miles of extra bussing per year, which has an environmental impact, if one of the schools serving by and large one side of the community is closed and there is no integrated option in that village, eventually, over five, ten or 20 years, that village will be seen to edge slowly towards being a single-identity village from what might have been a 50:50 or 60:40 village. The parents of children from the background affected will increasingly look to move to another village where there is education provision for their children. I think that is one of the reasons we increasingly have single-identity villages and communities in large parts of Northern Ireland. That is one of the models that we think needs to be looked at through the review of education in Northern Ireland. It is one of the areas on which the joint committee could keep a watching brief to see if it wants to form a view about the area planning model in the education service in Northern Ireland.

I apologise - I have gone on for a long time. Does Mr. Collins or Ms Merron wish to add anything in response to the other questions?

Ms Tina Merron

If the committee so wished, I am sure the University of Ulster would be happy to update it on its future schools project and to present to it, but I will leave that up to the committee.

To respond to some of the other questions asked, there are 68 integrated schools, 20 post-primary and 48 primary, across Northern Ireland. There are two ways of creating an integrated school. One is to start a new school on a new greenfield site, which we talked about earlier. The second way is to get an existing school to undergo a process called transformation. Are all schools successful? The process of transformation takes time. It can take anything up to five to ten years to change the balance of the pupils and the teachers. It will automatically change the balance on the board of governors from the get-go. At that stage a transformation action plan is worked through. The schools have to plan everything they do with regard to the customs, traditions and everything else. They plan that through a five-year period. Some schools are a lot quicker on that journey; other schools take more time. Recently we have opened a fund to encourage schools that have transformed. It is mainly schools that have transformed that have applied to look at sports in their schools to see if they wish to offer different sports. Sports are normally offered for just one tradition or another. For example, there could be a formerly controlled school that has now become controlled integrated and wants to offer the GAA sports, hockey and so on. The school can apply to us for funding for the additional equipment it needs. This is done over a period of time. As I said, some schools are very quick at this process; others are quite slow. The Department of Education monitors religious balance and advises schools if they are not meeting the religious balance required. It is up to the school. A lot of it depends on the community and if the communities mix before the school goes down that road of transformation.

Mr. Paul Collins

I will come in on the issue of opinion polls. The specific opinion poll referred to was conducted by LucidTalk, which is an independent polling body. It did the opinion poll last weekend or the weekend before for the Belfast Telegraph. In that survey we have quoted from there were 2,000 responses. For such a poll to be statistically accurate, it needs 1,080 responses. There was a 2.3% margin of error. According to that poll, about 73% of people support their local schools becoming integrated. Digging into that, there are some interesting statistics in respect of political parties. Of DUP supporters, 58% support integrated schools; of Sinn Féin supporters, 74%; of SDLP supporters, 77%; of UUP supporters, 78%; and of Alliance supporters, 94%. There has been survey after survey all indicating that the vast majority of people want their schools to become integrated. Probably the most important statistic I can cite is that in all the polls that have taken place in all schools over recent years for the Integrate my School campaign, funded by the IEF, the vast majority of people, that is, the parents whose children are in those schools, voted for their schools to become integrated. Those polls are run independently, and the range is from 71% through to 92%. Therefore, of all the people who are asked whether they want their schools to become integrated, the vast majority indicate that they do. In every opinion poll over recent years, people responding have responded that they want and support integrated education. Yet I come back to what we mentioned in our initial presentation: only 7% of schools in Northern Ireland are integrated. In fact, if all the schools that had voted to transform to become integrated were to become integrated, it would result in less than a 1% increase in the integrated school movement over the past year or two. The only way we can significantly move forward is through systemic change. Would it not be great to see a school set up and supported by the Government?

Chairman

We have to move on to the Fianna Fáil slot. I will expand the time to ten minutes and we will pay back Fine Gael at the end. Who from Fianna Fáil wishes to speak? I have one Fianna Fáil member in the room and one on the call. I do not want to choose between them.

Senator Niall Blaney

I will start.

Chairman

I see Deputy Brendan Smith smiling.

Senator Niall Blaney

Deputy Smith is there but I am not sure whether Senator McGreehan is still there. I will be as quick as I can. I thank the Chairman for putting this on the agenda for today. This is one of the most important things we discuss as a committee. I give a warm welcome to Mr. Osborne, Ms Merron and Mr. Collins. I thank them for the broad spectrum of work they are doing on this. The research and the polls they are doing are smart. I give credit to the political parties that supported their Bill in Stormont. It is an indictment on the parties that did not support it. You wonder what their real agenda is.

Rather than going down that road, I will get to the teeth of the report. It is stated in the report that there is a statutory duty on the Department of Education under the education order of 1989 to encourage and facilitate the development of integrated education but there is still no Government strategy for growing the number of integrated schools. Given that so many political parties supported the IEF's Bill, what is the IEF doing to influence them to change this? This will take political will and drive and, given the very high figures the IEF has found in its polls for those in favour of integrated education, and if we are ever going to have a shared future on this island, this has to happen. I believe strongly that education shapes society and we need to question ourselves about segregation of any kind, whether in the line of sex or religion.

The future is integrated education across the board, not just in the context of Catholics and Protestants, but it is still important in a Northern Ireland context. Does the Integrated Education Fund have a parents representative group as part of its committee? If it does, what plans does it have to lobby the parties now that the North is coming into election season?

Mr. Paul Collins

We are working hard to engage with all the political parties. First, two Private Members’ Bills are coming before the Assembly and we are pushing for all parties to support them. These include a Bill to repeal the fair employment and treatment order, FETO, and there is the integrated education Bill, which is coming back on 7 and 8 February for further consideration before it goes to a final vote and on to royal consent. We are pushing to move those Bills forward among all political parties. I will send an invitation out to every member here to visit an integrated school in the next 12 months and see what is happening on the ground. Once one sees what is happening there on a local level, one will see the difference between that and the education that is offered by other organisations.

Like most political parties we have built together a manifesto and within that manifesto we will be looking at our key recommendations moving forward. It is not just about changing one school at a time; we need to have systemic change in Northern Ireland. We need to pull together the different government bodies to bring together a more community-led approach to area planning. We need to cut down on the vast costs involved in that, which Mr. Osborne mentioned. We have put forward that manifesto and we will have hustings in the North to which we will invite political representatives, including Claire Hanna MP and whoever is available. We are doing that kind of work and we are also working with Ulster University, including doing detailed work to transform education in Northern Ireland. We have put together research and indicated the way forward to make those changes. We are doing whatever we can at a local level to push this forward. We are also funding schools at a local level to have ballots to transform and we are putting pressure on the Northern Ireland Department of Education to release extra funding for ballots that are not being funded at a local level.

We would urge anyone on the committee to respond the independent review of education set up by the New Decade, New Approach agreement, which is having a consultation. I ask members to respond to that and to quote the Integrated Education Fund and our demands for systemic change in Northern Ireland. That is something we are pushing for. Although it will be a-----

Senator Niall Blaney

I want to ask a question on that point. What are the timelines for that independent review? When is it expected to report?

Ms Tina Merron

It has 18 months so it is supposed to report back next year in May or June of 2023. The consultation is open to the public and it closes on Friday, 4 February.

Deputy Brendan Smith

Like other members, I welcome the witnesses. The statistics presented by them paint a stark picture. We realise that prior to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 there were 41 integrated schools and one new integrated school per year has been developed in the meantime. Some 71% of people surveyed by LucidTalk believe that integrated education should be the norm. Some 73% of those would support their children’s schools becoming integrated and 64% of the people surveyed attributed the slow growth to Northern Ireland’s political parties. At the same time I gather from one of the recent contributions that the majority of supporters of all political parties favour integrated education. There is a strong message from parents that they want the sector to be developed but it is obvious and clear that there has been no worthwhile state assistance.

Is the opposition at a political level in the department or at the level of officials? Or is it a combination of both? If the integrated education Bill is passed before the mandate of this Assembly expires, what can it achieve? Are there provisions within that legislation to make it mandatory for the Department to provide integrated education where there is a proven desire by parents for such a system? It is a huge lost opportunity not to be developing the integrated education sector. Many years ago I had the opportunity to visit Lagan College, which was established 40 years ago, and I saw first-hand the value of that college. Speaking to staff, pupils and former past pupils, I learned a great deal about it and about the value and contribution that college has made.

Chairman

I invite the witnesses to respond.

Ms Tina Merron

The difference this Bill will make is that the Northern Ireland Department of Education will have to have a strategy, look at demand and have targets. Those targets and an assessment of how the Department is doing will have to be brought back to the Assembly every year. This is really important and there has never been anything like this in place before. Parents started the integrated schools so that the Northern Ireland Department of Education would have a strategy to meet that demand. This Bill is important for that reason.

Mr. Peter Osborne

There is a context of understandable resistance or different views from all the different sectors. Discussions will need to be had across all the sectors in education. I will give the committee another statistic from Ulster University. Of all preschool provision in Northern Ireland, 47% is totally segregated and of the rest, almost all would have only one or two preschool participants from the other side of the community to the majority. That would be one or two children compared to the other side of the community that would have all the rest of the participants in the preschool provision. Some 47% of preschool provision does not have anybody from the other side of the community participating.

When I chaired the Community Relations Council I carried a session somewhere around the north coast. Integrated education and education as a whole were mentioned and one of the participants came to me privately and told me he or she lived in a rural area up the end of the lane where there were two houses. This person said that his or her family was in one house and the other house had a family from a Protestant background. It only occurred to him or her after I spoke that the children of both families were of the same age and played together. However, when they got to the age of five and went to school for the first time, they went down to the bottom of the lane and one of them turned left and the other turned right. He or she said they had been turning left and right at the bottom of the lane ever since. It is a phrase that I have never forgotten because that is what is happening. It is abnormal for that to happen in an education system because what then happens is the children play different sports, make different friends, go to different youth clubs and organisations, have different social structures around them and live their lives in different ways. That is abnormal and we should not be surprised if at the end of that we have an abnormal society where people from different backgrounds do not know enough about each other, do not respect each other and do not understand each other. That relationship is what reconciliation is all about and if we do not address this issue within schools and the schooling system, including area planning and all sorts of other relevant issues, we will not address the issue of reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

I will go back to the question that was asked earlier about the political parties in the North. I have a great deal of time for all the political parties across the divide and it was wonderful to see that coalition from across the divide recently supporting the Bill going to the next Stage in the Assembly. That is a remarkable thing and I have a lot of praise for it. I ask members to go to their colleagues and thank them for what they did there. One of the main things is that those parties are convinced that this is the right thing to do. That is what the Integrated Education Fund is trying to achieve but it is a small team of staff, along with voluntary directors like me.

There is a limit to what can be done. In that context, apart from thanking the political parties for their support - and hopefully that support will deepen as people think through the consequences of not tackling the abnormalities in the education system - I also thank the Department of Foreign Affairs, because its reconciliation fund has helped the IEF to do some of the work it is doing.

Chairman

Ms Claire Hanna from the SDLP is present. I call her next.

Ms Claire Hanna

I apologise for being a wee bit late. As I notified the committee, I have a constituency surgery on Thursday afternoons. I thank the witnesses for the presentation. I missed it being delivered, but I read their papers with interest yesterday evening. My party and I come from the position that this society is not going to change until people are living and being educated together. It very much needs to change in the context of the reconciliation aspect Mr. Osborne is addressing. The project in that regard is to increase integration and sharing in education. The challenge is how we do that. The witnesses will know that this is not the case because they are doing this every day, but sometimes there is a perception that the problem would be solved if everybody would just decide that they wanted to share. My worry concerns our inability to undertake that transformation and our general culture of poor governance here.

I make the comparison with health. We have failed to reform health and to reorganise and remodel some 20 hospitals. My concern is how we are going to undertake a similar process with approximately 1,000 schools, each of which has its own identity, governance structure and interests. It is a core part of this issue as well. Some of this context, then, is about that practical level of transformation. Picking up on the issue raised by Deputy Brendan Smith, there is a question regarding how much of this relates to political blockages and how much is really an inability to manage transformation.

The other bisecting issue is selection. To me, that is as egregious in some ways. The system, almost from the start, has at its core an educationally unsound and socially unjust method of separating children out. The rest of the education system, and I am just commenting as a parent because I am not a policy expert in this area, seems to be hinged around this poor core. This issue is partially about how an integrated model can help to address some of this social segregation. Lagan College is a good example of that. It is modelling the good behaviour of all-ability schooling. There is a perception that it provides great outcomes for bookish, academic children and for those developing in different directions or at different speeds.

I will give the witnesses a barrage of questions and then they can take them apart. How we get to the point I referred to is the major question. How do we disaggregate the technical barriers and the political barriers? How do the witnesses propose that we address the transfer issue? Some of this context is concerned with another aspect. Before I had kids, I thought that all I would want from a school was the ethos. Then as a parent, I realised that I also wanted the school to be five minutes away and to have a breakfast club costing £1. Most people make their educational choices on practical issues, such as where their childminder can collect from and where good after-school services are available, for example, in addition to the educational outcomes.

Like every sector, some schools are performing less well academically. One of the easier wins among the low-hanging fruit in respect of the current position could be training teachers together. Where does that stand now? It is seen as important by many people. When I consider the blockages that will arise from trying to reorganise schools, it is also the case that each school will have its own vested interests. I do not mean that negatively, but everybody has their attachment to their school and its history. I do not think that is a sectarian thing; it is just their project. Teacher training should be a little bit easier. I ask the witnesses to answer whichever of those questions they wish.

Mr. Peter Osborne

They are all relevant and pertinent questions. Again, time is against us in some ways, but I will attempt to give brief answers. I did not pass my 11+ examinations. I do not use the word "fail". I did not fail it; it failed me. It failed every other child in the class I attended. I was brought up in a working-class area in Ballybeen. Every child failed the 11+ examinations in my year. I was fortunate in that circumstances allowed me to go on to university. What the system was really saying to me, however, was that I should know my place, which was not to go to university and wind up doing some of the things I ended up doing. That is completely wrong. The integrated sector has elements in its schools of how it deals with mixed abilities which could be part of the answer to this issue. Of course, that is the political answer. It is up to the Assembly to legislate and to take forward the answers regarding selection and 11+ examinations.

Regarding how we do this, we are in the middle of a 50-year-plus peace process. It will take at least that many years from the agreement. It will even take more than that, because in some ways we have successfully managed the divisions in our society, but what we need to do in a peace process is to tackle the causes of these divisions. We have been less good at tackling those causes of division. One of those causes is that we send almost all our children into segregated education. We must end segregation in education. We must have people from different backgrounds in the same classrooms, wearing the same uniforms, playing the same sports and doing everything together to enable them to understand and respect each other, despite coming from different faith backgrounds and having different political views. It is absolutely fine to have those different political views, but if there is no contact with people with other views and backgrounds, there will be less understanding of and respect for them.

Therefore, while we are in the middle of a 50-year-plus peace process, making those changes is not going to happen next year. One of the difficulties here is that people do not see how it is possible to make the changes. It is too difficult. One of the things I will be saying to the independent review, as well as to this committee, is that we need a 20- or 30-year roadmap of how we can make these changes over time. The longer we put that off, however, and do not have such a roadmap in place, the longer this peace process is going to last. We will end up not having a 50-year-plus peace process, but a 70-year peace process. We must take the necessary decisions about systemic change and what causes division, and not continue to try to just manage those existing divisions. By the way, the roadmap process, if we lay it out, would be like eating an elephant. It would involve doing it one step at a time and one bite at a time, and we would get there eventually. We must, however, have the roadmap in place to specify responsibilities on everybody at each stage.

I do not disagree about teacher training. That is absolutely right. Why on earth would we do it this way? If people said they were going into medical training to become a GP and we asked them whether they wanted to make Protestants or Catholics better, because, depending on the answer, the person in question would go to a different college to train how to be a doctor, what sort of madness would that be? Yet that is what happens in teacher training, by and large. Before the next round of PEACE funds comes in, I would suggest that we slice off £30 million, or whatever the figure is, to build a bespoke, state-of-the-art, best-in-the-world teacher training college that is going to be the teacher training college. I would then put a five- or ten-year process in place to move into that kind of system.

We are talking about adults here. These trainee teachers, by and large, are men and women in their 20s and we must have them train together to be teachers. I am sorry, but I could go on all day about some of this stuff. Whenever there is a system where people are brought up, by and large, in one sector or another, for example, where they go to school with Protestants or Catholics, and they are from that background, what happens later? We then put them into teacher training colleges, where, predominantly, they are trained how to be teachers in the company of other Protestants or Catholics. They then go to take their placements in controlled schools with Protestants or maintained schools with Catholics.

They then go and take their placements in controlled schools with Protestants or maintained schools with Catholics. They then go and become teachers in controlled schools with Protestants or maintained schools with Catholics. Then we say to the teachers, who are the best placed people to influence the young folk in their classrooms to be better citizens and engage in cross-community activity with other people from other backgrounds, that they should go ahead and do that. The teachers are saying, of all the trades that could have been picked, we are one of the trades that has less experience of being in a place with people from another community background, and, therefore, there is a lack of confidence to do that within teachers. They have got to be trained together.

Chairman

That was a passionate and a very response. It made me think.

I have to call members who I may not see but may be present. I do not know if Deputy Tóibín, Senator Mullen, Deputy McNamara and Senator Black are there.

Deputy Peadar Tóibín

Gabhaim buíochas le gach uile dhuine a tháinig anseo. I thank Mr. Osborne for his wonderful presentation. I greatly appreciate it. Without a shadow of a doubt, it is quite clear that integrated education is excellent education. It is a very important sector in the education system. It is a sector that I want to see increase and grow in the North of Ireland over the next number of years. From my perspective and from the perspective of Aontú, we believe in a pluralist education system. I probably would disagree with the idea that all schools should become integrated schools. Parents should be able to choose which school they send their children to. That has to remain a key element of a liberal democratic education system - that there is a pluralism of ethos and that parents and children can select the ethos they wish to go to.

I agree that there is a difficulty in the lack of integrated options and choices in the North of Ireland at the moment. The point about having a statutory planning unit officially with in the Department of Education there is very important to drive the sector there.

I do not disagree with any of the language that I have heard today, but some of the language outside of this debate can be a little bit difficult at times. I have heard other people outside of this debate mention that Catholic schools and Protestant schools are parcels of hate and they are the cause of the divisions in North of Ireland. It is very important that we say that the Catholic and Protestant schools are not cause of the divisions in the North of Ireland and that they are excellent schools and they valued elements of the education system in the North of Ireland. For many nationalists, especially, Catholic schools are very important because for many years they felt that the only official section of society that their history, language and culture was protected in within the North of Ireland were those schools.

In the South of Ireland, obviously, there is a need to remove many schools from the Catholic sector and to make more multidenominational and interdenominational schools available. There is a big push for that. When it happens, oftentimes, to a specific school, one will find that parents often have a difficulty with the change in the school that they went to and, indeed, perhaps where their parents went to as well.

My question is similar to Ms Hanna’s. How do we get to a fully pluralist education system; an education system where parents can choose the education for their children? What is the process? What is necessary? First and foremost, what is the stumbling block?

I recently met with representatives of a Gaelscoil school in Dungiven, south Derry, and they mentioned the lack of a statutory planning function within the education system. It seems that the department itself is a laggard in terms of recognising the new political and societal landscape that exists. Perhaps that is where some of the effort needs to be focused.

In the South, when a new school is being built, there is a process where parents are surveyed as to their desire of the patronage of that school. Is there a similar process in the North of Ireland? There is also a process for schools that want to migrate or transition from one patronage to another. Is that the same in the North? One of the speakers mentioned that the transformation process is there but it is very slow, almost glacial, in its development. I would appreciate if those three elements could be addressed.

Ms Tina Merron

Perhaps I can clarify on the matters regarding the Department of Education. The current system within the department maintains the status quo. It should also be borne in mind that the number of children has dropped in Norther Ireland, so we have too many school places and schools. It is very hard to grow against that background.

Generally, the Department of Education does not ask parents what they want for the future. Parents assume that of what they have got, that is the choice. Therefore, if you do not have an integrated school in place, you are not going to get one. It has to be up to parents to start that themselves.

The transformation of a school from a maintained or controlled school to integrated education is a long process. I would like to see the process speeded up, but it requires the school to think about the changes and bring the parents with them as well. The parents are part of that process. First, they have to vote it through on a parental ballot. They get that opportunity to vote their school to transform. They then want to be part of the process. They have to think through what they want to do, such as what sports they want to bring and what changes they want to make. That change takes time. The slowness is probably, in regard to the Department of Education, in approving that. That usually takes about two years; that would probably be the period of time. However, the school will take longer in bringing in the changes.

The department just assumes it knows what parents want. That is the status quo and nothing will change. That would be the exact same for the Irish-medium sector as well. It would have the same problem because it is also like the integrated movement in that it does not have a publicly-funded statutory body to support it.

Deputy Peadar Tóibín

To clarify, is Ms Merron saying here is an inertia that is at the heart of the Department of Education which is, in part, militating against changes to a more diverse system?

Ms Tina Merron

Yes, I would say that. It has a duty to encourage and facilitate, but it is not proactive. It waits until something happens and something is brought to it. Basically, after it sees the evidence that parents have to bring, or we have to help parents bring, it will then step in and help with or approve a transformation, providing it meets certain guidelines. However, the department is not proactive. It does not go and ask parents. It could send a survey around to all parents in Northern Ireland and ask them what type of school they would like in five to ten years. This is where Irish-medium and integrated education would be the popular choices, as opposed to the status quo now.

Mr. Paul Collins

We are definitely not critical of other forms of education, not in the slightest. There is much evidence there is a demand for integrated education out there. I went to a Catholic primary and secondary school and I never had the opportunity to speak to someone of the opposite religion until I left the school. My children go to integrated primary school and secondary school and they have gotten to meet people from different faith backgrounds and different parts of the world, such as Italy, Spain and Brazil. That was at both primary and secondary school level. There is a world of difference.

There is nothing wrong with the Catholic education in Ireland. I received great qualifications - X, Y, and Z. I would not be critical of it at all. If one is looking at the fundamental they want to change and move forward in Northern Ireland society, the core of that surely must be Protestants, Catholics, other faith groups and non-faith groups mixing together in the same school, the same classroom and everyday. That is how we will move things forward in Northern Ireland. One only can understand when one gets to meet someone from a different background.

Mr. Peter Osborne

I echo that. The schooling system and other schools in all of the sectors are superb at times. They are really good and there would be no criticism coming from us about the quality of commitment of the teaching and the teachers within those schools. They are very good. The touchstone though, going forward, is that we need to get children from all backgrounds in the same classroom, learning and developing together.

That is the challenge for all of the sectors, if there are those sectors going forward, it is how they open themselves up to doing that. Indeed, it is how the independent review, which sets out a 20- or 30-year roadmap, sets out how that can be done as well.

The issue with the Department is that this is just very difficult. That is why the Department also needs a 20- or 30-year roadmap to say, here are the stages of development that we think you need to be part of and, in fact, you need to lead as well.

Deputy Peadar Tóibín

I imagine that there are many Muslim students and students from a Polish, Lithuanian and other backgrounds in those Catholic schools and control schools in the North of Ireland. Would that reflect roughly the same level of international or religious diversity, and outside of Catholic and Protestant students, that exists in integrated schools? Do integrated schools tend to exhibit more diverse student backgrounds?

Ms Tina Merron

It is a mixture of both depending on where a school is located. The fact that integrated schools are open to all children would encourage some parents. It really depends on where schools are located.

Deputy Peadar Tóibín

Society in the North of Ireland has had a radically different experience from society in the South for a large number of reasons, which I will not go into today. In the South, in general children are sent to schools on the basis that they are Catholic or Protestant schools as well. The selection of schools will be exactly the same in both the South and the North. Is that the view of the witnesses? Is there a difference between the South and the North?

Chairman

We must move on as we only have 15 minutes. I want to be fair to everybody and I do not have a problem stopping people from talking. I do not want anybody to complain that they cannot get in having attended. Does Mr. Osborne wish to give a brief answer?

Mr. Peter Osborne

There are issues in the South as well as the North in terms of minority communities, whether they be from newcomer or minority communities. In terms of being from a Protestant background, 100 years after what happened in the 1920s those issues are still to be addressed in some ways in the South just as they are in the North but obviously there are greater issues in the North. I do not know the answer to the Deputy's question. There may be scope to do some exploration around that and how collaboration North and South in education systems can be effective as well.

I wish to mention an issue that we have not touched on and that is educational under-achievement. Across the sector and community, and I think that the education system and the independent review, I hope, and this may be linked to the earlier point that the transfer test needs to tackle that, the statistics show, especially among Protestant and Catholic working-class kids, when a system is as good as our system is in many ways also creates educational under-achievement to such an extent then there is something wrong that needs to be addressed as well.

Chairman

The overall context of students was mentioned in the address. It is the lowest proportion across the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland of working adults with a degree. It has got the lowest rate of adult literary and it has got the lowest amount, which is almost 17%, who have no qualifications, so that is a system that is failing all of the time. In what way does the system employed by the organisation present better that? How do the schools compare? Do the socio-economic backgrounds, from which people come, differ? Are they working class, middle class, a mixture of both or rural?

Mr. Peter Osborne

My colleagues can respond as they probably have more direct contact than me.

Ms Tina Merron

The mix in the schools, so across working-class and middle-class backgrounds, would be the same at both second-level and post-primary schools. It is not comparable with grammar schools. I think it would be the same or very similar with the controlled and maintained secondary schools.

In terms of academic results, the integrated schools are comparable with the academic results of the secondary schools. They would not be as good as the academic results of grammar schools but then they do not select children on academic ability and accept all children should the child have special needs or be very academic. They accept all pupils as do all of the secondary schools. The results there are very similar to the secondary school results.

Chairman

Do the churches play a leading role in bringing about change or do they get involved? It seems from reading from what has been said that the parents must prove that they want to change an existing school and to get a new school they must prove a future demand. Is that not quite an onerous task for parents? Do churches nationally or in the North play a leadership role in bringing about that change and moving to integrated education?

Mr. Peter Osborne

All of the churches, not just the main ones but other churches and faith organisations, have a really important role in helping to shape the debate around children and young people learning and developing together in the same classroom. I think they may have different views, in some cases, from us. Obviously the system over the last 200 years, and when one goes back into the 19th century, has been influenced by the views of different churches on all sides of the community about what sort of system and education structure should be in place. Their role is important and they could have a positive contribution to make around where things go in the future. They need to reflect on how they can do that and even more than they do at the minute. It is part of the debate that needs to be had.

Ms Tina Merron

I would be less positive than Mr. Osborne. The integrated movement has had a difficult time in encouraging the churches, local priests and local ministers to come into integrated schools. They have worked hard to do that. In some areas they have a very good relationship but in other areas it is still difficult. The churches have not always been very forthcoming or helpful. For some of the schools that wish to transform, and there have been a couple of Catholic schools as well recently that wish to transform, the churches have not been very supportive of that either. I would like to see them more involved and more positive towards integrated education but currently I do not see a lot of evidence for that.

Mr. Paul Collins

I back up what Ms Merron has said. Certainly, with integrated education, we have engaged with all churches and non-faith groups. For example, my own children go to primary school where the children have the free option in terms of how to progress with their religion. One is a Catholic option so one receives sacraments and moves forward with that. Indeed, the sacraments are celebrated and children are brought into the school as part of that. As part of the community, we just celebrate, as do all faiths.

There is the second tier which is the broader Christian and, I suppose, Protestant faith route that one can go down. The third tier is more broad and comprises the religions of the world, humanism and secularism throughout the whole world. Certainly, in terms of ourselves, we are engaging with churches. We do what we can to represent all of the different faiths that are in Northern Ireland and the non-faith groups as well.

Chairman

There are two members present who have not spoken and perhaps they would like to address the meeting.

Ms Michelle Gildernew

I thank the witnesses for their presentations, and for their forthright and honest answers. I am very lucky because I have a number of fabulous integrated primary and post-primary schools in my constituency, and I have been very supportive of them all. Unfortunately, there was another school. Again, I visited it back in the day but things did not work in the end and these things happen.

We, in Sinn Féin, are very pleased to have been able to support the Private Members' Bill.

That is a great step forward in placing statutory responsibility on the Department. Sometimes we need targets and tangible figures we can work towards. We hope the Private Members' Bill gets through during this assembly mandate and we move on. What is a realistic target for increasing that number from six to eight? Where will those figures be in five or ten years' time? I think our guests have covered most of the rest of the points but what do they think is a tangible figure? I know it is always controversial to put numbers on it, but what is realistic? I would appreciate it if our guests would try to answer that. I thank them again.

Senator John McGahon

I apologise that I am coming in now but I was attending a meeting of the Joint Committee on Climate Action at the same time. Mr. Collins mentioned the LucidTalk poll that showed 71% of people in Northern Ireland believe that integrated schools should be the norm. Is that a recent trend? Has that 71% support for integrated schools been progressing steadily or has it emerged in recent years?

As Mr. Collins mentioned, there were 41 integrated schools at the time of the Good Friday Agreement and there are now 68 or 69. Why has progress in creating integrated schools been so slow? Is there much opposition to integrated schools in Northern Ireland? If there is opposition, which sectors of society is that opposition coming from?

The Chairman touched on an issue. Mr. John FitzGerald noted that the education system in Northern Ireland is a recipe for failure. Do our guests think that is a fair assessment and if so, why?

Senator Emer Currie

I support the Integrated Education Bill and the Private Members' Bill about fair employment legislation. Is the Integrated Education Bill on Committee Stage at the moment? Will it pass before the elections? What happens if it does not?

Ms Tina Merron

I will come in on Ms Gildernew's question about targets. We are currently working with 30 schools. It is more than we, as a charity, and NICIE can deal with. That we are working with 30 schools within two years shows where the demand is. People have always said that more than 10% would make a significant difference. Baroness May Blood always said she would like to see more than 100 integrated schools in her lifetime. Those are the kinds of targets we should be getting to within two or three years. We should be able to achieve 10% and more than 100 schools.

Mr. Paul Collins

I will come in quickly on the issue of the Integrated Education Bill. The Bill has passed through the first consideration stage and will go through second consideration stage. All the amendments are being pulled together and are now on the Assembly website. Minor tweaks will be discussed on 7 and 8 February. It will be debated and agreed over two days. It will then come back for a final vote. We have our fingers crossed that it will cross the line before the deadline.

I will come back on the question of polls. That 71% is reflective of an overall trend. I will quote another set of statistics. A Sky News poll in March 2018 showed that 69% of people believed that every school in Northern Ireland should be integrated. While the trend is definitely on the up, there seems to have always been an interest in, and desire for, schools to become integrated.

Mr. Peter Osborne

I will add one or two things to that. I would need to go back and check over the past number of years, perhaps even the past decade or two, but that increase is a regular trend around the numbers of people who like the principle of their children going to a school where they can learn and develop with children from other backgrounds. There are a number of issues that have stopped that and not all of them are negative. Some of them are understandable. Examples of those have been touched on and include parents wanting their children to go to the same school they went to and other practical issues. It certainly could be helped by the work that the Integrated Education Fund and NICIE do at the moment. As Ms Merron said, perhaps another 30 schools are on the runway. That takes a lot of resources. The situation would be helped by extra resources. That is why funding, for example through the reconciliation fund, is important and appreciated from our end.

We do not have time to go into the issue but I touched on isolated pairs of schools. There are 64 schools, 32 pairs of schools, in rural villages and in 26 of those 32, at least one school is below the threshold for sustainability, and sometimes both schools are. If the area planning model changed to make the assumption that the first thing to be done is the exploration of the amalgamation of those schools to ensure sustainable schools in villages, which is important to those villages, that policy change to the system would be significant in terms of the numbers we could look for over the next five or ten years. Those are the critical policy changes we need to look for. That would be a part of the 20-year roadmap for how we get to the place we want to get to.

There are issues around teacher training colleges, where there is suddenly greater integration of the teachers who are going out to teach in the different sectors. The fair employment exemption in schools is long past its overdue date. We need to explore that and get rid of it to have a level playing field.

We are in a long-term process with this change and it is tough. There are some great schools across the sectors and we do not want to lose them. On the question as to whether the education system is a recipe for failure, it is not. There are great teachers and schools but we need to make some changes in dealing with issues around educational underachievement. Let us deal with the transfer test one way or another, for goodness' sake. Fundamental to this process around the Good Friday Agreement to which we are all committed is not only dealing with the symptoms of division but also its causes. One of the fundamental parts of that must be making sure that children of five years of age do not turn left and right at the bottom of the lane.

Chairman

I thank Mr. Osborne, Ms Merron and Mr. Collins for their attendance and contributions, which were enlightening and challenging. We, as a committee, hope to have an opportunity to visit the North again, as we have before, and perhaps to visit an integrated school. Our guests might recommend such a school to us. The meeting has been helpful and useful, and provided food for thought. Our guests are the agents of bringing about the effect of the Good Friday Agreement in bringing the whole community in the North together. That is what everybody wants. I thank them again.

The joint committee adjourned at 4.29 p.m. until 1.30 p.m. on Thursday, 3 February 2021.