Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): We have three members of the Transferor Representatives’ Council (TRC) with us this morning: Reverend Trevor Gribben, clerk of the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland; Reverend Donald Ker, secretary of conference of the Methodist Church in Ireland; and Reverend Dr Ian Ellis, secretary to the Church of Ireland board of education and secretary to the TRC. You are all very welcome, and thank you very much for your paper. I ask you to make an opening statement, and members will follow that with questions.

Rev Dr Ian Ellis (Transferor Representatives' Council): Thank you, Chair, for your invitation and welcome this morning. It is a little while since we have been at the Committee, and we thought that we should refresh your memory of who we are and where we are from. We represent the three main Protestant dominations: the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterian Church and the Methodist Church. Each of our Churches has a board of education, and we work together as three Churches in the Transferor Representatives’ Council. A number of years ago, my predecessor came up with the idea of a council to represent our three Churches, because there was strength in the three being together.

Originally, the three Churches were school owners, and, as you know, most of our schools were transferred to state control in the 20th century. In return for that, transferors were given legal rights of representation in local schools and on area bodies or area boards, as they now are. Of course, transferors are also represented on the new Education Authority. That was all about ensuring that a Christian ethos remained in the schools that we transferred and that in their governance and in the regional body itself, where principals were appointed and where planning took place, there was an emphasis placed on the ethos in the schools. That was achieved in the early 20th century and persists today. We have been here a long time, in the business of the controlled sector especially. As transferors, we tend to speak about our role in the controlled sector, and many of you know that we were up here many times during the debate about the Education Authority.

We are here today to speak to the paper that we gave you in October about the shared education inquiry that you are undertaking. As you know, in parallel with that is the Minister's consultation on shared education, so we may refer to some of the questions that he raises in that as well as some of the points that we made in our submission to the Committee. If it is agreeable, we will do that.

From the outset, it is important to say that the Churches have been strongly in favour of shared education as a concept for quite a number of years. I think that we have even been here talking about it, incidentally, on the margins of other topics in the past. It has inspired and enthused us, and, if you look back at the records of debates in the Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church and the Church of Ireland over the past four or five years, you will find that each of our Churches has passed resolutions of strong support for the concept. We believe that, within it, there is the potential for so much good: in the educational outcomes achievable when schools work together and in the reconciliation benefits and community cohesion that can come about through contact and the process of sharing in an educational enterprise. As Churches, we have felt that it is a concept worthy of exploring and developing, and we have been keen to see it developed.

Now that I have given the opening comment, my colleagues will say a little more on other topics of interest to you in your inquiry, rather than your hearing one voice all the time. I hand over to Trevor, and Donald will come in after that.

Rev Trevor Gribben (Transferor Representatives' Council): Chair, thank you for the invitation. As transferors, we have strongly advocated the need for a definition of shared education. It can be a very nebulous term, and we welcome the move towards defining it. However, we express grave concerns, as we did in our response to the Minister's consultation, about the definition that the Department proposes.

The definition that would sit much more comfortably with us is that proposed by the ministerial advisory group, which reported in 2013. The reason for that is the Department's inclusion in its definition of "socio-economic sharing", for want of a better phrase. We want to be very clear on this point. We believe that a lot of work has to be done to counter and deal with economic and social disadvantage in education and that such work is so important that it should have a particular focus. We also believe that huge work needs to be done on shared education by bringing together schools from different sectors and communities to share real educational experiences. We feel that attempting to mix the two in one definition could limit the potential of shared education to be very effective in Northern Ireland.

We can illustrate the point by referring to an earlier departmental consultation on special educational needs, on which many of us worked incredibly hard. As Churches, we brought together a group of leading experts from this island and put in what we felt was a very credible submission, as did many other groups. We said at the time that the widening of the definition of special education beyond the accepted understanding would damage both the consultation and the prospect of moving forward in special education — that is exactly what happened. The other issues that the Department wanted to attach to special education through the redefinition were good and worthy in themselves, but attaching them to special education meant that much good work was lost. We fear that exactly the same could happen here. Let us deal with these two issues: both need to be dealt with, but let us not try to lump them together in a definition of shared education.

Our response to the Minister's consultation also addressed the proposal to designate schools public authorities, thereby bringing them under section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998. As Churches, we are not opposed to section 75. Sometimes, we express concerns about its implementation, but we do not want to give the impression that the Churches are against equality. We are not; we are strong advocates of equality. However, placing on schools, and particularly small primary or rural schools, all the administrative demands of being a public authority under section 75 would, we believe, distract them from their real job of education. The sheer bureaucracy that would come with this designation would be counterproductive to education throughout Northern Ireland, so we have real concerns about that. I will come to another issue later, but, first, Donald will address one or two other issues.

Rev Donald Ker (Methodist Church in Ireland): Thank you, Madam Chair. What does good shared education look like? We want to express strongly the view that good shared education will not look the same in every situation — the cliché is one size does not fit all. The Department and the Committee need to understand that local situations demand different local responses. It would be invidious to name any particular places. It could be that the fairly simple sharing happening in one place might not be perceived as all that significant, but the local context, its history and the community surroundings need to be borne in mind when seeking to evaluate what good shared education looks like. This has a couple of implications. It has an implication, first, for the inspectorate. If the inspectorate simply says that it needs to see A, B, C, D and E — in other words, it is simply a question of how the sharing fits into a pre-constructed template and no account is taken of the local circumstances and where the community has come from to get to the stage that it has achieved — we will have a difficulty.

Secondly, we want to emphasise strongly that, even where a school is perceived to sit within one section of the community or governance structure, there is already, in a wide variety of cases, substantial cross-community sharing in schools. The population of any given school does not necessarily simply reflect its governance structure. Therefore, where sharing is happening within a school, there should be encouragement and incentive to help that forward.

Where should the capital investment go? We are aware of the announcements made in the last 24 hours. Capital investment should go to places where shared initiatives already take or have taken place and where good outcomes — by "good", I mean evaluated according to the local situation — have been demonstrated. We are asking for a flexible approach and a deeper understanding, which do not always sit easily with very tightly constructed definitions.

Rev Trevor Gribben: I will address one additional issue, Chair. Lacking in the proposals in the Department's consultation document is the role of sectoral bodies in shared education. We raised this in our submission to the Committee in October. At the very core, we are involved, as you are aware, in getting the sectoral body for controlled schools up and running. In the very remit agreed with the Minister for that body is the promotion of sharing between the different sectors, meaning that the sectoral bodies have to be not just an advocate for their own sector but a leader of that sector in sharing with other sectors. I am sure that we all have our own view of how we ended up with the Education Authority and the sectoral bodies, but we are where we are, and we are very positive about wanting to make that work and maximising the potential of the new era beginning in April. It seems to us that the Minister's consultation and the various pointers on who will be involved almost totally miss the role of sectoral bodies. The controlled sector body will have a key role in promoting good practice in sharing, in working with other sectoral bodies to help to negotiate local situations and in coming together with other sectoral bodies to advocate together how sharing can be maximised in local situations. We want the role of sectoral bodies, which is, we feel, absent at the moment, to be written in very clearly. It is acknowledged in certain aspects of departmental policy, but — surprise, surprise — that policy is not always as joined up as it might be. In the document on shared education, no real role is given to sectoral bodies, yet the policy on sectoral bodies encourages them to become involved in shared education, which is what we want. That needs to be written in. It may be an administrative oversight, but we fear that sectoral bodies have simply been forgotten.

We operate largely in the controlled sector, as you are aware, and we are perturbed generally, and specifically when it comes to shared education, that the controlled sector body will not be up and running on 1 April. Therefore, despite all the developments in shared education — we hope that the Education Authority and Department will lead on that and that the Committee and others will be involved — the controlled sector body does not have the capacity to operate. That is because, largely, it has not been possible to deliver on the assurances that we were given. We have been held up by what one might call bureaucracy. We are still without a chief executive or a body to advocate for the controlled sector in the area of shared education from 1 April; other sectors have publicly funded posts so that they can be involved in that work. We make that general point and attach it to shared education. We are aware that others are coming to talk to you later today and would welcome your exploring that issue with them, if you are so minded, Chair.

Rev Dr Ian Ellis: I have a final point, which follows on from what Trevor was saying about a role for the controlled sector support body. A key role is in providing ethos support. I mentioned that the foundational ethos of controlled schools is characterised by a Christian spirit. Over the years, we have discovered that our colleagues, the Catholic trustees, are very keen to work with us on sharing because they recognise that controlled schools have a Christian faith foundation, as do their schools. We have, over a good number of years, had very positive conversations with our Catholic trustee colleagues, who are keen that we develop work together because of that common bond.

We have been looking at the new concept of a jointly managed church school, which is a possible option for sharing in the future. We are all aware of the spectrum of options for shared education. One of those narrow points on the spectrum is the possibility of a jointly managed church school. That is where the transferring Churches and the Catholic Church come together to form a group of trustees — they would be the trustees of the enterprise — which nominates governors to sit on the school board alongside governors who come from parent groups and teachers. The school then becomes a new type of school, but it is founded on common Christian principles and on the interplay between the two sides, the Protestant Churches and the Catholic Church, which work together in an agreed way.

We are keen to develop that, so the Department, to its credit, has been trying to devise a circular of guidance, which has been requested by a number of schools. We have been working together to finalise that, and it is at a fairly advanced stage. A number of ramifications need to be thought out, not least transport policy, but that is progressing well, and we see it as one option on a spectrum of options for sharing. Requests have come in to the Department from a number of areas for guidance on how that might come about.

If it did come about, it would, in our view, be an integrated school, meeting all the criteria of an integrated school. Both communities are represented there at the heart of the governance and foundation of the school, and that goes right through to the ethos that is developed within it. If such a school could be devised and a pilot produced, it should have all the benefits that flow to and are enjoyed by the integrated sector — that is "integrated" with a small "i", of course. That is one option for the future, and it comes about because the Catholic trustees are keen to work with us on the basis of a common bond.

That was my final point. Donald, I think, will wrap up.

Rev Donald Ker: Yes, and I will do so with what I hope you will not think a cheeky postscript. In so far as we are aware that initial teacher education is not the remit of this Committee, it seems to us to provide the opportunity for a good model for sharing. In the current situation, some enhanced collaboration between the two institutions particularly responsible for initial teacher education would be a good way forward, and we strongly encourage that.
That is all we want to say by way of an opening statement, Madam Chair. We are very happy to respond to questions.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Thank you very much. You covered quite a number of issues, and I very much enjoyed that neat segue to the controlled sector body.

Rev Trevor Gribben: Thank you, Chair.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): You were also kind to the Department when you said that the role of sectoral bodies not being in its paper was, perhaps, an "administrative oversight".

You mentioned the ministerial advisory group's definition of shared education and pointed out that you have an issue with the focus on socio-economic. The new definition proposed includes terms such as "religious belief" and "political opinion". What are you views on that?

Rev Trevor Gribben: We are not convinced that it is a useful change to the definition that the ministerial advisory group recommended, which would sit much more comfortably with us and does not include the word "political". Let me illustrate our point: would it mean that two schools on the Shankill Road that were influenced by different groups in loyalism could be defined as collaborating in shared education if they were perceived to have different political leanings? We do not think that that is what shared education is meant to be about; it is meant to be about the two communities.

We recognise that not everyone is churchgoing — from our Churches' perspective, our job is to change that, of course — so some people may no longer define themselves as Protestant or Catholic. However, we are aware also that, in legislation, people are defined as being perceived to be from the Protestant community or Roman Catholic community. That is often how fair employment works, and it is how the Equality Commission works.
Therefore, perceived Protestant or perceived Catholic, or perceived to be from a Protestant or Catholic background, is better phraseology than bringing the word "politics" into it. We are not against politicians; they are wonderful people, but we should keep politics out of the definition, if possible.

Rev Dr Ian Ellis: I come back to Trevor's original point about the socio-economic aspect. There are lots of towns and villages in this country in which the mix of people is limited. In some towns, there are no great socio-economic divides, and schools just happen to be placed where they are. The definition seems to rule out sharing where the mix of pupils is fairly homogenous. We think that the definition is limiting and are happier with the kind of thrust that Paul Connolly's group came up with, which was about promoting social cohesion and community identity and so on, rather than placing it in the Bill as a must-do list of things that have to be covered.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Other than your comment towards the end about jointly managed church schools, which I will come back to, you have not really mentioned integrated education. The comment that I want to make is on the controlled sector. It is often, perhaps, misrepresented as a sector. Natural sharing has taken place in the sector over many years, and there is natural integration there already. Do you have a comment on that?

Rev Dr Ian Ellis: You are right to say that there is some natural mixing in schools. The controlled sector was weakened because it did not have the same support as other sectors. Some schools in the Catholic sector have good mixes, and there are super-mixed non-denominational schools that have quite a range of religious identities. We have not really been opposed to integrated education. As Protestant Churches, our line has been that, where a community wished to develop integrated education and there was no threat to controlled school provision, we have supported it. We have supported communities that wished to engage in the process of controlled schools transforming to controlled integrated status. At the end of the day, the Churches still have a place in that kind of new arrangement. There are places for transferors in that.

The downside is that the process has always been perceived as being one way. No maintained school has ever transformed. So the transformation process has been faulty from the beginning, and there is a sense of loss in our community when it happens. The sense of loss is this: although still involved in the controlled school that is created, you have two rather than four places, and, anyway, the maintained schools do not seem to change. In spite of all that, as Churches, we supported transformation where there was community support for it, because we felt that it needed to happen for social cohesion and reconciliation reasons.

It has to be said that some transformations were panic transformations and were because of "last resort" reasons. Maybe they felt that they were not sustainable and that transformation was a way of becoming sustainable. Interestingly, there have been very few transformations in recent years.

We have never been opposed to integrated education. Our main focus has been controlled schools, and defending controlled schools has been our key purpose. We have very good working relations with the integrated sector and the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education (NICIE).

Rev Trevor Gribben: As Churches, we want to be clear in saying that we affirm schools that are formally integrated, so integrated with a capital "I", as one form of sharing. We are opposed to the more purist line that it is the only legitimate form of sharing. The integrated movement has taken things so far in a relatively small number of schools and communities, but the concept of shared education has the potential of rolling out a much better future for Northern Ireland by encouraging people to work together, where they are able to do so, and to stop saying, "We cannot do everything" and start asking, "What can we do?".

I go back to Donald's earlier point: while we have been one of the groups advocating that shared education needs be mainstreamed and not left to voluntary groups on the fringes — we welcome the Committee and the Minister's involvement in attempting to do that — our fear is that every Department, not just the Education Department, in case people think that we do not like the Education Department, once things are mainstreamed, will want everything regulated.

Take academic league tables. We all know the farce that is there, because the level that pupils achieve in an academic table depends on the pupils who go to a school. In the system that we have, a selective grammar school will probably achieve higher GCSE results than a non-selective secondary school in the controlled sector; that is obvious. The danger is that we will have league tables in sharing: "These two schools have maximised sharing and are wonderful, but these have done very little". However, in that community that might be wonderful. We are yet to be convinced that the inspectorate and the Department can devise a scheme that acknowledges those small steps that are absolutely brilliant for that community. However, if you put it in a league table, it looks as if it is a failing shared education enterprise.

Integrated education is one form of sharing; we do not see it as the peak or the new Jerusalem to which we are all heading. It works in some places; it will not work in others. We are delighted that our colleagues in the Catholic Church have embraced shared education and are talking with us about jointly managed schools. If this enables colleagues in the Catholic Church to participate fully in sharing where, perhaps, they have some concerns about the integrated movement, we should welcome that. We would hope that those in the integrated movement would welcome sharing and not see it as a threat to their existence.

Rev Donald Ker: May I make a quick personal comment? I have four children, three of whom went to a school that would be perceived largely as sitting in the Protestant community while the other went to an integrated school. In terms of actual sharing and alertness cross-community, both schools delivered what I considered to be a high degree of sharing in understanding.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): I want to return to the jointly managed Church schools. While controlled schools have a Christian ethos, generally they are non-denominational and would not necessarily be regarded as faith schools. How, in practice, would a jointly managed Church school would work and how would it differ from, say, a Roman Catholic school or, indeed, an integrated school with a capital "I"?

Rev Trevor Gribben: I will begin and Ian might come in on some of the detail. The first thing that we want the Committee to hear very clearly is that this would be a model that communities could embrace if they wanted to. We are not going into every village and saying that their controlled school and their maintained school must come together and be jointly managed because some communities are not ready and do not want to go there. However, some communities have already said that they do. The scenario is this: a small controlled primary school and a small maintained primary school in a village are both no longer viable, so close them both and bus the kids to the big town. The other option is a joint school.

For some in our community, formal integrated status is not the way they want to go. Our Catholic colleagues have worked very closely with us and the Department on this jointly managed school. It will respect ethos and will have aspects of denominational religious education in it because that is respecting the ethos of those from a Roman Catholic background. There will be some general religious education in it, and there will be well-worked-out protocols for how differences are dealt with. We have an embryonic framework document almost agreed with the Department. We have been working on it for more than two years. As you can imagine, progress has occasionally been slow, but we have got there.

We, as transferors, and our Catholic colleagues have almost signed off on that process. The Minister hopes to publish it as a guidance document for schools that might want to explore jointly managed schools. We recognise that there is potential fear of loss of identity and a fear of this being imposed on a community. That is not what we want it to be. Situations, which are not useful to name in public, have asked for this; they have asked the Churches to work together to deliver this. There are situations who will want to pilot this once the Department enables it to happen. We will want to talk to all kinds of people, political parties and the Committee about this more fully on other occasions, if you wish us to, once we get that document agreed between us.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): So, at this stage, you cannot share with us how it will work in practice.

Rev Trevor Gribben: Ian can give you some details.

Rev Dr Ian Ellis: Some of the structural issues, particularly around governance, have been hammered out, as have some of the issues around ownership; we are almost there with that. We think that the nitty-gritty of the religious education aspect is likely to be resolved at a local level between trustees, for example. Each school will have trustees of the enterprise, nominated by the transferring Churches and the Catholic trustees. That group of local trustees will be charged with making the arrangements for religious education in a school. As Trevor suggests, it will be common RE that can be delivered to everyone. Specific sacramental preparation may also be made available, particularly at primary school, to Catholic children for their sacraments, which has to be part of the curriculum. That is a local arrangement. In the circular being devised at the moment, there are some gaps still to be filled in because local solutions will be found for them.

It is about the confidence to do it. That is the point that Trevor is making. These requests are coming from the grass roots — from schools that want to do something. Perhaps they think, "The only way to preserve a school in this community is to work together with a solution", so they have asked for this. There is a great willingness in some areas; it is not for everywhere, but some communities want to pursue this and explore it. So, it is at their request that we have been encouraged to do that.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Might this be something that could be explored for the Moy, for example, which has already made the step towards looking at a shared building?

Rev Trevor Gribben: Yes. For us, shared education at its best will always be evolutionary; it has to start somewhere, but it also has to go somewhere. We are not saying that it will all end up in a jointly managed church school, an integrated school or any particular model, but, for those schools that have begun to take steps down the road, this could offer something else on an à la carte menu that could be the option that they would choose. We would advocate the very best à la carte option that they could choose. We have had no conversation with Moy, but do not illustrate from that at all. This could be another step in the evolutionary process for schools that are already working very closely together — maybe even talking about new builds together. Internally, as Churches, we want sharing to be maximised, but we want it to work locally. This could be a good step in that.

Mr Hazzard: Thanks very much, Chair, and thanks for the presentation. I want to raise a couple of issues. Trevor, you expressed concern that you do not want shared education to overgrow itself. If I am picking you up right, you are suggesting that we should not be looking at socio-economic sharing and that it should be more community- and faith-based. I may not be taking you up right, but I take exception to the term that we hear all the time, "the super-mixed schools". I grant that the religious mix may be better than in other schools, but the socio-economic mix in those schools is woeful. We have more affluent Catholics and Protestants sitting together in classes, but that is probably not doing a lot for community relations, especially in the areas that we need to act in. It is very important that we include socio-economic sharing. Am I picking you up right? What are your thoughts on that?

Rev Trevor Gribben: Thank you for coming back to us on that, Chris, so that we can be very clear. A major piece of work needs to be done on helping with socio-economic disadvantage in education. There is advantage in collaborating across socio-economic groups, to use that terrible technical phrase. However, we fear that lumping that in with shared education and with the definition of "shared education" produced by the Minister's advisory group could, in some senses, harm the key principle of moving in that other aspect of shared education. Both need to move forward, but lumping them together could harm shared education.

There is an interesting phrase in the Minister's definition: "and socio-economic". Ian has it here. It talks about "those of differing political belief and those who are experiencing socio-economic deprivation". Belfast is peculiar, with kids being bused in from all over the place. Take a provincial town, where the school that most Protestants go to and the school that most Catholics go to are basically the same socio-economically; there are not the huge divisions that there may be in some cities. Would those two schools be prohibited from developing shared education because they were not sharing across two different socio-economic groups? If people from a perceived Protestant background and a perceived Catholic background were going to work together in shared education were somehow inhibited because they did not have a socio-economic mix because they were reflecting their community, that would be crazy. That is our fear of putting it in as an "and"; if you do not have the socio-economic group, you do not tick a box and you do not access that funding. In certain communities outside Belfast, there are not the socio-economic mixes. There will always be deprivation, I am not saying that there will not, but building it in as a key requirement could damage the cross-community sharing that is so important. We do not want anything that could damage it.

Mr Hazzard: I agree. I do not want any of this process to inhibit; that is why it is important that we look to be more inclusive. I have talked in the Committee before about the Coleman report in America following desegregation. Educational outcomes did not go up; there was no improvement whatsoever because they did not tackle socio-economic division in schools. They desegregated schools, which, of course, was right, but there was no apparent lift in educational outcomes. My worry for this process is that we will get so overlooked by the need to sit orange and green beside each other in classrooms that we do not look at the real reasons why educational outcomes are not as good as they should be.

You talked a bit about the jointly managed school model, which is very interesting. How does it differ from an integrated school, for example? Are you looking at joint-faith models in England? Is that where that is coming from?

Rev Dr Ian Ellis: We visited two in Liverpool: a primary and a post-primary and saw it at work. You cannot replicate what happens in Liverpool here because that was a mix of an Anglican school and a Catholic school, so it was just two identities. There were not so many Presbyterians or Methodists around.

Rev Trevor Gribben: There is no place for Presbyterians in Liverpool.

Rev Dr Ian Ellis: It is more complex here because there is a non-denominational element in the controlled sector. That is where we got the concept, and it works effectively. It is not a big player in the English economy of schools; it is a small component of their schools. There are still Church of England schools, Catholic Church schools as well as Jewish schools and Muslim schools. It is not a big player on the English scene, but we felt that it was worth exploring here. The conversations with our Catholic colleagues took us there.

Your question was about the difference between "Integrated" — with a capital "I" — and this approach. The difference is that our Catholic colleagues are keen to be involved in the enterprise; they want to be there as foundation trustees. Our Catholic colleagues here are less happy with being involved in the integrated sector. I am not —

Mr Lunn: Why do you keep looking at me? [Laughter.]

Rev Dr Ian Ellis: — giving away any secrets. I do not know why I am looking in that direction.

Rev Trevor Gribben: We suspect that some questions might come from that end of the table.

Rev Dr Ian Ellis: That is well known. I think that they feel some kind of consonance with us and what we are doing. They wish to be involved in doing that with us. If they are involved in the enterprise from the outset, it comes with the possibility of better community buy-in. I think that that is what we are looking at.

Mr Hazzard: Again, I am thinking of going towards ownership, especially for controlled schools that did not transfer. Where does that issue take us?

Rev Dr Ian Ellis: There are only a couple left. We have three Church of Ireland schools that never transferred. Trevor has one Presbyterian school.

Rev Trevor Gribben: I have one Presbyterian school that is keen to transfer but cannot get the Department organised to enable that to happen. We are working on it.

Rev Dr Ian Ellis: It is down to very small numbers.

Mr Hazzard: Finally, who drives that process. Is it you?

Rev Dr Ian Ellis: It is driven locally; local churches just decided not to transfer their schools.

Mr Hazzard: I mean who drives that [Inaudible.]

Rev Dr Ian Ellis: Oh, right. It has been driven by TRC and the bishops.

Rev Trevor Gribben: We have worked up the scheme, which will then be available for local communities to buy into if that is what works in a locally. If folk from the controlled sector and transferor governors came and talked to us, we would of course put the scheme before them. There would probably be an advocate for it if it is a local situation. It is not imposed, but, as transferors and Catholic bishops, we have worked up this scheme jointly with the Department. The Minister has facilitated us and provided officials who have been dedicated and focused on this.

As one, I suppose, appendix of a shared education document, this is one way in which it might work. We also feel strongly — Ian made the point earlier — that it will fulfil every legal requirement in legislation of what an integrated school is, which, in legislation, has a small "i" — it is not a sector, but a concept — because, unlike in some other schools, which, for instance, Judge Treacy had problems with, it will be management and schooling that are shared. In every sense, we feel that, if other schools have benefited from legislation, these schools will benefit from exactly the same legislation.

Mr Hazzard: It is an interesting development.

Mr Kinahan: I am pleased to hear about the joint faiths. I sit here struggling with the definition. When I looked at it, what I found was that there was not enough flexibility in it. Any types of schools that felt that they could do more sharing of any type needed to be included in it. You seem to be pushing it just down the sectoral side, which worries me because schools may be in your sector, but you have different ethnic minorities and whole mixtures in there, whether you are talking about the super-mix school right the way through to one that is just a mixture of Protestant cultures. There are so many needing it.

I would like to explore the sectoral side. Do you see the sectors as controlled and maintained or do you see the Governing Bodies Association as being another sector? In that case, we have to get you all to the point where you have the same powers and the same organisations. At the moment, we have difference in how each is set up. Do you see it as all the sectors or as just the main two?

Rev Dr Ian Ellis: Our focus is on controlled schools and the controlled schools support body, but if other groups of schools have sectoral support bodies, we will work with them, of course, Danny. Some of us were involved in the Queen's shared education programme and the PI programme in the North Eastern Board and the Fermanagh Trust. I have some experience of seeing that in action.

What was interesting about the Queen's one, with which we were closely involved, was that it was cross-sectoral across faiths and types of schools. You often saw little projects between a grammar school and a secondary school, a grammar school and a primary school or a secondary school and a special school. Each was interesting in itself, and there was obvious educational benefit in it. The thing that we have found from our experience is that the wider the sharing that is available, the better it can be. Particularly where there was sharing between primary and secondary or primary and grammar schools, there was sharing of expertise between staff and facilities that primary schools might not have had, which really did improve and enrich the quality of educational experience for children. We do not see it as a narrow focus on Catholic/Protestant sectors. We need to finds ways right across the educational system of developing sharing. Those programmes at Queen's and the other programmes led the way. That may be the point that Donald is making: where there have been good experiences when schools have taken part in those programmes is possibly where we need to start to build and do more.

Rev Trevor Gribben: We felt that the definition that the Minister's advisory group came up with was a good one, that shared education:

To add other things such as socio-economic is unhelpful. We refer the Committee to that definition of shared education from an advisory group whose balance, to be honest, we had concerns about. We had a challenging meeting with them because of perceived presuppositions of some of its members. However, it came out with that agreed definition, and we do not know why the Department has chosen not to adopt it and to add bits to it.

That is our main point. It referred to sectors — we did not create the sectors; it was the Minister's advisory group that used that definition.

Mr Kinahan: If we are to amend the definition when the Bill comes forward, we need to have flexibility in it. Last week, I asked the Department who should be the body that decides on flexibility. I asked, "If you were to keep it to your definition but just allow it to be flexible to look at other areas so that you could maximise sharing, who should that body be?"

Should we set up a separate body that has you all represented, or should it be the Education Authority? Last week, the Department wanted the Education Authority to do it. Do we need a body that looks at other types of sharing as they arise so you are not stuck at always looking at set types?

Rev Dr Ian Ellis: The Education Authority has a duty to consult sectoral bodies, so I would have thought that the Education Authority was the basis of it, but it has to involve the sectoral support bodies.

Rev Trevor Gribben: The problem for us is that you can use "sharing" in its widest sense. It goes back to Chris's point: we agree with sharing between socio-economic groups, but this document has a specific definition of "shared education". We do not want that definition to be so widened that the core is lost. By all means develop and do all those other things — socio-economic, sharing with a small "s", and between other sectors and schools, whatever they might be — but do not lose the core definition of what shared education is. Do not ignore one of the core problems that we have in this community: we need to move from a segregated education system to more sharing in education. Do not lose that by adding all the other bits and pieces. That is our plea.

Mr Kinahan: We also heard from the departmental witnesses last week that they felt that no extra resources were needed, given the difficult budget times that we are in. Yet they did at one stage say they might need a little bit of pump-priming, or words to that effect. Do you feel that there needs to be priming?

We know that £500 million of capital is sitting there to be borrowed against, but do you think that there is a need, or can we just do it through the area-learning communities or yourselves? Can get away with not putting extra resources into it?

Rev Trevor Gribben: Can you do anything worthwhile without resources? The answer is no. How those resources flow is a key factor. For instance, a control sector body, if and when it ever gets up and running, will be funded. The Minister is committed to that, and we accept that commitment100%, and we thank the Minister and the Department for it.

The other sectoral bodies will also be funded. Part of their job will be to develop shared education, so some of the advisory, support, encouragement and promotion will come through sectoral bodies that will be funded, so it is indirect funding.

There needs to be something to incentivise schools directly. Staff development will be important. There is no point in putting pupils together if staff are not equipped to deal with the difficult questions. We would be up-front and say clearly that there is expertise in the integrated sector that can be shared with schools that are developing shared education.

We want that to be shared in the same way as the expertise of special schools in dealing with special needs children can be shared with other schools.

There has to be investment. It is about how that flows. A dedicated fund called the shared education fund is probably not the best way forward. Every other sectoral body has obligations, including through staff development, for shared education through various funding pots.

Mr Lunn: Thank you for your presentation. I was taken by Danny's comment about a little bit of pump-priming. The pump-priming is £20 million from Atlantic Philanthropies. That will certainly provide an opportunity to test the process. I wonder what happens when that runs out, but we will see; that is for another day. I want to ask you a bit more about your joint management concept. Donald, you said that it is not a case of one-size-fits-all. Frankly, does it mean two schools under one roof with joint management, or does it mean one school under one roof with joint management? What is your ideal?

Rev Dr Ian Ellis: A jointly managed church school in our vision would be one school under one roof. There would be joint trustees, governance that reflected the community and the teaching staff and a common curriculum. It would effectively be a single school under one management.

Mr Lunn: An amalgamation of the two schools, but retaining joint authority — not the Moy concept.

Rev Dr Ian Ellis: In the sense of physical separation? No, it would be a single school.

Mr Lunn: You said that you have had a lot of cooperation from the Catholic trustees, and that is good. However, when CCMS was here not too long ago, they set their face implacably against — it is all in Hansard — any attempt to amalgamate one of their maintained schools with a controlled school. They will not have it. Malachy Crudden commented that their remit is to open, close and maintain Catholic maintained schools. It was absolutely clear what they meant: before they would allow an amalgamation — I am staying away from the "I" word, whether a big "I" or a small "i" — they would close the maintained school and see the Catholic children going to the nearest maintained school. That is their attitude, so I am mildly surprised, and encouraged, that they are prepared to cooperate with you. They would not have sanctioned the Moy situation if that had meant an amalgamation of the two schools. They fought against it tooth and nail until it was obviously the solution that the community wanted. Are you satisfied with the level of cooperation that you are —

Rev Trevor Gribben: Perhaps I can put this on record: Moy is a local solution that is acceptable to the community, which we support. The Moy solution might evolve further, and we would not oppose that. We want to say that very clearly, in case there is any misunderstanding. It is a local solution that works, and we encourage that. The roles of CCMS and of the Catholic trustees are a mystery to a mere Presbyterian like me. Those people need to answer for themselves. CCMS is a statutory body with statutory functions, and it does certain things. The Catholic trustees are a different group; they effectively own the schools. We have been working with the Catholic trustees as colleagues. They are happy to develop a new model, but it is not there yet. If you ask the question now, there is no model called "jointly managed church schools". There is no departmental guidance and no legislative backup if needed.

Our Catholic colleagues have said that they will not go in the direction of integration with a capital "I". We believe that this is a creative solution that can be embraced both by transferors and Catholic trustees. This could change the landscape. We do not think that it will roll out and every school in Northern Ireland will suddenly become jointly managed; we are not stupid. We believe, however, that it could be a local solution for a significant number of situations. If you ask the question now of a statutory body with certain statutory functions, you will undoubtedly get an answer. If you ask the Catholic trustees whether they are willing to continue to develop this model with transferors and the Department, you will, I assume, get a different answer, but, obviously, the Catholic trustees need to answer that themselves.

Mr Lunn: There has been some progress in the Republic along those lines.

Rev Trevor Gribben: There has. Education in the Republic is a totally different landscape. Donald knows much more about it than I do.

Rev Donald Ker: We are starting from a small base. Yes, patronage of schools in the Republic is a very open question. The Department is now exploring the possibility of others being patrons. The Catholic bishops in the Republic have clearly stated that they do not necessarily want to be patron of nearly every school in the state. Changes are taking place there, and we sense that changes are taking place here as well.

Mr Lunn: I am still thinking about joint management. If what you are proposing comes to pass and you get the right level of cooperation from the Catholic trustees or CCMS or both — I think it really has to be from both — that is fine with me. Everybody keeps looking at me when anybody says "integrated". That would, in my opinion, be a pretty good solution.

Rev Trevor Gribben: We will write that down.

Mr Lunn: Hansard is writing it down. As long as it means one joint school, not two schools.

Rev Donald Ker: That is exactly the model.

Mr Lunn: I am glad to hear that.

Rev Trevor Gribben: "Alliance Party supports jointly managed church schools" will be the headline for the journalists at the back.

Mr Lunn: They are around somewhere. That was the main question that I wanted to ask you but I wanted to touch on one other thing. I see in your paper that the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland passed a motion in 2014 supporting shared education. That is warmly welcomed. In the 40-odd years since the opening of the first integrated school, has either the general assembly, the general synod of the Church of Ireland or the Methodist conference ever passed a similar motion in support of integrated education?

Rev Trevor Gribben: I am not as old as you, Trevor; I think that is an objective truth.

Mr Lunn: I am really getting it today. [Laughter.]

Rev Trevor Gribben: You do that to friends. To be honest, I am not sure. I am clerk of the general assembly, but I have not been around that long. I know that the general assembly has been supportive of integrated education where that is what parents and local communities want. That has been stated in reports, whether or not we passed a specific resolution. It is not just the general assembly, although we quoted its text in the paper. Exactly the same resolution was passed in the general synod and the Methodist conference. We purposely did that in the same year so that we, as education secretaries, could go into the public domain as strong advocates of shared education with Church policy behind us.

We wanted the general assembly, the general synod and the Methodist conference to have that debate. We had very good debates, and it was strongly welcomed, because it is evolutionary, rather than one-size-fits-all. It can work itself out in local circumstances, and we are strongly in favour of that. That is a good thing. There are lots of other things that we are strongly in favour of, but have maybe not passed resolutions about. That is a positive statement. We see integrated education with a capital "I" as part of shared education, so, by definition, we are in favour of integrated education where that is the appropriate solution.

Rev Donald Ker: Whatever a body formally says, it is what actually happens on the ground that matters. If you look at the various schools under the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education throughout Northern Ireland, you will find support from Churches for what those schools do in governance and everyday life.

Mr Lunn: I would not argue with that at all. I am pleased that you have passed such a resolution. I sense that there is a bit of relief out there that the emphasis has moved from the push for integrated education to what some people see as a slightly lesser way out, which is shared education. It is very difficult not to sound as if I am against shared education, because I am not; it has been going on for years. It is a perfectly natural thing to do, and it has educational benefits. I must say that the Department prefers to emphasise the educational benefit rather than the sociological benefits that you would, obviously and naturally, subscribe to. We will have to see where it all goes. I am encouraged by the joint management concept.

Mr Rogers: Reverend gentlemen, you are very welcome. Your presentation has been very interesting, but even more telling is your response to some of the questions that have been asked. Rev Ian, one of your telling comments was when you said:

I get the sense of frustration that, maybe, the focus of education, never mind shared education, gets a bit blurred when we try to address everything. You have an ally, Trevor, when you say that Department policy is not always as joined up as it could be. There is frustration. Are there frustrations in respect of the entitlement framework and the proposed cuts, for example, or the entitlement framework with the early learning community, which is a fantastic way of developing shared education? Are there frustrations with recent funding? Maybe shared education needs to recognise more fully when good sharing is going on within one school, rather than having to make that link with a school from a different background.

Rev Trevor Gribben: I recently talked to colleagues over coffee about a past life as a parish minister in my first charge in south Tyrone. The youth club in the village was in our church hall. That is all there was in the village. The youth club was 60% Protestant and 40% Catholic. We could not get any grants for cross-community youth work, and we had to work with a Catholic youth club to get those grants, even though, every Tuesday night, we were doing cross-community youth work. That was a fatal flaw in the Department's funding of youth work. There is a fatal flaw in shared education if the Department does not recognise that, in some places, it is happening within schools and needs to be incentivised. Children from different perceived communities are working and learning together. That can happen within one school; it happens in an integrated school. That is a shared education school, and that should be incentivised. It happens. I do not want to name schools, but we can all name schools that are perceived to be Protestant or Catholic but which have significant numbers of the other community within them. That needs to be affirmed and incentivised, as should schools of one group or the other working together. It has to be all-embracing. Whilst we want shared education to be mainstreamed, our fear is of any bureaucracy that wants to make it a particular type or no type. We want to guard against that as this progresses.

Rev Dr Ian Ellis: Your point about departmental policies not always being aligned is a good one. In the midst of our discussions about the jointly managed approach, it became clear that the transport policy that existed was going to count against any kind of sharing in that way. To its credit, the Department has done some work on that and is making proposals around how that might be approached. That is the case with so many different aspects of the Departments' work. They are all working in different little silos; they are not always talking to one another. It is whenever you try something new that you suddenly realise that things run up against one another rather than work with one another. That has been our experience. It is a frustration.

Mr Rogers: This came across in our visit to Moy, but we know it from our own communities as well: local context demands a local solution. You said that ETI must take that on board. That is a very relevant point. You could have two schools that are next door to each other in an urban environment, but it is very different in a rural environment, where you may be six miles from any school. How should ETI report sharing?

Rev Trevor Gribben: As an art, not a science. That is probably very different thinking for those who want to fill in forms and tick boxes. I am not saying that inspectors just tick boxes, but this really is an art, not a science. Therefore, those who seek to assess it must come with that mindset. That is vital. That could be rolled out by ETI in lots of areas of education. It likes to measure against tick boxes and criteria; it does not recognise lots of good things that are happening, but that is a matter for another day.

Mr Rogers: Yes, but you raise a very relevant point. In rural areas in particular, it can be much more difficult to work that through.

Mr Newton: I thank the witnesses for coming today. I do not really have a lot of questions; they are more comments. I agree with the teacher training comments that were made. It was sad that the blunt instrument of budget was used in such a manner. It requires a bit more thought to achieve teacher training together.

You have consistently referred to integrated education with a large "I" and with a small "i". For my children, my wife and I chose integrated education with a large "I": they went to Methodist College, which is the finest example of integrated education.

Rev Trevor Gribben: How much did you pay him, Donald?

Rev Donald Ker: I have to declare an interest in that I am a governor thereof. Thank you.

Mr Newton: When the Committee held a meeting in the college, we were impressed by the initiatives that Methodist College had undertaken. It undertook those when, effectively, there were no incentives whatsoever. In fact, it might sometimes have worked against it. I was not aware that Methody had been stretching out on socio-economic issues. Indeed, it recognised that, in terms of contact with other schools that may have been in less favoured areas, it needed to provide practical support as well as educational support for the encouragement and the contact between Methodist College and local primary schools, and practical support when youngsters were able to get into Methodist College. If we can achieve that kind of model to address the academic issues and the socio-economic issues, there is a model that perhaps needs to be reflected in some way in where we are coming from.

I will finish by saying that the comment about ETI needing to embrace an approach to achieving shared education as an art rather than a science is probably very telling and relevant.

Rev Dr Ian Ellis: The area learning communities are the system's way of approaching sharing, in a way. The needs of driving a curriculum with 24 to 27 subjects should encourage schools to think about more of that sharing. Good educational outcomes should be a primary reason for sharing as well as the community benefits. We would like to think that that area learning community approach could be developed. Any reduction in the funding for that is concerning. Some area learning communities work better than others. There are some good examples of that, and some that have been not just so effective. That seems to us to be a key way of doing it. Sir George Bain pointed that out a very long time ago in his report into our education and schools system. That is probably the best place for that to begin and that is now going to be within the Education Authority's remit.

Mr Craig: It is good to see you all again. I apologise for being late this morning, but I caught most of what you said. I was listening intently to what you were saying, Trevor, about how you were going to do a joint school, instead of having almost two separate schools in the one building. I am not playing devil's advocate but I am just curious about how that would work for you. There seems to be a bit of a stumbling block when it comes to the maintained sector, and that is the Catholic certificate. How would you get around that issue, or has that been agreed?

Rev Trevor Gribben: We have not got into the detail of that. There is a fairly high-level document, which is being drawn up by the Department with our assistance, but those kinds of issues do need to be dealt with. I am sure, Jonathan, that you are not trying to take us into a contentious debate about the Catholic certificate in religious education.

Mr Craig: No, I am not —

Rev Trevor Gribben: Good.

Mr Craig: — because I think I nearly gave one of the bishops a heart attack on that issue.

Rev Trevor Gribben: We feel that we would be in a better place if such certificates no longer existed, and, if they did exist, were not used as essential criteria in appointments. They may well be desirable criteria, like a football coaching certificate or whatever certificate a teacher will come to interview with. Hopefully, before we ever get to a jointly managed church school, we will be in a better place with regard to the Catholic certificate, but we have not got into the detail of those specifics yet.

Mr Craig: Again, do not get me wrong; I have absolutely no opposition whatsoever to faith-based education. I just have a question mark in my mind about whether the state should be paying for it.

The Equality Commission was here last week, and I distinctly picked up that it had a raft of issues around the faith-based sector, which is not really the controlled sector. We know that, at present, it has little or no influence over that sector because of the exemption. Would you support the exemption staying or be happy to see it lifted?

Rev Trevor Gribben: It is good to have the easy questions towards the end.

Rev Dr Ian Ellis: We were involved in general discussions around that a number of years ago when the Equality Commission was reviewing the certificate. At the end of that review, there was a recommendation to OFMDFM that it should cease to be a requirement post-primary. I think that the Catholic Church since then, through CCMS, has probably accepted that it would no longer be a requirement for employment in the post-primary sector, but I think that they are strongly of the view that it is an essential component of primary education.

We see movement in that they have accepted that it should be seen as no longer a requirement for general employment in the post-primary sector. I suppose what Trevor has said is where we are: in an ideal world, we really ought not to have any such barriers. However, we recognise that Catholic parents send their children to school and expect there to be preparation for a Catholic way of life and a Catholic way of being a Christian. Around that, I guess, there needs to be a recognition that the teachers providing that education meet a certain standard for the Catholic Church. I think the room for wriggle within that is around who prepares the children for the sacramental aspects and whether there is enough common ground between the Churches to say that other teachers can teach common religious education. I think that that is what the discussion is around. That is where we are with that. It is up for discussion and, as I said earlier, these things will probably be decided at a local level.

Rev Trevor Gribben: There are exceptions in all kinds of things but, on the wider issue of legislation generally, we believe that there needs to be a lot of discussion about this before steps that could have unforeseen consequences are taken. That is why we stated, in response to the Minister's consultation, that we would have major concerns about schools being designated as public authorities and coming under all of section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act. As we stated earlier, we feel that one of the unforeseen consequences of that would be the sheer administrative burden placed on schools to fulfil all the criteria that public authorities have to fulfil. That does not mean that we are opposed to schools developing equality etc; we are not. However, we feel that there needs to be a lot more consultation on the blunt instrument of defining schools as public authorities and sweeping away the current framework. To slip it in as a proposal in the midst of a shared education consultation is not the best place for it. It needs to be a separate consultation. There should be thorough discussion, and all of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and concerns about the proposal should be looked at.

Mr Craig: It is an interesting one, gentlemen. Forgive me for asking those awkward questions; that was me thinking out loud. I find that the devil is always in the detail with a lot of this stuff. I take it that you would look more kindly on locally based solutions for local areas. That is what I am clearly picking up from all of you. There is another aspect to this: controlled schools and sectors get everyone from all backgrounds, including the Muslim background, which brings its own challenges in how you accommodate their faith. I know of local solutions that were found in Lagan Valley, and I have no difficulty with them. I wish you all the best in the efforts that you are making around shared education.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): No other members have indicated that they wish to ask a question. Thank you for your presentation. Given your interest, you are very welcome to stay to hear the Department talk about the Education Authority. If you wish to stay in the Public Gallery, you are very welcome.

Rev Trevor Gribben: We might stay for a little while, Chair. Thank you for your invitation and for having us today.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Thank you very much.