Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): I welcome Teresa Graham, Northern Ireland president of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT); Justin McCamphill, the national official from NASUWT; Gillian Dunlop, past president of the Ulster Teachers' Union (UTU), and Diane Nugent, past president of the UTU. You are very welcome. Thank you for coming. You may make an opening statement, and members will follow up with questions.

Ms Gillian Dunlop (Ulster Teachers' Union): We have come as two separate unions, so, with your permission, representatives from each of the unions will speak. I teach at a controlled primary school in Lisburn.

Ms Diane Nugent (Ulster Teachers' Union): I am from Park School, special educational needs.

Ms Dunlop: The Ulster Teachers' Union represents 6,000 teachers in all sectors. We feel that the funding by DE of two separate management systems — the new Education Authority and the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS) — is not conducive to shared education or, indeed, a shared future. Shared education can go forward only on the premise that both sides are willing to engage in a process where there could be common ground and understanding of the purpose of shared education. The Education Authority and the CCMS do not appear to have a consensual understanding or demonstrate a shared structural system that models the Department's vision for education. These apparent barriers in the management system inhibit shared learning and need to be addressed urgently if progress is to be made. In this respect, UTU still believes in a single education authority. Recently, there was also the contentious proposal to merge the teacher training colleges, and UTU believes that this is a missed opportunity in the Province.

In the interim, where there is a significant political impasse, shared education has to be a conscious part of the political discourse, and there has to be genuine systemic change. The membership of UTU support the policy and the proposed legislation to advance shared education; and we will reply before the deadline next week. UTU is willing to engage and provide examples of cost-effective practice that already exist — we are not recreating things — and that work for the communities we serve.

The main mechanism for enabling shared education is sound investment. UTU believes that failure to provide this investment is a false economy. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has stipulated in many reports that countries that invest in education programmes recover from austerity much more quickly. In Northern Ireland, such investment also helps to secure a shared future for us all. Over the past few years, a lot of the funding has come, as we are all aware, from Atlantic Philanthropies. Schools also draw down a lot of EU Peace money, and the International Fund for Ireland (IFI) has provided much needed support for all shared education practices. We acknowledge that Queen's University Belfast has taken a lead role in much of the work.

The community relations, equality and diversity (CRED) policy and 'Classrooms Re-imagined: Education in Diversity and Inclusion for Teachers' (CREDIT) courses for our teachers have been welcomed by UTU and schools. Unfortunately, not all schools have been able to avail of this because of funding. We were horrified to hear, after the consultation ended, that funding is being withdrawn from CRED. If funding can be drawn down from Atlantic Philanthropies, we certainly feel that the CREDIT training and CRED programme should stay.

Ms Nugent: We also believe that this Committee should recognise that cohorts of schools have been involved in the Queen's University Belfast shared education programme since 2007. In my own experience of leading a shared education programme, which involved two special needs schools and a university, the pupils benefited greatly from their experience of sharing. Now that the three years of funding and the effective work have finished, the momentum gained by pupils, staff and the communities in each school has stopped. Due to lack of funding for the ongoing projects, the schools are back at square one. Unfortunately, no one in DE had the foresight to continue the funding and fulfil the vision.

Some examples of shared education practice are as follows: the enhanced qualifications framework; science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects in rural primary schools, and shared teacher initiatives, which were evaluated and found to be successful, with benefits for the economy, education and for reconciliation. 'How to Create and Maintain Primary Partnerships' was an excellent publication, but the project was never rolled out across the Province, and, sadly, as for all the effective initiatives, the funding has all but ended, with the result that the good work is now operating on a skeleton budget or not at all. The momentum gained from sharing has been dissipated, and if funding is not provided to ignite the successful transformational work that was being carried out then it has been all but lost.

DE needs to make shared education mainstream as soon as possible: there have been enough pilots and research to show that it works. There is a wealth of evidence highlighting that, where clustering occurs, neighbouring schools that work cooperatively are able to make more effective use of the resources available, whether it is through, as Gillian said, CRED, the social investment fund (SIF), or the entitlement framework. Indeed, at the UTU/Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) joint leadership conference in November 2013, each of the primary and post-primary schools from across the Province highlighted, in their presentations about shared education, the great impact of sharing not only on their schools but on the local community. These examples were not contrived, but were real, verbatim accounts of the success of shared education and the pride those communities had in their creativity, innovation and imagination. The Education Minister stated that this is what is needed to advance shared education.

Such advancement was made possible by the autonomy of schools to find ways to support the most vulnerable children in their localities. As a result, shared education leaders have demonstrated the capacity to take risks and break vicious cycles of hatred, ignorance and single-mindedness in many of their communities. It is those negative views that continue to blight much of the work in our education system; and shared education, we believe, can help to address or, indeed, eradicate that.

New buildings can also help to create a good working environment on neutral territory, and UTU welcomes the ongoing commitment to the shared education campuses programme. However, if we are to create a culture of shared education, we are dependent on the quality of our teachers, and the same investment has to be made in continuing professional development of teachers, as in the CREDIT modules at Stranmillis and shared education at Queen's University that is available to teachers in all sectors. Teachers need support on how to enable collaboration, and schools need coordinators to lead shared education, with roles recognised and teachers remunerated for their leadership skills and expertise.

Ms Dunlop: How can we ensure that all schools in Northern Ireland engage in shared education? UTU believes that the current funding model of bums on seats and the selective system militates against sharing, as it puts schools in competition with one another. Schools need to be supported to become innovative in their approach to enrolment, and that means addressing the detrimental competition between schools and sectors and, instead, promoting Every School a Good School.

Unfortunately, this Committee and the Assembly continue to demand league tables and school results from the Department, the publication of which creates turmoil and competition for us. Schools and communities are very apprehensive about sharing. As trust is the social glue of any community, these actions erode the bedrock on which shared education must advance.

There are already workable models across Northern Ireland, such as in Ballycastle and in the west of the Province; and school leaders and boards of governors should be afforded the autonomy to decide what model best suits the needs of the pupils, staff and school communities.

Ms Nugent: To return to finance; one example of how all pupils could benefit is through a shared education premium that would be incorporated into the funding formula. The Minister, as I am sure you are aware, announced a £58 million budget for the next four years. If we take it that there are 335,366 pupils in Northern Ireland, according to the October census, then we can do a calculation. If we divide the £58 million by that number of pupils, it gives £172·95 per pupil that could be spent on education within the age-weighted pupil unit (AWPU). We believe that this would ensure that all pupils are given the opportunity to have shared experiences in their education. Furthermore, ring-fencing the money would ensure that shared activities are carried out in every school in Northern Ireland and would give shared education the status it deserves.

UTU believes that seven years of pilots is enough, and that now it is time for shared education to be rolled out universally. Schools and communities could still apply for additional funding to enhance the experiences of pupils as they saw fit.

Furthermore, UTU believes that while funding should support continuing professional development (CPD) of teachers, other outside agency professionals should also be funded to deal with the communities. We also believe that parents play an integral part in ensuring that shared activities take place, and their voices also need to be heard and fully supported by schools and outside agencies. Furthermore, UTU believes that boards of governors should be given training on shared education and should fully support the shared views and activities taking place in schools. The new Education Authority and CCMS need to provide support and advice for realistic, feasible, long-term, workable arrangements for schools. The Education Authority must be cognisant of the views of all school stakeholders and facilitate realistic consultation time frames that enable everyone to respond to transformational changes suggested for schools.

Finally, UTU believes that the introduction of a Shared Education Bill will go far to advancing the work of shared education and ensuring that all schools develop a positive ethos towards sharing. This will enable schools to contribute towards the Programme for Government's shared future agenda.

Mr Justin McCamphill (National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers): I am the national official for Northern Ireland. Before taking up my role with the union, I spent 19 years in the classroom. My colleague Teresa Graham is president of the NASUWT in Northern Ireland. You received our submission back in October. We will also be submitting a draft response to the Department of Education's consultation on shared education before the end of the week. I will speak on the nature and definition of shared and integrated education, the key barriers and enablers, and the models of good practice we have identified from other jurisdictions.

Teresa will outline what priorities and actions need to be taken to improve sharing and integration, why the CRED policy should remain in place and the need to engage more effectively with parents, carers and the role of special schools.

I believe that the NASUWT brings a unique perspective to the debate on shared and integrated education. Although we were established here only in the 1960s, we have worked assiduously to recruit from both sides of the community to become the largest teachers' union in Northern Ireland. Our team of elected officials and staff reflect the composition of the teaching workforce. We are the largest teaching union in east Belfast, west Belfast, south Armagh and north Down.

Despite the divisions in our education system, NASUWT members choose to work together regardless of the sectors they teach in. It is our belief that education has a critical role to play promoting the reconciliation of our people and the development of safe, just, inclusive and tolerant communities. Like the ministerial advisory group, we believe that shared education has to be about more than just the religious beliefs of pupils, parents and wider communities but also their socio-economic status. Our schools are divided on class lines as well as on religious lines. To have real shared education, we must address all divisions in education. We agree that there should be a commonly recognised working definition of shared education and agree with the definition put forward by the ministerial advisory group. Given the acceptance by the Minister and the ministerial advisory group of that definition, it is not clear why it has not been incorporated into the draft Shared Education Bill published by the Department of Education. Maybe someone around this table knows the answer to that.

If shared education is to be established on a statutory basis, it is important that the Department sets out its reasons for departing from the definition of shared education contained in its remit to the ministerial advisory group.

While the definition of shared education may still be under consideration, we all have a common understanding of integrated education already, which is quite distinct from shared education. Integrated schools have an important and legitimate role to play in the education system in Northern Ireland and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. As a union, we are concerned by the perception that DE has failed to discharge its statutory responsibility to encourage and facilitate integrated education. We hope that the Committee holds the Department to account for that failure.

The NASUWT will continue to offer its full support to the integrated sector, in light of the critical contribution it is able to make to advancing shared education across Northern Ireland. The union is clear that, in viable circumstances, active consideration should continue to be given to establishing education provision on an integrated basis. However, the NASUWT recognises that, as currently constituted, integrated skills in education provision are in settings with a Christian character. Given the increasingly diverse nature of Northern Irish society, it must be recognised that many parents would prefer, if given the choice, to express a preference for education that is provided on an entirely non-denominational basis for their children. Where there is not the demand for integrated education in a particular locality, there should be no barrier to the establishment of other approaches to shared education that are tailored to the needs and circumstances of local communities.

We believe that the promotion of shared education should not be a statutory duty on the basis proposed by DE until a clear and coherent implementation framework is introduced. If not, it would lead to the imposition of duties on DE schools and other public bodies, including the Education Authority, that they may not be in a position to discharge effectively.

We cannot discuss shared education without addressing what I believe to be the elephant in the room; academic selection. As a union, we are opposed to the current system of academic selection in Northern Ireland. However, given that the issue of academic selection will not be resolved to everyone's satisfaction any time soon, shared education draws attention to the ways in which academically selective schools might contribute effectively to the learning of all children and young people. The Committee should be giving consideration to the ways in which academically selective schools can be integrated into genuinely collaborative arrangements with non-selective schools. This collaboration, if it is to be meaningful, would need to include provision, where appropriate, for selective pupils to take an active and direct role in the education of pupils enrolled at other schools as part of their contribution to local learning partnerships.

One of the barriers to shared education is the accountability regime. The NASUWT is clear that a fit-for-purpose framework of accountability is critical to ensuring that public trust and confidence in the education system can continue to be secured. Those responsible for the accountability system must ensure that it does not operate in ways that contradict or undermine shared education. The increasingly high stakes nature of the Education and Training Inspectorate (ETI) establishes powerful incentives for schools and other learning providers to focus on their own pupil performance indicators rather than on addressing, through collaboration, the needs of all learners in the communities they serve. It is evident that, at present, the current framework for holding schools to account in Northern Ireland works against the establishment of effective, collaborative arrangements between schools.

We need to address, in a context where greater emphasis is placed on shared education, that a growing number of pupils, although remaining formally enrolled in one school, would receive education in more than one setting. In such circumstances, we believe that it would be inappropriate to continue to attempt to hold schools to account for their performances solely on the basis of the progress and achievement of the pupils on their rolls. It is therefore evident that building effective collaboration between institutions would require a fundamental review of the way in which schools are held to account for the work that they undertake collectively with other settings.

Schools need to be incentivised to focus to a greater extent on the work they undertake in collaboration with other settings, including their contribution to the education of pupils enrolled in other schools. There is now an opportunity to explore alternative policy options for school accountability in Northern Ireland. We need to learn from those countries that are often cited as high performing or fast improving as to how they are able to establish and sustain accountability rated processes that maintain high levels of public confidence and support system development improvement without use of the high stakes approaches to school accountability that characterised the arrangements in Northern Ireland.

There are great stories of shared education that we can all share, but it is evident that more attention needs to be paid to developing the capacity of institutions to embed collaborative arrangements in areas where there is no history of partnership working. Schools need time, additional resources and support to be able to develop and implement effective partnerships.

We believe that the primary responsibility for shared education should be with the Department of Education and not with the new Education Authority. Until the Education Authority is established, it is not clear whether it will have the capacity to deploy staff effectively or would commit to do so in a way that is consistent with DE's policy objectives in relation to shared education. Given the system-wide level importance of the shared education agenda, the NASUWT believes that giving responsibility for the deployment of support staff to the Education Authority would create unacceptable risks to the successful implementation of that policy. The union can therefore identify no reason why staff who are appointed to work in shared education partnerships should not fall within the direct remit and direction of DE.

We also need to address issues relating to the training and development of teachers and school leaders working within a shared education context. The effective development of shared education will not be possible without a credible professional training and development strategy.

It is critical that clarity is provided in the models of funding as a matter of urgency before any attempt is made to begin the implementation of shared education on a wider scale. We seek clarity on how the Department intends to secure the extra £25 million of funding that was identified in its consultation document and the basis upon which it will be distributed. It also needs to clarify what relationship, if any, that funding has to the £500 million capital funds that were referenced in the Stormont House Agreement or to the existing shared educational campuses programme.

The union is clear that collaborative arrangements between schools can secure the more effective use of finite resources through the generation of economies of scale and by minimising unnecessary duplication. However, it is essential that any proposals for the development of local shared education arrangements are not used as a pretext for attempts to reduce overall levels of current spending in the schools sector or undermine the job security of members of the school workforce through the imposition of inappropriate approaches to school rationalisation.

As a union, we represent teachers who are already trying to juggle a massive workload while delivering one of the best education systems in the world. Inter-school partnership arrangements must be properly assessed in their impact on teacher workload. That assessment must examine the capacity for institutions to cope with the changes and the capacity of the workforce in the areas of time, knowledge and skills. That is particularly important with the increased demands that may be made of teachers and school leaders in the future development of shared education campuses.

In our annual survey of teacher opinion last year, we found that 84% of teachers and school leaders in Northern Ireland cite excessive workload as their main concern. Attempts, therefore, to progress a shared education agenda in ways that do not take meaningful account of those pressures and that would further intensify the workload demands on teachers and school leaders would be entirely unacceptable and, therefore, unsuccessful.

I note with interest that the Committee is interested in evidence from other jurisdictions that could provide some support for the development of shared education. The development of education policy in Northern Ireland must acknowledge the unique post-conflict context in which the education system operates. We must therefore resist simplistic attempts to transplant approaches from other jurisdictions that do not take account of the particular circumstances that pertain in Northern Ireland. However, the NASUWT is clear that it is possible to identify some policy lessons from other jurisdictions that are relevant to the development of shared education. The main lesson I would highlight is the avoidance of the privatisation of education as happens elsewhere. The status of education as a public good means that policy and practice should not only seek to secure benefits for individual pupils and learners but should recognise the importance of education to the economic, cultural and civic well-being of wider society. I will now hand over to Teresa.

Mrs Teresa Graham (National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers): First, I will look at the effectiveness of the relevant parts of the CRED policy. The NASUWT supports the stated aims of the CRED policy, which seeks to contribute to improving relations between communities by educating children and young people to develop self-respect and respect for others and by providing formal and non-formal education opportunities for them to build relationships with those from different backgrounds and traditions.

It is clear that CRED activities have had a positive impact in Northern Ireland. There is strong evidence from the Young Life and Times Survey 2012 that, of the majority of young people who have experienced CRED activities, it is the impact on section 75 groups that is particularly striking, with at least two thirds of such respondents feeling that CRED activities have resulted in them feeling more positive towards those groups. The section 75 groups particularly affected by CRED activities are those in the categories of religious belief, race, sexual orientation and disability. Of those, the first three are also the top three groups in the PSNI hate crime statistics tables.

Therefore, it would appear to the NASUWT that, while a move towards shared education is very positive, it will also need to embrace significant groundwork both in and out of school that will lead to building a peaceful and stable Northern Ireland. We would also be of the opinion that the evidence would support an extension of CRED activities within the concept of shared education to include work on tackling sectarianism, racism, homophobia and disability.

There is strong evidence that CRED programmes on those issues work. For example, the surveys show that, among those who have taken part in CRED activities on disabilities, over 80% reported more positive attitudes to people with different disabilities as a result. From such evidence, the NASUWT suggests that the CRED programme should form an effective part of shared education. Therefore, we would urge that funding for the programme should remain in place.

Secondly, there is the need to engage more effectively with parents and carers. In a context in which greater emphasis is being placed on shared education, pupils are likely to be educated in more than one institution. In such circumstances, the present system for reporting or engaging with parents will have to be re-examined. It is without doubt that the introduction of effective approaches to shared education will depend very much on effective parental engagement, and it is vital that that aspect of shared education is examined. The NASUWT therefore advocates an objective and detailed review of models of school accountability to parents. The review should include considerations of the way in which accountability and reporting frameworks that are in operation elsewhere have engendered greater levels of parental involvement in the education system, and, if that has led the promotion of the public valuing and celebration of a shared education system, as can be seen in high-performing jurisdictions such as South Korea and Finland. Also very importantly, the role of technology in such accounting and reporting systems would need to be reviewed.

The NASUWT welcomes the recognition by DE of the important role that special schools play and can play in the future in the provision of an inclusive or shared educational system. To all intents and purposes, special schools are already shared schools. The NASUWT is of the opinion that special schools are well placed to be of great benefit to all schools, with their experience of sharing across many areas of society. It might well be that special schools could be at the heart of shared education in an area and that, with enhanced collaboration between mainstream schools, special schools and education support centres, the educational needs of all children, including those with disabilities, emotional troubles, behavioural issues and special needs can be met more effectively in a shared school system. However, that should not be interpreted in a way that would undermine the importance of ensuring that decisions about where pupils are educated are guided by objective and professional assessments of the settings where their needs are best met. The NASUWT is very supportive of the need for and work of our special schools. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Thank you very much. A number of Committee members have had to leave to take part in a debate, hence there has been some movement while you were speaking. Mr Rogers, I understand that you also maybe have to leave.

Mr Rogers: Yes.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): I will take you first.

Mr Rogers: First, you are very welcome. Diane, when you talked about the Department needing to make shared education mainstream, there was an acknowledgement that it may be a bit of a patchwork and sporadic at the moment. You talked about the shared education premium and how it would be divided. Do you not think that, when there is £172 for rural schools versus urban schools, it can be difficult for rural schools to link up with a school from another community? A lot of money could be spent on transport for that type of thing.

Ms Nugent: I suppose that is true, but the ideal sharing partnership is with those schools from neighbouring communities. There have been good examples of that, such as in Ballycastle, where students walk from one school to another. I think there is some ambiguity about integrated schools. Integrated schools have to share as well, so a lot of controlled and maintained schools are in those schools' locality. Basically, it is about any school in sectors that are sharing together.

I understand that there are going to be transport issues, but if schools work together, the beauty of autonomy is that they could come up with ideas that would enable a workable way for them to share and maybe minimise transport costs. For example, a school could have a minibus and the other school could avail itself of it. That may be one way you could develop that kind of collaboration and partnership.

The fact that the shared education pupil premium would be shared out among every pupil also links into equality. Every child has a right to shared education, and by giving each child the same amount of money and the schools an economy, it would be up to the transformational leadership of schools to come up with innovative, flexible, workable ideas that would enable the money to be spent on a value-added basis. That would be documented in the school's improvement or development plans to ensure that the money is being spent in the correct way and that there is value added to the shared education premium.

Mr Rogers: A quick question, Justin. You commented that integrated education is quite distinct from shared education. Do you not believe that integrated education is a logical conclusion of shared education?

Mr McCamphill: It is, but it is not something that can happen everywhere. Integrated schools are set up in such a way that means that there has to be an equal balance of pupils from different communities. To set up integrated schools as they are to be constituted in every locality will not be practical, but where it is possible, we support it as the long-term aim. In other places you have to accept the reality that people live in divided communities and that you have to plan for shared education based on where people are, not where you want them to be.

Mr Rogers: Do you believe that faith-based schools have a key role to play in developing shared education and all that?

Mr McCamphill: Yes, most certainly.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Just to pick up on your point about funding, there are obviously schools that have been working together for maybe 40 years, long before there were any Queen's University groups looking at shared education and before any funding packages were available. If there is a willingness for sharing, does it necessarily have to have an associated monetary incentive?

Ms Dunlop: The monetary incentive begins the process, especially with schools that have not been involved in sharing. This goes back to the EMU programme in the 1980s and 1990s, if you remember that. That was not ideal, because we were linked with schools that were away somewhere else; they were not our neighbouring schools. Certainly, it is going to take less finance to link with some schools. For example, in Lisburn there is a maintained school less than 1 kilometre away from us. That would be our natural clustering, but we are looking at quite an overloaded curriculum at the moment, and if DE sets the priority that shared education is up there with literacy, numeracy and ICT, a coordinator to roll out a programme needs to be remunerated for.

It is taking on an extra workload, unless a priority is set . That is what we mean when we talk about the league table of results and competition between schools needing to be brought down a peg. The school down the road is pulling back from sharing, and there is a big divide between our grammar and secondary schools. I know that, in Lisburn, we share through the SIF funding and try to bring in every sector. Grammar is the hardest sector to get in to the overall picture. Funding has been a way of softening that and attracting leadership to it. If that is the beginnings of it, you can look at self-sustaining programmes down the line.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Is there not, then, a duplication? We already have area learning coordinators, and we have money involved in the entitlement framework and how it is to be brought together. Are you not duplicating all the time?

Ms Dunlop: I think they are overlapping. The problem we have at the minute is the talk of lifting the CRED and CREDIT funding, SIF and the community education initiative funding. Yes, that is promoting sharing in a learning community. It most definitely is. You have to be careful that there is no overlap. That is what we were talking about with the shared education premium, which is ring-fenced for those activities. It can be the CRED, CREDIT, SIF entitlement framework, but it is all from the one overarching funding stream for those that is pulled down from wherever, whether it be Atlantic Philanthropies or DE.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): You talked about league tables. I have been on the Committee a long time, and I do not remember us calling for or promoting league tables, but I stand to be corrected on that point.

Justin, you commented on the ministerial advisory group's definition. Are you in support of that?

Mr McCamphill: We believe it is an excellent starting point. To go back to the question you asked Gillian, I will say that shared education has to be about more than just practical sharing between two schools that happen to be adjacent. The ministerial advisory group's definition also covers promoting equality of opportunity, good relations, equality of identity, respect for diversity and community cohesion. We need to put funding into shared education, because partnerships that happen spontaneously, when two schools are built back to back, will happen anyway. This is about breaking down barriers, such as distance in some places, academic selection in others and barriers between special schools and mainstream schools. It takes planning, and money needs to be spent on it.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): I really just want to compare the ministerial advisory group's definition to that which is out for consultation from the Minister and to get your views on the difference.

Mr McCamphill: I am afraid I do not have the Minister's definition in front of me.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): It is this:

Mr McCamphill: We were just curious about why they are different. That is not to say that one is better than the other. Do you know why there is a difference?

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): No.

Ms Dunlop: The two maybe address two different things: the religion side of it and the socio-economic barriers. Any learning community will tell you that it is most difficult for grammar schools. Primaries and secondaries have very close relationships involving the toing and froing of pupils. When a relationship forms between a grammar and a secondary, it very much goes one way, with the secondary going into the grammar school for a sharing of lessons and CRED or whatever.

Rarely does grammar move back the other way.

I will give you an example of what happens for us in primary schools. My last school, Donaghadee Primary School, had Killard House School, a special school, on the same campus. We brought those kids together, and you might say that that was the special school coming up into the mainstream to learn, but equally our kids got such an education in the problems that those kids face and what it is like to have a disability, how they can help and what they can learn from it. It has to go both ways, and that is where a barrier exists between grammar schools and secondary schools in town areas. You are all nodding in agreement.

Mrs Graham: That is where the socio-economic barrier is, and that is what needs to be addressed, along with everything else. If you are going to have mixed, shared education, it has to be shared across the socio-economic groupings as well.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): The NASUWT submission talks about section 75 and the fact that you needed to look at the potential implications of any implementation. Are you aware at this stage of what those implications may be?

Mr McCamphill: I have some idea of what they may be. I do not want to pre-empt that, because I might almost be predicting how people would discriminate, and I do not know whether that is something that I want to throw out to people. For example, we know at the moment that there are issues around religious discrimination that need to be looked at. There are also issues around discrimination against people on the grounds of disability. We want everything looked at. Schools have a responsibility, and there has to be a conversation about what all the implications will be.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): At this stage, do you want to be any more specific than that?

Mr McCamphill: No.

Mr Kinahan: Thank you very much for your presentations. I have lots of questions, but my concern with the way that the Bill is coming through is that, if we just specify those three areas, we forget community and the complex mixtures of others. Do you not feel that we should have a slightly vaguer definition that may allow a school that is doing well in sharing to apply for funding so that it is not just about two schools? Sometimes you can have one school doing phenomenally well, as an example. Do you think we should have something that is a little bit looser and more flexible? If you are going to do that, who makes the decision about sharing funding? Is it the Education Authority, or is it the Department?

Mr McCamphill: In my view the decision should lie with the Department. I think that there are too many vested interests in the make-up of the Education Authority, and I would prefer that the strategy and its outworkings come from the Department. I am not ruling out what you are saying; I am listening to it. Whoever is assessing the project could look at it, but I do not have a strong view.

Ms Nugent: Can I just add to that? We had also discussed the idea that the ETI should be trained in what shared education is. That would be another mechanism for looking at shared education practice to make it more realistic on the ground.

You talked about religious discrimination and things like that. I was privy to a very good example of shared education in Glasgow, which, we all know, is a bit similar to Northern Ireland. There was a maintained primary school and a controlled primary school, and in the middle there was a special needs unit and a shared nursery. I thought that that was a beautiful example of shared education, because the children were coming into the school together. We know that, when kids are young, that is the best time to expose them to the realities of life and to let them learn new skills, even with things like languages. When I spoke to some of the children in that school and asked them how they shared, they told me that they loved coming together at break time and lunchtime. So, as Gillian said, sharing education is not just about lessons, academic learning or examinations. Sharing can take place in local communities and youth centres. Sport is ideal for sharing; what better way is there than that? That is how some of that pupil premium could be used.

To go back to the example of the school with special needs, that facility meant that those schools could transfer the kids in and out so they could have the support base and the teacher-informed professional judgement that they needed. That is another model of good, effective continuing professional development. The teachers in each of those schools planned together. They designed opportunities throughout the school year with themes in both schools. The important thing was that both those schools could retain their own identity. The maintained school still had its symbols and things, and the controlled school had what was related to it. I think that respecting differences is what sharing education is about.

In my experience of leading the shared education programme, we linked our two special schools — ours is kind of mixed but mostly controlled, and there is also the maintained — with the university. We take for granted that students or whoever know how to share. However, even their eyes were opened in the sharing engagement process. When students came into our schools, we had kids saying, "Miss, can we be friends with a black person?" They did not know, because they have preconceived notions.

While we support coordinators being in place and their being remunerated, it takes a special kind of leadership and person to enable those collaborations. In the past, it was maybe taken for granted that sharing was happening. However, it was not real sharing. It was not having the outcomes that are perhaps being seen in the shared education programme that Queen's University has rolled and in all the research from 2007 that proves that it works and can have long-lasting impacts on communities, as well as between and among children of different ages and abilities. That is what is important with that.

Mr Kinahan: I will ask a second question, if I may. The NASUWT mentioned getting parents more involved. We do not really seem to have parents involved anywhere in our education system. You get it from 'Belfast Telegraph' polls and other things. What do you see as the mechanism for getting them involved?

Mrs Graham: At the moment, the way that parents are involved in most schools is through an annual report and an annual visit. It is really important. I know that the Department has been stressing that school improvement really needs parental involvement. If we have shared education, we were looking at how we could use it as a vehicle to involve more parents. That would bring about not just a better understanding of sharing among parents but parents would become more proud of their schools and communities. If you go down the shared school route, you will not be able to send out a report on a child. That child might be enrolled in your school but be in that school only some of the time. Some mechanism will have to be developed whereby the progress and attitudes of the child are conveyed to parents. To get buy-in from parental support, it is going to have to be different and more dynamic. That is why we talked about technology and all that stuff and how it could be utilised to encourage the shared nature of any project. You might well have the added bonus that parents, by becoming involved in it, could become more involved in sharing in the community.

Mr McCamphill: There could also be consultation with parents in the establishment of any new shared arrangements, in that they could look at the type of shared arrangement they want. Is it two schools beside each other? Is it an integrated school? Is it a faith school? There needs to be greater consultation with parents and wider communities when the decisions are made.

Ms Dunlop: We mentioned that it is not just funding in schools that is required for parental involvement. There are organisations that we have used for the last 30 years. I was heavily involved with the Children's Program of Northern Ireland.

A lot of the parental involvement that we saw benefit communities most happened outside school hours, but some was in school hours. It was delivered through outside agencies like Community Relations in Schools (CRIS), YMCA and the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. DE had funding attached to programmes that dealt with conflict resolution.

We are sitting here as teachers, and we know that, when you bring parents into a room, there is a big elephant there. Who will broach the difficult topics? Who will broach the community disaster that happened last weekend? How do you go about dealing with that? I know that, all through the 1990s, when we lifted kids from the Templemore Avenue divide in east Belfast and from Ardoyne, we had the parents in the leisure centres working with their kids, and CRIS and YMCA ran conflict resolution workshops. Those people knew what they were doing and were able to tease out of those parents an open and frank discussion of prejudice, racism and all the things that we still have huge problems with in Northern Ireland. I know that you also mentioned outside agencies that support educators' work, but the community people are the ones who really tackle the big issues. Those communities and the parents benefited from that.

Mr Craig: Thank you for the presentation. I gathered from some of the comments that maybe not all the unions are singing from the same hymn sheet on shared education. Is that because of a lack of definition, or is there a more fundamental disagreement between you on it?

Mr McCamphill: I thought that we agreed with most of what the UTU said. In which areas did you detect the difference?

Mr Craig: I thought that it was quite interesting, because one of you was pushing very heavily to get this implemented immediately, even though we do not exactly know what it is. You, in particular, were urging caution and looking for more money for it, so I am just curious.

Mr McCamphill: I think that we both have the same vision down the line. I think that that was coming across. We are more cautious, in that we do not want to go ahead into things where, if the money is not there, because of the extra workload on teachers, people will end up not prioritising shared education and will just get on with the delivery in the classroom. If the money is not there, we will run into problems.

Mrs Graham: Our idea is that, before you go down that line, you should look to see what problems there are. There would be nothing worse than to start off on this shared education programme and for it all to crash halfway through. What message would that give? You really need to have thought right through not just how it will work but what will make it work. I think that we all agree that, at the end of the line, we all have the same ideal of what we would like shared education to be. As I said, we do not want it to end in failure. If we do not prepare adequately, that could be the result.

Ms Nugent: Both our unions have concern for teacher workload. It is easy to dump everything on the teachers and to say that they are the superheroes who can heal everything. That is not the case in shared education. The good thing is that, through the research that has been carried out and in engaging with teacher unions to advance the shared education agenda, there is collaboration. We need to collaborate to ensure that everybody is protected. We would all love 90 hours a day to do everything. That is why we made the point about making sure that coordinators are remunerated so that teachers are given time. It is about the time that teachers need to plan the shared education activities and to engage with communities. From being involved with shared education, I know the time and commitment that it takes. I also know, from being engaged in the ministerial advisory group, that some of the comments that were made were about the people who are coordinating getting some recognition for the work that they do. That effective work has been documented in the evidence. It needs to be ensured that, in the new shared education advancement, that is the kind of model that reflects all that and is used to advance shared education. So, I do not see that there are so many apparent differences, except for the fact that you had maybe detailed it a bit more. Those are our concerns.

Mr Craig: I find even that answer fascinating, because I think the problem is that we have all got different interpretations of what shared education is about. You are already talking about additional resources and coordinators, and I am thinking, "Coordinators for what?" What exactly are we talking about in shared education? I see shared education as cooperation between sectors, between schools and especially between smaller schools that cannot sustain the economic model that they have. That even applies within the same sector. None of that has the additional burden that you are talking about, which is coordinators. This is not about sharing religious experiences between children; it is about administration.

Ms Nugent: That is not what I was talking about. With respect, I have been a shared education leader. I have done it without being remunerated. It is difficult and challenging, it takes a lot of time and not all the agencies that you contact to develop activities in schools and with parents and communities are available within a teacher's 1,265 working hours. We are not looking for remuneration for coordination of shared education because we are greedy. It would be easy for those to come back at teachers and say, "You're well enough paid". If you want something done medically and you want the best job done, you go to the best person. We need the best people in schools to enable those communities to engage, enable schools to come together and to have the time to purposefully carry out that role and engage with everybody so that there is not that element of some kind of competition, which, I think you are hinting at. It is not about competition. That is why it needs people who are creative, people who can take risks and people who fully understand shared education and have the time to commit and devote to that role to enable it to be done purposefully. That will ensure that those schools are not in competition and that the pupils and communities will benefit. That is what the coordination role is about. Does that clarify it for you?

Mr Craig: I get what you are saying, and I do not doubt that, at a higher level, probably within the Education Authority, there will be a need for people like that to promote shared education ideas between schools and sectors. I do not doubt that for one second. The difficulty I see with all this is that, if shared education is to work — we have seen this — it needs to be a bottom-up approach, not a top-down approach. Top-down does not work. We have sat with an integrated sector for 30 years. It reflects 7% of the pupils of Northern Ireland. So, the forced approach did not work. Parents did not vote with their feet. That is the difficulty with it. If we are going to make this work, it should be a bottom-up approach, where schools and the authority are bringing solutions to the table that mean sharing between schools and sectors. That will be a completely new kettle of fish, and I would like to think that the unions will support that approach.

Mr McCamphill: It is difficult. There are learning partnerships, for example, that have only one community in them. There are some like that, so it is probably a matter of looking at those partnerships and considering how you then put a shared model on top of them. That will have to be worked out.

You made the comment that there has to be a bottom-up approach, but there has to be a structure from the top. That is why the Department is bringing forward legislation. There have to be incentives for people at the bottom to aim for. When the European Community gives out grants to farmers, those grants are there at the top but somebody at the bottom has to say, "This is what I'm going to do so that I can apply to get that". It is no different in education.

Mr Craig: Will the unions actively promote that approach? I have seen ideas for schools to come together — there would have been a fantastic opportunity — yet, because of competition between them, it all fell apart.

Mr McCamphill: In my view, that competition does not come from teacher unions; it comes from principals and governors. It comes from teachers as well, but it has to be worked around. That is why I talked about the accountability mechanism. People worry that their school will end up in intervention, and that can drive schools more than anything else.

Mrs Graham: I mentioned earlier that it is absolutely vital that the parents are involved from a bottom-up point of view. It will not succeed unless the parents buy into it, as well as everyone else. Before you go any further, you have to develop a mechanism by which the parents will be brought into the planning and running of the shared education experience.

Mr Craig: I wish that we could get them into the existing system, never mind the shared one.

Mrs Graham: Perhaps this is the new start for them.

Mr Newton: I thank the members for coming this evening. I think that Diane said that teachers are not superheroes. I think that they are superheroes.

Mrs Graham: Thanks. [Laughter.]

Mr Newton: In many ways, they contributed to tackling the difficulties that we had over the years of what we call the Troubles; they played a fantastic role in that.

I would like a succinct answer to a few questions. Grammar schools that share at the moment — there are a number of examples across Northern Ireland — have done so without any incentive whatsoever. They are reaping the benefits of that, so why do we not ensure that the other schools employ the same methods as some of those grammar schools?

Ms Nugent: I am thinking about the kinds of behaviours and disciplines in schools. There are different challenges. Speaking as a special needs teacher, there are challenges in that environment compared with secondary, primary and grammar schools. I have to be careful about how I say this, but children who attend grammar school generally have the wherewithal to go between schools; behaviour is not an issue.

Shared education works for areas in which you may see a higher incidence of behavioural problems and even special needs and things like that; those are the low socio-economic areas. Mention was made of working with parents. You have to bear in mind that a lot of parents do not want even to go near the gates of schools. I have had children going through school for five years without ever once seeing a parent. Through the shared education programme, the interesting thing for me was that we had parent/child workshops. No one ever wants to be seen as a bad parent. That was an innovative way of getting our parents into the schools. Interestingly enough, the parents who never darkened the door were the ones who brought their child to school to do things like cookery, jewellery-making and art; not English, maths and things like that. It was creating a new kind of culture so they could see that education is not maybe the same as when they were in school. That was one way of getting parents engaged with the schools.

It is great that some schools have been able to collaborate, as you mentioned, but I think that there are different challenges in different areas. Perhaps it is a little easier in a sector where there are not so many apparent challenges, although that is not to say that there are not special needs and other issues in those schools. The grammar school sector will have different challenges, which might be accreditation based.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Perhaps your question was more about the fact that schools are mixed. Is that what you were referring to?

Mr Newton: Yes.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Of course, special schools are naturally mixed, so sharing is already taking place as a natural consequence of the population that is at the school.

Ms Dunlop: Looking at the school population, the current DE policy is forcing integration without purposely going out and doing it. We have the policy of going to the neighbouring school. The transport issue that has come in recently will force people to their neighbouring school. I speak from experience. Where I sit in Lisburn, in a controlled primary school, 12% of my enrolment is children from what normally would have been the Catholic maintained sector. That was down to the population explosion in Lisburn and the number of places available in the schools available. As we are going down that route, there is forced integration happening. I have not put my hands up, and my board of governors has not said, "We want to go down the transformation route and become an integrated school."

We are quite happy to be a controlled primary school but to accept newcomer pupils from, for example, the Polish community. Integration is being forced upon us. Look at the number of newcomer pupils in our system currently. They bring with them their own challenges of other prejudices as well. So, if the DE continues on that route, we will, slowly but surely, have a shared system without going out of our way to achieve it. Our children are educated together in nursery provision and, at the other end, they are educated together in further education. We have lots of special education. We still have our two sectors but, certainly, the controlled sector is becoming more integrated without going out of its way to do so.

Mr McCamphill: To come back to Mr Newton, there could be lessons to learn, but that would involve looking at why some grammar schools end up with a different intake than others. There needs to be a study to look at why parents are choosing a grammar school from what could be perceived as the other side. Are they choosing it because it is the grammar school they want to send their children to? Are they choosing it because there was not a place available in the grammar school they wanted to send their children to? Different parents will have different motivations. If it is working at the grammar sector level, at least in some grammar schools, we should ask what is good about what they are doing. What lessons are there? What does not work well? There will be issues within those schools about the respect for diversity and identity. Those issues exist in all schools, regardless of sector. Somebody needs to take a look at that.

The other thing we have to look at is that pupils in grammar schools are travelling greater distances, they have different motivations, and there are non-selective schools in some areas, which serve the local communities and reflect the composition of those communities. If we want to build a more cohesive and diverse society, we need to have shared projects to bring together children who would not otherwise meet across, maybe, five or six miles.

Mr Newton: What do you think will be the impact of effective area planning?

Ms Dunlop: Effective area planning will happen where the community can decide what it wishes its schools to become. We have had a few contentious cases over the past while where maintained schools have looked to go integrated simply because the village would send their children to that school if it was integrated.

They have had a certain amount of input into area planning. Certainly, CCMS has looked at planning, and the controlled sector has started and is some way into it. As I touched on earlier, I believe that the way forward for our communities is for schools to come together and educate children together, and then let the community decide whether to go integrated. That is a personal opinion. We have villages and towns that are further down the line than others. If a community is ready for it, let it happen.

There are CRED programmes that encounter, shall we say — "a hard line" is the wrong thing to say — but there are towns in which we know there is a divide that will never be crossed. The schools there need the CRED programmes and outside organisations brought in. There are some schools that could not link with others at the minute, but they need the education in their own school. Every school is on a different journey. Some are ready, some are not, and some will not be ready for a long time. That is where there is still the necessity for funding for the CRED and CREDIT programmes.

Mr Newton: That is not effective area planning.

Ms Dunlop: No. As far as area-based planning is concerned, the community is willing. In education, we only see people wanting the best for their communities. Transformational leadership is required. For example, at Lisanelly, it took the leaders in that community to sell a programme to their stakeholders. In education, we are always in the business of looking to sell something to the stakeholders and saying, "This is the best route for your children. This is the best thing for your kids." It is a huge job. It is about the winning of hearts and minds.

Mr McCamphill: We in the NASUWT are of the view that there should be more cross-sectoral area planning. There is a perception out there that one sector is moving on with its area planning and maybe not taking it across and asking, "What is happening in the sector neighbouring us, and what do we need to do to plan together?" We would like to see more evidence of joint planning between the controlled and maintained sectors.

Mr Newton: Finally, can I ask about your attitude towards a school working with similar schools across socio-economic barriers?

Mr McCamphill: Do you mean one school that has lots of socio-economic differences within it?

Mr Newton: No. I am thinking of a school from the controlled or maintained sector, or whatever, instead of working across a divide or with a different sector, that wants to work with schools in its area that would be less well off — socio-economically deprived.

Mr McCamphill: That in itself is a good thing, but why not take it out to make it shared with the other community as well? That may be difficult in some areas but, if it is possible, I think it should happen.

Mrs Graham: We believe that sharing on socio-economic grounds is as important for the good of society in Northern Ireland, and for its development, as any kind of sharing. The way it is at the moment, that type of sharing is not going on, and it is very difficult to get it happening because the grammar school sector is not, by and large, buying into —

Mr Newton: It does not have to be a grammar school.

Mrs Graham: Yes. I said, "by and large".

Ms Dunlop: I have a wee example that might illustrate this. Early Intervention Lisburn took only the schools across the bottom free-school-meals band in targeting social need. It was across sectors, so we had Catholic maintained schools, controlled schools, special schools and nursery schools. When the work started, the question was asked, "Why can the next schools up in the other free-school-meals bands, even up to well-off schools, not be a part of this?" And they were. It was opened up because we realised that the gap was there and that we have a lot to learn from each other's schools. We opened it up, but it took two years for somebody to ask the question: why are we not sharing this with the next band? Dare I mention the class system in Northern Ireland; we have middle-class schools and prep schools. They have all been included now, but it took somebody in the leadership of the community to invite them into it. That is where leaders in each community are key to the success of sharing, even in the learning community.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): You talk very much about community reconciliation rather than the educational benefits and outcomes that can and are being realised through sharing.

Ms Dunlop: Early Intervention Lisburn is about educational outcomes. It was looking at barriers to learning and transitional programmes between primary and post-primaries to achieve better outcomes for our 16-year-olds. They are being tracked through to see whether the transitional programmes will work. So there are educational outcomes for our kids as well as social outcomes. We would not say that we have touched on any religious or CRED activities, but we have opened equality as an educational outcome for the children we serve. So, even in the secondary sector, the post-primaries in Lisburn work like other towns. Through SIF funding, the learning partnerships meet as a committee and then they meet some link person who would come from post-primary to primary, and we organise programmes within our schools.

Mr Craig: On that point, Gillian, you know that I know that sector. The simple truth about the whole area learning community is that it is simply based on needs. I think that that applies to shared education unless, as you say, there is some forced method. I notice that, especially in the secondary sector, schools that need to share resources, especially at A level, have done so and have done incredibly well in that. They have crossed barriers we never thought would be crossed. However, there are examples in Lisburn of schools that did not need to do that and therefore did not bother.

Ms Dunlop: I agree with you. It happens when the need is there.

Ms Maeve McLaughlin: Thank you all for your presentation. A lot of the points have been covered. By way of commentary, I see the issue of definition as critical. What I am hearing is that shared education is not going to be truly shared unless it starts crossing all divisions. James, you pointed out that you cannot address shared education without reflection on academic selection.

Mr McCamphill: Yes.

Ms Maeve McLaughlin: How do you do that?

Mr McCamphill: I cannot tell you how to get rid of academic selection. We have to work with what we have. A lot of academically successful schools now have a wider intake and are looking at how they will deliver the entitlement framework, so they will be sharing with neighbouring secondary schools. There will be people in some non-selective schools who will want to access subjects that are only available at the grammar school. In the absence of being able to remove academic selection, that is a good thing to do. If academic selection were to change, educational campuses with several schools built in one area will make it easier to make future changes.

Ms Maeve McLaughlin: That leads to another point that I have picked up about barriers. You were very specific about the barrier to shared education being the accountability regime: can you expand on that?

Mr McCamphill: Yes. If schools are basically in competition for children all the time, that drive can sometimes stop people wanting to share with a neighbouring school. We have all experienced other teachers in other schools who want to share. However, you also get those teachers who think, "Maybe not". They are worried about being compared with other schools.

There was mention of league tables. The Department does not publish league tables, but the information is released on a spreadsheet and the newspapers can sort out schools into rank order. We know that that is what happens. I know that ETI does not do that, but people are always looking over their shoulder at someone.

Ms Maeve McLaughlin: Is there is specific issue with the ETI? You referred to it, and so did Diane.

Mr McCamphill: It comes down to who is ultimately responsible for the progress of pupils. When ETI looks at a school's exam results, it is going to have to somehow factor in where these children were educated and be able to make a judgement that is reflective of the education that took place.

Ms Maeve McLaughlin: Does that come back to Diane's point about the need for more training?

Ms Nugent: Yes.

Ms Maeve McLaughlin: You also talked about ETI training.

Ms Nugent: Yes. As we mentioned, parents are important too. They may not need training but information sessions and a realisation of what they are looking for. Often, we hear from members — I am sure that NASUWT can say the same — that inspectors come in, and it is perhaps someone from a completely different sector telling you what you should or should not be doing. That leaves teachers very demoralised and wanting to leave the profession.

Interestingly, burnout, depression and things like that are quite commonplace within the teaching profession, more so now than ever. That is due to the additional pressures and workload put upon the role of the teacher. That is why we suggest that a teacher who is going to take on the role of shared education coordinator needs to be given the recognition for that.

I would also like to add that, although we have talked about the grammar sector, a lot of the barriers to learning for our children, particularly in low socio-economic areas, is their self-esteem. One thing that I certainly noted was that, when children from my school engaged with university students, it gave them aspirations of what they could be. For example, working together can help, even should it be a piece of art or something that is communicating who they are and where they want to be. Children from low socio-economic backgrounds and those who have the most learning barriers are going to cost society most in the long term. I also believe that those children — all children — need to become more mentally tough so that they are able to cope with challenges and changes. That gives them a more realistic experience of what life is. When you go into a job, especially for special children or children for whom school is not the most favourite place in the world, they have to see that there are other things out there.

It is useful to remember that teachers are also "teacherpreneurs". We talk a lot about entrepreneurship in Northern Ireland. If you look at the likes of Richard Branson, there is a man who is an entrepreneur and who everyone can look up to. One thing I tell the kids in my school is, "He was dyslexic, just like you." That breaks down preconceived notions that children have and raises their self-esteem so that they can have aspirations, and look to the school up the road and say, "I am as good as them", or, "We can work together. Look at what we have done together." It is about being able to see the vision for the future as well as looking for accreditation. Accreditation is not for everybody, and perhaps the children who have the most barriers are those who are not going to be coming out with 10 A*s and go to university. However, it is about creating an education that is for all, and I think that that is what shared education does; it creates life chances for all our children.

Ms Maeve McLaughlin: I get that completely but my question was not about barriers to individual children, families or communities; it was about barriers in the system to shared education. James, in fairness, you have answered that.

Mr McCamphill: Sorry, my name is Justin.

Ms Maeve McLaughlin: OK. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Miss M McIlveen): Thank you for your time this afternoon and for presenting together. I know that it is often not easy to do that, but you did it well. Thank you very much for that, and no doubt we will be in touch again. We have quite a number of other consultations and pieces of legislation that we will look at over the next number of months, so I am sure that our paths will meet again. Thank you very much.