Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): I welcome the officials who are joining us: Faustina Graham, who is director of collaborative education and practice; Andrew Bell, head of shared education and the community relations team; and Suzanne Kingon, head of the Irish-medium and integrated team. I remind you that this session is being recorded by Hansard.

There will be a wide range of questions. It would be helpful to the Department if the Committee could draw its thoughts together on this, and we will have that with you reasonably soon, but I invite you to make your opening statement.

Mrs Faustina Graham (Department of Education): Thank you, Chair. I welcome the opportunity to brief the Committee on the outcome of the public consultation on the Sharing Works policy for shared education and on the draft Bill. I hope also to provide further clarification and update members on progress made since we last briefed the Committee in January.

As members are aware, the policy sets out a comprehensive framework for the future development of shared education, building on the research, consultation and recommendations of the ministerial advisory group. The policy contains 14 overarching actions that will support the advancement of shared education. It sets out plans to define, encourage and facilitate shared education through legislation and also support structures to fund, develop and embed sharing throughout the system.

An eight-week consultation was undertaken on both the draft policy and Bill from 5 January to 6 March. Sixty seven organisations responded. For the most part, consultation responses were supportive and did not raise significant objections or major issues with the draft policy or Bill. Some comments that we received reflected misperceptions or incorrect assumptions as to how shared education will be advanced. We found that these proved extremely useful in directing us to where amending wording would provide clarity and avoid potential ambiguity.

The most common issue raised related to the relationship between integrated and shared education. Integrated education provides for:

That is the wording of article 64 of the Education Reform (Northern Ireland) Order 1989. In the context of this inquiry, I would like to record the Department's recognition of the significant contribution of the integrated sector in educating children from different community backgrounds together over the past 30 years. The Department remains fully committed and alive to the proactive implementation of its statutory duty to encourage and facilitate integrated education under article 64.

Shared education aims to improve educational outcomes, including reconciliation outcomes, through inter-school collaboration. Mutual understanding, citizenship and cultural understanding are key areas in our curriculum and provide explicit opportunities to address community relations, reconciliation, equality, diversity and human rights. Consequently, it is important to say that we see reconciliation outcomes as integral to and interdependent with educational outcomes and not as something separate, irrespective of the educational context or setting. Therefore, it is not a question of either/or with regards to integrated education and shared education.

Integrated and shared education will have complementary roles in contributing to the development of a more tolerant, diverse, pluralist and shared society here. Nevertheless, amendments have been made to the policy to explicitly reference and to set in context the Department's statutory duty to encourage and facilitate integrated education and also to reinforce the opportunity to learn from the integrated sector's experience in developing and deepening an inclusive ethos.

More broadly, refinements to the policy include: changes to terminology to remove any misconception that shared education is only relevant to schools and pupils and clarification that it is inclusive of youth and early years settings; explicit reference to children from different religious backgrounds in the policy description; more explicit reference to the role of sectoral support bodies; strengthening the section on the role of special schools and learning support centres; and further clarification of the role of wider communities in advancing shared education.

Ensuring that practitioners have the right skills has been a common thread in evidence presented to the Committee, and we fully endorse that view. The Delivering Social Change (DSC) shared education signature project, for example, includes provision for teacher training. In the spirit of sharing, we have invited stakeholders to collaborate to bring forward proposals for a capacity-building strategy for teachers.

Again, in response to feedback, reference has also been added to the section in the policy that sets the policy within the wider legislative context to reflect the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and other relevant human rights legislation.

The Shared Education Bill will provide a legislative definition, providing the Department and relevant arm's-length bodies with the power to encourage and facilitate shared education. As this is very much a developing area, and given its wide scope, this power will provide necessary flexibility as we seek to further develop and embed shared education. Again, the proposed legislative power is complementary to and in no way undermines or supersedes the Department's statutory duty to integrated education.

The draft Bill defines shared education as:

Some respondents, including some schools, identified practical difficulties in referencing "political opinion" and the word "significant" with regard to "socio-economic" status in clause 2 of the draft Bill. Upon further reflection, the Department has removed both from the wording of the Bill. That leaves us with the definition of shared education as:

There was some suggestion also that all section 75 groups should be specified in the legislative definition. In reality, this would set very challenging demands on the mix of children and young people that would be required to meet the definition. For example, including gender would have implications for partnerships of single-sex schools, and it is neither practical nor desirable for organisations to identify the sexual orientation of children and young people. The legislative definition is underpinned by the policy description, which encourages educational settings to work to maximise the education together of those from all section 75 groups, as far as is practically possible.

In relation to that description, the ministerial advisory group said in its 2013 report:

This definition, then, is the one that is reflected in the policy.

There has been progress since we last briefed the Committee. Applications under the first call of the DSC shared education funding were approved for 32 partnerships comprising 72 schools. A further 10 partnerships consisting of 27 schools have been invited to refine and resubmit their applications. A second call for applications closes this month. Schools will be advised of the outcome prior to the end of the academic year to allow planning for implementation to commence. A project coordinator and a team of shared education development officers are now in place to support schools through the application process and in embedding shared education.

The ministerial advisory group recommended a shared education premium within the common funding formula. As there are advantages and disadvantages to this approach, the Minister has committed to using the experience from the DSC project to determine the best mechanism for funding and mainstreaming any additional costs.

Building the capacity of organisations to develop collaborative working where there is no history of partnerships between those schools will be addressed through the work that we have undertaken with the Special EU Programmes Body. The design of the shared education thematic area within Peace IV will recognise that organisations that have not yet engaged in sharing need a different type of support.

The Minister has clearly articulated his vision for the future of shared education. It is a vision for vibrant, self-improving education communities, delivering educational benefits to learners, encouraging the efficient and effective use of resources and promoting equality of opportunity, good relations, equality of identity, respect for diversity, and community cohesion. We believe that the shared education policy and Bill provide a coherent framework to achieve this vision. We welcome the opportunity to answer any of your questions.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): Thank you for those opening comments. Obviously, the Committee has been conducting an inquiry. I think that we have had 25 evidence sessions so far. It has given us the opportunity for a number of school visits, and I think that it is important to place on record at this stage that, as a Committee, we have been impressed by the quality and standard of the formal and informal contacts that are already there in terms of both improvement of educational attainment and community relations.

You mentioned the either/or situation earlier, and I will take that in a slightly different context. One area that the Committee has been concerned about is the discontinuation of funding for community relations, equality and diversity (CRED). Particularly given the Life and Times survey and the very positive findings of the Education and Training Inspectorate (ETI) review into CRED, we will be asking you quite a few questions. If it comes down to either CRED or shared education, I suppose that there will be a concern that CRED schemes are often a prerequisite, an initial stepping stone, for school communities prior to meaningful shared education. First, can you comment on the situation regarding CRED?

Mrs Graham: We came to the Committee two weeks ago and talked about the situation with regard to CRED. Obviously, the funding has stopped. Now, as part of the review process for the policy, which was under way anyway before the funding stopped, we hope to look very carefully at all of the recommendations from the Education and Training Inspectorate report and use that as a platform to move forward. We are where we are with the funding, but the whole thrust of the funding for CRED was directed towards capacity building for the system. I think that the outworkings from the ETI review demonstrate that significant capacity has been built, and it is now about how we manage to take that forward without the additional funding that we had.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): Does that mean that the door is closed on future funding for CRED, or will the ETI review lead to elements of that being reinstated?

Mr Andrew Bell (Department of Education): In ending the earmarked funding, which, as Faustina said, was for a specific purpose, the Minister has indicated that the CRED policy will remain and that the CRED work will be mainstreamed. Schools, boards and the Youth Council will be expected to deliver CRED through their mainstream funding. The earmarked funding was there because the previous review of community relations schemes had identified issues, particularly around capacity building and sharing good experience. That all happened through the earmarked funding. Essentially, CRED will remain. It should continue to be delivered through existing funding. Indeed, we have identified that, for the Education Authority and the Youth Council, there is an expectation to address CRED within their existing budgets.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): The Committee will want to keep a close eye on that because we have all seen situations in different Departments where, if something is mainstreamed, that can either be a good thing by making it a key component of everything that is done, or, alternatively, it can be a code for it disappearing altogether. Mainstreaming can be a euphemism for the death of a particular project, so we want to see how that operates in practice. We have a fairly wide range questions, and the first couple of questions will come from Chris.

Mr Hazzard: Thanks for the report. I want to start off by asking a few questions around integrated education. Time and time again, we see in surveys and newspaper reports a very high demand for integrated education, yet, when we look at school places and where that demand is eventually met, the figures never tally. We are not seeing the growth of integrated education that some of these surveys suggest. Why is that the case?

Mrs Graham: I think that it is hard to know in the sense that, ultimately, the demand for integrated education has to come from communities. I think that it is about how those communities respond to wanting to have integrated education in their schools. The important thing for us is that, in the absence of the growth of the integrated sector, we cannot afford to stand still on the issue of community cohesion and building a better future for children and young people. We have seen that slowing down, and it certainly does not mean that nothing can be done about the growth of the integrated sector. That is obviously something we can work on with the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education (NICIE). We are working with it on its business-planning process for the next year, as it has now become an NDPB. The whole thrust of change in the education sector, without that kind of certainty about how organisations will move forward, has probably caused a bit of a hiatus. We will certainly be looking at that carefully with them.

Mr Hazzard: If I am picking this up right, you seem to suggest that it nearly needs to be a voluntary move from the community to embrace integrated education, but the Department has a legislative duty to encourage and facilitate it.

Mrs Graham: Yes.

Mr Hazzard: Does the Department not need to be doing more? For example, if you had waited for communities in America to voluntarily desegregate, we would probably still be waiting now. Does the Department need to do more when it comes to integrated education?

Dr Suzanne Kingon (Department of Education): The Department funds NICIE to provide a support role to communities that wish to take forward the integrated option. There is a variety of paths by which communities can embrace the integrated option. One is through the establishment of a grant-maintained integrated school. The other is transformation of existing schools. There are different avenues open, and the Department provides support to schools that have indicated a wish to transform and to schools post-transformation. Members may be aware that the Minister is considering the need for, and the scope of, a potential future review of integrated education.

Mr Hazzard: You mentioned NICIE, which is obviously not a statutory planning organisation on behalf of integrated education, whereas the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS) could perhaps be described as such for the Catholic schools and the education and library boards, as they were, for controlled schools. You could argue that no one was formally planning for the growth of integrated education. Critics of the Department will say that you have a duty to encourage and facilitate the growth of integrated education but are not doing that.

Dr Kingon: NICIE is represented at all levels throughout the area-planning process, from the area-planning steering group, local working groups etc. There is very much an onus on both the Education Authority and CCMS to work closely with NICIE in the planning of the schools estate.

Mr Hazzard: OK, so is that situation failing? Is NICIE failing? Is the Department failing? We are not seeing growth. No matter what we do here, and no matter how much we talk about what is happening, we are not seeing the growth of integrated education that public support would tend to indicate. What is not working?

Mrs Graham: There is a role for NICIE as we move forward. For the Department to be prescriptive is not the way to ensure that integrated education grows. Every piece of evidence I have ever read that tells people what is good for them and is prescriptive is not going to change things. We have to win hearts and minds. There is something that all of us can do, working together, around how we access — more creatively perhaps — community support for the growth of integrated education.

We have used methods that are not necessarily tried and tested. You can use a questionnaire, for example, as you say, and people can suggest that that is not as strong or robust as it could be. We will be working with NICIE and we also have a meeting set up with the integrated education fund to look at whether to look at if there are more creative ways to access the community support that is actually there.

The separate bit, as Suzanne has said, is the area planning process, looking at the whole transformation process. In the Department, we hope to look again at the transformation policy in relation to encouraging and facilitating. If the Minister, in considering the scope of a review of integrated education, looks at that, that would allow us to look at a process that has been in place for some time and would probably benefit from a second look.

Mr Hazzard: Finally, again going back to the duty, it is arguable that the area-planning process has encouraged or facilitated integrated education. To what extent will this new shared education facilitate and encourage integrated education?

Mrs Graham: We have spoken, at other appearances before the Committee, about the view that integrated education sits at the top end of a continuum of sharing, where you have a fully integrated model in a school. What we are looking at, with shared education, is the opportunities, which I mentioned in the briefing, for inter-school collaboration. That may, in time, lead to schools seeing that they have more in common than they have differences when it comes to working collaboratively — and perhaps becoming one school in some instances — particularly around efficient and effective use of resources. That has to be a decision that comes from the schools in particular and from the governors and communities with which they work.

I made reference to the concept of working with communities. One of the key aspects of the shared education programme is the role of the school in the community. In education terms, generally, it has always been a key part of what is expected of a school. For example, given the bids that came in under the DSC programme, it has probably been the weakest part of the existing action plans. Everything seems to suggest that we in education are not as strong as we could be at every level when it comes to community engagement. We have tried in lots of ways. We have looked at ways to encourage parents in particular to become part of the school process, and very often people feel welcomed into the school, but I think that we have not maximised the potential of how our schools can truly engage with communities. That may be of its time in a sense. What do we need for the 21st century to fully engage communities in their schools and vice versa? Certainly the action plans that we have seen indicate that there is something there that we can work on, in the same way in which, as said, we hope to work with NICIE. If we say it is about community engagement, we have to ensure that the community engagement is meaningful.

Mr Hazzard: Is that a particular piece of work going on at the minute? You are looking at the engagement and how —

Mrs Graham: With shared education it is a key part. Each of the partnerships has four areas to look at, all of which are linked to the key pillars of Every School a Good School, one of which is the school in its community. Therefore, if the partnerships are working together, and the schools are working together, there is the expectation that they will also work with the community.

Each partnership, in designing the action plan, is trying to move forward along the continuum. The education and training expectorate has identified the continuum in four stages. They need to move along that continuum to demonstrate success in the programme.

There is a huge amount of learning that we should be able to accrue across the shared education programme that will have application to all schools, never mind the schools that are involved in the programme. That is when we can begin to get serious about how we engage, to the optimum, with the community that each school is situated in.

Mr Hazzard: One final point, on the duty again. Some witnesses have said that it is time for the duty to go. Some have said that it needs to be bolstered. Where do you think we need to be going with the duty?

Mrs Graham: As far as we are concerned, the duty is there and we are committed to being proactive in its implementation. That is the duty that is there, and it is the duty that the Department will continue to fulfil.

Mr Lunn: Thank you for your presentation. I will be on the tack that you would expect. Faustina, you said in your presentation that the Department remains fully committed to supporting the integrated sector. Apart from funding NICIE, can you give us any example of something proactive that the Department has done to fulfil its obligation to encourage integrated education?

Mrs Graham: Internally, in the Department, we have looked carefully across the Department. The Minister has asked that we do exactly what you say: ensure that we encourage and facilitate both integrated and Irish-medium education, because we have a statutory duty there too. Over the last year, we have conducted internal workshops in the Department for all of the senior officials. You cannot underestimate the fact that we fund NICIE. The Department's statutory duty is to encourage and facilitate. NICIE's work is to promote the integrated sector.

We have a statutory duty to encourage and facilitate.

Mr A Bell: When developing policies, we look at where we can support it: for example, other schools see the transport policy and temporary variation policy as being more generous towards the integrated sector, but we are taking into account that statutory duty through policy development.

Mr Lunn: I fancy that Justice Treacy gave you a considerable shove when he made his ruling on Irish-medium transport policy.

It is all very well to say that you have conducted internal exercises, presumably to make sure that everybody in the Department understands what the obligation is. I still do not see what you have done externally to encourage integrated education. Has the Department ever done anything by way of information output through schools or to communities that would make people like me, who might be slightly sceptical, think that it is proactively trying to encourage integrated education?

Dr Kingon: We recently updated the Department's website so that integrated education figures on the home page.

Mr Lunn: Is that for the first time?

Dr Kingon: It has always been on the website, but there is now a quick link to it on the front page for the first time.

The Department has provided funding to support transformed schools for the first five years after transformation. The statutory development proposal process underpins area planning. In considering all development proposals, the Department infuses the consideration of the statutory duty. As Faustina said earlier, the Minister is considering a potential review of integrated education. Part of any review of the transformation process will look at how we can make that a more publicly known and accessible process.

Mr Lunn: That is exactly what I am talking about. I will not bore you with the dictionary definition of encourage, but we all understand what it means. It obviously involves proactivity. It is good that you are finally putting something on the web page and, internally, instructing all your staff that integrated education exists, but have you ever explained to schools the current process of transformation? I know that it is under review, but has the Department ever made any attempt, through outreach, to explain to schools that it is an available option for them? Do you just leave it to NICIE? While I am at it, how much money does NICIE get?

Dr Kingon: The Department has produced a transformation pack for schools, which was provided to all grant-aided schools. It explains how to access, and the operation of, the transformation process. It is called 'Transformation: An Information Pack for Schools'.

Mr Lunn: When was that done?

Dr Kingon: I would need to find out the date and come back to you.

Mr Lunn: Was it in the 1970s or the 2000s? I do not remember it.

Dr Kingon: I think that the last time that it was updated was probably 2009.

Mr Lunn: What amount of funding does NICIE get?

Mrs Graham: Around £650,000.

Mr Lunn: Is that before the cut or after?

Mrs Graham: After the cut.

Mr Lunn: I have £600,000 written down, so I will not argue with you. [Laughter.]

It is what you might call a drop in the ocean.

Mrs Graham: It was about £700,000 before the cut.

Mr Lunn: I cannot argue about the need for cuts at the moment, but I suppose that it depends on what the priorities are.

What do you say to the accusation, which the Committee heard in the course of the review, that the area planning arrangements require the other sectors to authorise growth in the integrated sector? Do you agree with that? Do you agree with the suggestion that provision for integrated education has never been increased in an area plan as a consequence of parental demand?

Mrs Graham: Sorry, I lost the second bit of that.

Mr Lunn: The provision for integrated education as a consequence of parental demand never seems to be built into the considerations under area planning.

Dr Kingon: We are not from the area planning side of the Department. Colleagues there may be better able to answer your queries. However, NICIE has an integral role in all levels of the area planning process. The Department is keen to ensure that the Education Authority and CCMS work closely with NICIE in developing plans for the integrated sector.

Mr Lunn: Do you think that the current area planning rules — the needs model and the various considerations — work in favour of or against integrated education, or would you say that they are neutral?

Dr Kingon: I do not think that any of us at the table would profess to being experts on the details of the needs model.

Mrs Graham: It is fair to say that Justice Treacy did not say that there was a problem with the needs model. Rather, it is that the needs model has to be applied sensibly. It is not meant to be hard and fast. It is indicative of what might happen and how populations will grow or change. Like Suzanne, I say this as someone who does not work in that area: the important thing in area planning, I think, is the range of information that the Department looks at and provides to the Minister to inform his decision. Ultimately, the decision will be the Minister's, and it will be based on all the information that comes in. There is a very clear process that allows people to opt in to the various consultation processes along the way. I think that that process is very comprehensive. Of course, anyone is free to give you their view, but I think that the Department has a very comprehensive process in place for making decisions on development proposals.

Mr Lunn: I do not have it here, but Judge Treacy criticised the needs model. In simple terms, he said that it currently involves projections of the need for the maintained and controlled sectors but not the integrated sector. I know that you will say that you are not experts in area planning, but that is more or less what it says, which indicates to me something not far short of discrimination against the integrated sector.

Mrs Graham: I do not have it in front of me either, but that is not my interpretation of what Justice Treacy said about the needs model.

Mr Lunn: Fair enough.

Mrs Graham: I cannot not say that my interpretation is different from what you said. Like you, I cannot be authoritative, but that is not my interpretation or recollection of what the judgement said.

Mr Lunn: OK, I will leave it at that.

Mr Rogers: According to the Department, there seem to be few material differences between integrated schools and jointly managed schools. If that is the case, why do we need jointly managed schools?

Dr Kingon: The interest came from communities interested in exploring the option of jointly managed schools, whereby a school would be organically linked to both the Catholic Church and the transferring churches through the composition of the school trustees and boards of governors. A number of communities were interested in exploring that. The Department then worked with the transferors and trustees to develop guidance for communities that may wish to consider this option.

Mr A Bell: There are more similarities than differences, but the differences make jointly managed schools more acceptable to some communities. When the Committee heard evidence from CCMS and the Northern Ireland Commission for Catholic Education, they set out clearly that they value the legal protection of ownership by the trustees, and the property guarantees. They also said that they place value on the fundamental values of a shared common good, reconciliation and peace, which they said were central to Christianity, being protected in law. The Catholic trustees and the transferors have said that they are willing to collaborate on the basis of protecting the Christian ethos that both value. So, crucially for jointly managed schools, the transferors and the Catholic trustees are content with the legislation. We talked last time about the differences between the set-up of a jointly managed school and an integrated one. They see that as a key point and a key issue in moving the whole thing forward. From that point of view, it is very much a bottom-up approach and an issue that I think may well make a significant difference in having a more integrated system that is not necessarily of integrated status. Some have referred to it as the difference between a capital "I" and a small "i".

Mr Rogers: You say that Christianity would be more protected in law. Will you clarify the Department's position? Will the Christian ethos have better legal protection in jointly managed schools than in the integrated or controlled sectors?

Mr A Bell: The trustees and transferors in a jointly managed school will agree the make-up of the board of governors. They will agree certain places between them. Since the board of governors sets the ethos for the school, it follows that the expectation is that the ethos will be Christian.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): To some extent, the point being made is that, in practice, people from different sectors would be there to provide that practical protection, but maybe you will drill down into the better legal protection.

Mr A Bell: From their evidence, I think that they had thought about the fact that yes, that can happen in other schools. However, the key difference is that it does not necessarily have that legal protection. In my reading of what they said to the Committee, that seems to be one of the key principles that they —

Mr Rogers: So, jointly managed schools will not have better protection of the Christian ethos than controlled or integrated schools.

Mr A Bell: Well, from what —

Mr Rogers: I am talking about from the Department's point of view.

Dr Kingon: It may be worth separating ethos from the legal position on the provision of collective worship and religious education. The provision of collective worship and religious education for all schools is set out in the Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1986. It makes provision for daily collective worship at controlled, grant-maintained and — as amended in the Education Reform (Northern Ireland) Order 1989 — integrated schools. There is legal protection in statute for the provision of religious education and collective worship at all schools.

Andrew is making the point that we would expect, as set out in our circular, a formal memorandum of agreement between the Catholic trustees and the transferors in a jointly managed school on its future ethos, arrangements for religious education etc. Also, both churches will be trustees of the school and, therefore, on the board of governors. Stakeholders feel that this gives additional protection to the Christian ethos and the individual ethos of each church.

Mr Rogers: Yes, but, although there is a memorandum, there is really no further legal protection for the Christian ethos in a jointly managed school.

Dr Kingon: School ethos is not prescribed in law, but it is very important. There are legal differences in the constitution of the schools, through the boards of governors, which can be perceived as an additional legal protection, if you follow me.

Mr Rogers: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): Trevor wanted to come in on that point.

Mr Lunn: It is just a quick addition. It is heartening to see that trustees and transferors managed to agree on something like this. Is CCMS agreement needed for such a school to be set up?

Dr Kingon: We talked about that last time, when we said that CCMS had full sight of the draft guidance. The circular expects the development proposal to close the existing maintained school. If the amalgamation is of a controlled and a maintained school, it will, of course, be put forward by CCMS. Working in conjunction with the Education Authority, CCMS would submit the development proposal to establish the new jointly managed school.

Mrs Graham: CCMS, in its presentation to the Committee, made the distinction that it was not like NICIE. It is there not to promote Catholic education but to manage the school estate that is already in place. In my reading of the evidence to the Committee, there was that distinction, so it is not the case that the decision would come from the Church working with the transferors.

Mr A Bell: When we met communities that expressed an interest in this, the boards and CCMS were involved. Both have been very willing to explore the issues with those communities.

Mr Lunn: That is lovely CCMS-speak for "push it down the pipe", frankly. It seems to me that the CCMS will, should they want to exercise it, have a blocking role. It may be making the right noises now, but, if you look at its recent history, it has, as far as I can remember, only ever acceded to one amalgamation with a controlled school, and that was Clintyclay Primary School. The Minister has challenged the result of the judicial review, so I really do not know where we go with that, but I am curious to know whether CCMS, separately from the Catholic trustees, has a legal right to block. In its evidence to us, Faustina, it did not only say that it managed the sector; it said that its remit was to open, close and maintain Catholic schools.

Mr Rogers: We are all aware of the mix in schools. We have many schools that are highly mixed or "super-mixed", as we call it. What has the Department done to promote that natural integration in schools across the North?

Mr A Bell: With some of the schemes that we had in the past, such as the community relations schemes, that has been a natural consequence. We hope that shared education will further drive that work forward.

Mr Rogers: Has the Department done any studies on super-mixed schools to see what makes them tick?

Mr A Bell: I am not aware of any particular studies. I was managing agent for the International Fund for Ireland, and it had asked us to do some work on what made certain schools more acceptable to both communities than others. I know that the general feeling at that stage was that creating and making schools neutral spaces is what would drive us forward. During the work that we did on behalf of the fund, we visited a number of schools that have been very successful in attracting pupils from both communities, and what became very obvious very quickly was that it was not about creating neutral spaces; it was about those schools being more acceptable to their communities. Very often, it was parents who were making the choice because they saw that these schools produced better academic outcomes. That was part of the reason for sending their children there.

I was struck by what I was told by one Catholic maintained school that we visited. It explained that it had always had a leavers' mass. When it tried to make it more ecumenical, the Protestant pupils said, "No, there is a long history at this school of having this mass." It was the pupils who asked the school to do it in the same way as it had always done it. That was quite an interesting perspective. That is as much as we have done by way of a study.

Mr Rogers: I find that disappointing. It would have been important had the Department gone more deeply into that, because this goes much deeper than a leaving mass or leaving service. What schools do not understand, particularly the super-mixed schools that are doing really well, is that they cannot now avail themselves of shared education funding because, to do so, they would have to link with another school.

Mrs Graham: Why would they object to working collaboratively with another school? What would be the problem with that? If they are doing well, it would be an encouragement to another school to gain and benefit from their experience. I do not understand why, if you have an ethos of sharing in your school, you would not want to work collaboratively with another school.

Mr Rogers: I do not think that there is a problem with that, but why should they be penalised? They do super work in sharing across the social divide, the academic divide and everything else. They are doing fantastically well, but, whether maintained, controlled or integrated, they see that they are being penalised because they have to link with another school rather than being rewarded. Why can that good practice not be rewarded? It goes back to my earlier point that the Department should have done an in-depth study of what makes super-mixed schools really tick.

Mr A Bell: Do not forget that the aim of shared education is to improve educational outcomes, including reconciliation outcomes. Part of that is based on research that shows that, when schools collaborate, they can improve educational outcomes, and, if they do it on a cross-community basis, reconciliation outcomes. While those super-mixed schools may have a good mix of communities, a very good school will have the opportunity to work with another school to raise its level. They can also learn from other schools.

Last time, we talked about the framework devised by the Education and Training Inspectorate, which is a four-level model. In the first phase of the Delivering Social Change signature project, we targeted schools that had already been involved in considerable sharing. Among that first set of applications, no school was at the top level of that model, which suggests that all schools have an opportunity to benefit and raise educational outcomes by working collaboratively.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): I guess that there is a slightly separate point, which Seán has been making. I do not think that any of those schools will object to sharing and will probably be fairly proactive. However, there have been specific attempts to set up schools, some of which have been very successful, others less so. In my area, a number of schools have reached this position organically. In looking at the experience of those schools and trying to learn lessons from them, a more proactive approach to the exploration of information may be useful.

Mr A Bell: You need to go back to the fact that the Minister, through the ministerial advisory group, has recognised that there are additional costs in sharing. From our five years' experience of running 22 strategic projects across the Province, which included 500-odd schools, we know that the main sharing costs are for transport and teacher substitute cover for planning purposes — aligning timetables etc — and for when a teacher goes with pupils to another school. That is where the Delivering Social Change signature funding is targeted. Sharing within your school means that you do not need to do that planning, and you do not have the additional costs for transport and substitute cover.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): We are talking at cross purposes. No one is saying that, from that point of view, we are looking at additional funding. We are saying that a number of schools have achieved certain things organically. Maybe they did not set out to do that, and maybe it was because of particular circumstances in the area. I am a little concerned that, from the broader departmental point of view, there does not seem to be the curiosity to explore what is happening in those schools to see whether there are useful lessons. It might well be that such exploration might find individual circumstances that are not transferable. Whatever is being done in shared education, those schools need to be looked at to ensure that the full information is pulled together.

Mrs Graham: That is a totally valid point. It is important to say that everything is of its time. To have shone a light at different points in time on some of the schools that you talked about might not have been helpful. We are now in a place where some of the organic things that have happened over time can be celebrated. Over the next period, the whole concept of the work that is done under shared education will be to look at precisely the things that you are talking about. What is it that makes the difference? The truth is that we do not know, but we hope to get to that stage by the end of the four years on which we are embarking. We are looking right across the spectrum at schools under the Delivering Social Change programme that have a history of sharing. I feel very strongly that it is hugely important for the schools that Mr Rogers talked about to engage in the programme.

Everything in education is about building communities of good practice; no school should be in isolation. Where there is good practice and it can be shared, it should be. Equally, we are in a learning phase with regard to what will allow us to get to a point, hopefully at the end of this four-year process, where we begin to see what we have described as a concept-shared education as something that is integral to every school and part and parcel of what they do.

I spoke earlier about some of the explicit references in our curriculum that would lend themselves to shared education. We did not necessarily have the time to provide professional development to our teachers as part of this programme or to evaluate in the way that you described. I am really hopeful that, as part of the journey, we will find out the answers to the very questions that you pose this morning as part of the process. That was the concept of engaging the Education and Training Inspectorate right at the beginning of this process in the design and development, rather than just coming along as evaluators at the end, to accrue all the learning that will influence the system by the end of the four-year period. Your points are well made.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): Seán, do you want to raise the issue of Drumragh?

Mr Rogers: I want to ask Andrew a question. You talked about timetabling, which is a major problem. I noticed that some of the earlier projects involved schools adjacent to one another, whether in Limavady or Ballycastle or Moy. What consideration has been given to the rural White Paper, so that all our young people have the same access to shared education and so on, particularly in rural areas? Northern Ireland is so rural, and it really is not feasible in some cases to link two schools because of the distance. It is OK if they are a few hundred yards apart or in an urban environment. Sceptics would say that this will lead to the urbanisation of our education system; the rural school will be a thing of the past. A link with another school brings so many benefits, but it also brings more funding in, and that is crucial at the moment. What is your comment on that?

Mr A Bell: I can only point to the examples over the last five years involving rural schools, particularly in what was the North Eastern Board area, now the north-eastern region. Yes, it can be more challenging; there is no doubt about that. In Fermanagh, schools have very successfully collaborated, and I know that the Committee has taken witness statements from those groups. The evidence is that it was more challenging, but it will work. There is also the use of technology and IT to link schools up, which we are keen to explore. Schools linked up using technology, as well as face-to-face contact, through the International Fund for Ireland (IFI) programme. That gives an additional element to the joined-up approach, although we would always advocate face-to-face work.

Mrs Graham: Certainly, listening to principals of schools, particularly post-primary schools, involved in the IFI projects, there is, as you say, the added worry of losing class time because of transport issues. In the consultation we had feedback from young people on some of the concerns that they have about that as well. I have found principals to be very honest about embarking on the IFI programmes and feeling exactly as you said: "We are getting extra funding here, but this will be so complex that we will struggle with it". It is about working through those problems and finding solutions to them. The only thing that we can do is try. We see what has happened in some schools where those issues have been overcome, but they have not been overcome easily.

I think that it has been the case over a three-year period that the first year has been quite difficult, in the second people have begun to get some sense that it is possible, and moving into the third year they think that it is something worth fighting for. When you see those outcomes from mixes of schools, it is something that would also encourage us to keep pushing at the boundaries of that as well, while not, at any point, ever sacrificing the educational quality of a school. Where a school knows what it can deliver on its own in terms of educational quality for its pupils, that should not be compromised in any way. First and foremost, the duty is to ensure that young people get the best possible education, but we have seen how people have described the benefits that have accrued at the end of a process, while they themselves have been extremely fearful and extremely cautious at the beginning.

Mr A Bell: It is probably worth saying that there are good examples — people who have been through the process and done it; therefore, we can point people to those who have experience. The Education Authority has development officers working with individual schools. If schools are having difficulties in that area, we would expect the Education Authority to make that known to us. We will then look at the issues and the barriers and how they can be overcome.

Mr Craig: What are the guidelines on minority community representation in integrated education? More importantly, how many schools with the title "integrated" actually meet those criteria?

Dr Kingon: The criteria for a newly transformed school are that, in the first year, it will achieve 10%, working towards 30% from the minority community, and the criteria for grant-maintained integrated schools are that they will work towards 30%. Obviously, for certain schools and certain communities, those targets have not been achieved. The schools continue to work to achieve those targets. I think that there is a recognition that, in some communities, those targets may not be achieved, certainly in the short-to-medium term.

Mr Craig: I am interested to hear you say "short-to-medium term". What is the definition of that?

Dr Kingon: Certainly, within the next five years it seems unlikely that a number of schools will meet the 30% target.

Mr Craig: If they do not meet the target in 15 years, what happens to them?

Dr Kingon: The Department will work closely with the schools to try to ensure that they get the appropriate community balance.

Mr Craig: So what happens to them?

Dr Kingon: In what sense?

Mr Craig: If they never meet the target, what happens?

Dr Kingon: There is no question of the Department removing funding from those schools or —

Mr Craig: Thanks for the honesty. So absolutely nothing happens. At least that is clarification.

Mrs Graham: I think, to be fair —

Mr Craig: Sorry; I have got the answer.

How many schools not called "integrated" actually meet those criteria?

Dr Kingon: There is much more to integrated status than simply the religious intake. The Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education takes forward an awful lot of work on the ethos of those schools. There are also important legal distinctions on the composition of the boards of governors and other aspects of school provision. There are important aspects of integrated provision that are much more than just a numbers game about minority population at the school.

Mr Craig: Suzanne, do you know the number of schools not in the integrated sector that meet those criteria?

Dr Kingon: In terms of the 30%? We could certainly find that out.

Mr Craig: Not only the religious breakdown of pupils. Plenty of schools meet those criteria in the make-up of the board of governors as well. Have we any idea what that is?

Mrs Graham: We have that information in the Department, but we could not say off the top of our head here today.

Mr Craig: However, you would agree that a number of schools meet those criteria but do not call themselves "integrated".

Mrs Graham: Yes, I would say that there are a number, but that is, as Suzanne said, in terms of religious balance as opposed to ethos.

Mr Craig: There is also a growing issue of pupils and individuals not wanting to tag themselves as either one or other community. Those figures are growing generally across the board. Will there be any change in those artificial criteria to allow for that?

Dr Kingon: As we said earlier, the Minister is considering both the need for and the scope of a future review of integrated education.

Mr Craig: Will it be reviewed, then?

Dr Kingon: As I have said, the Minister is considering both the need for a review and its scope, and whether it will encompass the areas that you have alluded to.

Mr Craig: Fair enough.

Mr Lunn: I heard what you said about how the qualification for an integrated school applies at the start and in the early years of that school, whether it is a transformation or a new school. I think that Jonathan is suggesting that they should lose their integrated status if they cannot comply. There is really no reason for that. Would you agree with me that integrated schools are far more likely to take ethnic minorities, for instance? I was in one recently that has just taken in four or six Somalian children who, I venture to suggest, would not have been taken by any other school in the area, because it was a secondary school and they had no primary education whatsoever, nor had they any English.

Dr Kingon: I could cite examples of schools —

Mr Lunn: There is far more to it than just the Protestant/Catholic balance. Jonathan quite rightly cites examples of very good schools that do not have integrated labels but which are effectively integrated. The one that we always to come back to, Chairman, is Methodist College, which would not strictly qualify, at the moment, if it applied for integrated status because it has only 25% minority, but it has 55% non-Protestant. So it is a silly argument. It is exactly as you say, Suzanne: it is all about ethos, approach and balance —. I am going to make a speech, and I do not mean to.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): To be fair, Trevor, there are an awful lot of questions to get through, so if we could avoid speeches it would be helpful.

Mr Lunn: You would agree with me about the approach.

Mrs Graham: It would be unfair to say that we have many schools that would be unwilling to take in children who have not had a previous education. That would be unfair, and I want to correct that. It is not only the integrated sector that will accept pupils who have a disadvantaged background in any way. That is my experience.

Dr Kingon: Under open enrolment policy, schools will accept the pupils who apply if there are surplus places and capacity at the school. A point to make is that the majority of integrated schools have achieved the 30% target.

Mr Craig: Fair enough.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): Trevor, while you have the floor, do you want to deal with the issue of special schools and integration?

Mr Lunn: Why is the Department so heart set against giving special schools integrated status?

Mrs Graham: I do not think that the Department has a view that special schools should not have integrated status; it is the way that special schools are constituted. They see themselves as naturally, organically integrated, as we said earlier. Therefore, there is not the need for something called "integrated status" for those special schools.

Mr Lunn: If one of them applies for integrated status from here on, would the Department be minded to allow it if it satisfied the criteria for an integrated school?

Dr Kingon: We will come back to you with the detail on that. My understanding is that, at the minute, legislation prohibits a special school from becoming an integrated school. However, I would like to come back to you to confirm that.

Mr Lunn: That is fair enough. You can come back and confirm that, Suzanne. I wonder whether that is correct. Why on earth would legislation prohibit such a transformation? If that is the rule, that is the rule. The logic would interest me. Why?

Dr Kingon: We will come back to you about that position.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): Can I ask a couple of questions about definitions? You gave a good reason why, from a practical point of view, widening shared education into all the section 75 groups would not be practical. People's general perception, when we talk about shared education, is about across the religious divide. Obviously, that is clearly catered for. However, within that definition, you have also talked about socio-economic deprivation. To clarify, from the point of view of the qualification of shared education, if you had two schools in exactly the same sector, one from a fairly affluent area with children from a very affluent socio-economic background and the other from a more deprived area, with a virtually identical religious mix and being single identity, would that count in the definition of shared education if there were collaboration between those two schools?

Mrs Graham: Where both schools have the same community background?

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): Yes. In the controlled sector, if you were talking about primary-school level and mixing a very affluent controlled primary school with 95%-plus of children from the broader Protestant/unionist community with a controlled primary school with 95%-plus of children from the Protestant/unionist community but much more deprived, does that count under this as shared education? To a certain extent, is that getting away from the notion? I would have thought that the driver behind this was particularly to, largely speaking, cross the community divide.

Dr Kingon: There are a couple of points to make. The legislative definition is religious background and socio-economic. It is not "or"; it is "and".

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): So, effectively, it is both boxes in that regard.

Dr Kingon: Having said that, there may be circumstances where schools of the same management type have different religious backgrounds, given the eccentricities of the system. In terms of applications to individual programmes, the Department will look carefully at everything case by case. However, the legislative definition is religious education "and" socio-economic, not "or".

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): Is there a pecking order? For example, if a maintained school from a socially deprived background wanted to have a level of shared education and looked across a motorway or whatever and wanted to have a level of link with a controlled school also from a socially deprived background, is the lack of social mobility or status in that going to be a barrier to that being funded as shared education?

Dr Kingon: In the Delivering Social Change project, we looked at all the applications case by case, and it is safe to say that the applications that we have received to date can all demonstrate a reasonable degree of social mixing. That issue has not arisen.

The main thing is that we do not want to be prescriptive. We do not want to say, "This is only about this type of school and this type of school" because our system has so many eccentricities. There are controlled schools with majority Catholic populations. In Delivering Social Change, we have indicated that, in the majority of cases, we expect it to be schools of different management types cooperating.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): Obviously, one of the issues that were raised by evidence from the Speedwell Trust was whole-school sharing. What assurances can we get that, whenever we are looking at it, we do not get simply tokenism in sharing; that it is not a question of ticking half a dozen boxes to show some level of activity. That would be almost like building up the brownie points and getting the badge as opposed to the notion that the shared-education activity should be based on a whole-school organisational involvement.

Dr Kingon: In the Delivering Social Change signature project, the ETI has developed a shared-education continuum. At the beginning of the process, partnerships evaluate where they are in that process. The thrust of the project is that, in four key areas, they will develop their relationships. We expect to see an increase in the quantum of sharing, which is the number of year groups participating in the shared-education project, and the range of curricular areas that the sharing is in. That is built into the planning of the project.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): As part of that, it is really where the end game is in each of those. It may be that you are starting off with a limited level of direct involvement —

Dr Kingon: Absolutely.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): — but, so long as there is a clear —

Dr Kingon: There is a very clearly articulated —

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): — pathway to sharing.

Mr A Bell: The schools have to provide an action plan as part of their application as to how they are going to move. That action plan is looked at by the project board that approves the applications as to whether it believes that that is sufficient to get the school from where it says it is to where it aims to be.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): This is the final question I want to ask in connection with this. I appreciate that this does not relate to the post-primary sector. Particularly when people look at the significance of early years and particularly if we look at sharing from the point of view of community relations and academic achievement, to what extent will you reflect the need for sharing at early years in the obligations of the Bill?

Mr A Bell: Early years are covered in the policy and in the Bill. As regards actual programmes, the Delivering Social Change programme targets schools specifically, but we have been working with the Special EU Programmes Body on the shared education thematic area for Peace IV. Peace IV will extend to schools that have not currently shared, as well as to early years and the youth sector. Indeed, we have asked the Education and Training Inspectorate for a continuing model specifically for the early years sector that ties in. In fact, they completed it just in the last couple of days, and I still have to look in detail at it. We have also asked them to do something similar for the youth sector, so that we have continuing models that are more appropriate to those individual sectors.

Mr McCausland: You had a consultation process on the forthcoming legislation, but it says on page 131 that the number of attendees at the public meetings was small. How many meeting were there and how many people attended? What does "small" mean?

Mr A Bell: We held three consultation events, one in Armagh, one in Belfast and one in Derry/Londonderry. There were probably fewer than 10 at each event. We catered for as many as wanted to come, but those were the numbers that turned up.

Mr McCausland: You say fewer than 10; that could be two or nine. I would be interested to hear just how small the numbers were. We are told that there is evidence of huge demand for more integration and sharing, so it is surprising that across the whole of Northern Ireland you could not even get 30 people to turn up.

Mr A Bell: As you know, the process is that we advertise public events fairly widely, and it is up to individuals —

Mr McCausland: I appreciate that. What does it say that so few people did turn up?

Mr A Bell: The events were held in the evening to facilitate as many people as possible who wished to attend. It is asking them to come out in the evening —

Mr McCausland: If you are passionate about something, you will turn up.

Mr A Bell: Absolutely, and those who did turn up were very passionate.

Mr McCausland: It is just that there were not many of them.

Mr A Bell: There were not many of them. Others used the questionnaire.

Mr McCausland: Would it be possible to have the exact figures for each of the three events?

Mr A Bell: Yes.

Mr McCausland: I was reading John O' Dowd's ministerial foreword to the policy, and there is a line in it that I do not understand. He says:

— that is fine —

What does "equality of identity" mean?

Mr A Bell: That is about people from different communities, who identify with a different community or who are from a different background coming together. It is equality across communities.

Mr McCausland: Is it well expressed, though, if it is not clear? Does "equality of identity" refer to religious or cultural identity? What sort of identity?

Mr A Bell: We are trying to be as inclusive as possible, and it is open to those of different identities to come together to fulfil —

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): Is there a difference between inclusive and vague?

Mr McCausland: It is also incoherent.

Mr A Bell: The only thing that I can say is that nobody raised it as an issue during the public consultation. You are the first person to do that.

Mr McCausland: I think that there are certain things in life that people approach with a sort of glowing generosity where maybe they do not like to say those things. I can understand respect for diversity and community cohesion, but I think that the term "equality of identity" is meaningless. It needs to be much more specific and spelt out. I can understand that there is an attempt to get something that reads well with a lot of little phrases of about three or four words, but I stress that identity is multi-layered and it is many different things. It is a core issue in Northern Ireland and, if it is being mentioned in there, it is important that it is mentioned properly. I would like that to be relayed back.

The other bit there — Jonathan Craig touched on it — is a recognised integrated school that is trying to reach the criteria. I think that I know the answer to this before asking: what about the school that has reached the criteria at some point but then slides away back because, for some reason or another, people from one community or another community walk away? I assume that that school also retains its integrated status.

Dr Kingon: The Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education works closely with those schools to help them to promote the integrated ethos. As part of the school development plan of an integrated school, the Department expects there to be significant emphasis on the integrated ethos and promoting the integrated ethos in the school.

Mr McCausland: Do you have a graph for each school that shows how they are doing in terms of reaching those criteria?

Dr Kingon: Yes; we do not have a graph, but we certainly monitor the figures.

Mr McCausland: You would know whether a particular school was —

Dr Kingon: I certainly have the figures. I might not know just off the top of my head, but yes.

Mr McCausland: Even if one community almost entirely walked away from the school, it would still retain its status. The money would not be withdrawn.

Dr Kingon: It is important to distinguish between funding for a grant-aided school and integrated status. Integrated status is bestowed through a development proposal process. It is statutory; it is in law. Once that is assumed through the development proposal process, it can only be taken away again via the development proposal process, which would have to come from the managing authority of the school. It would determine whether it wished to change its status to a management type of school.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): I think that Jonathan wants to come in on that one.

Mr Craig: I have a supplementary to Nelson's question. You have said a fascinating thing, Suzanne, because we all know how it is done. You call a meeting of the parents, and 51% of them have to agree to integrated status. Some of the decisions that have been made to go integrated have been extremely close. I am aware of one school where, really, that decision was made by three parents, and that was a school of several hundred pupils — and even more parents, for that matter. Are you aware of that process ever being kicked off for a school that has never met the other criteria set out in the definition of integrated?

Dr Kingon: The ballot for parents is part of the statutory transformation process, so that ballot almost begins a process. The ballot of parents has to get the 51% that you talked about before a statutory development proposal can be published for transformation to integrated status. As part of the statutory transformation process, there will be a pre-consultation and a full public consultation on the proposal. At the end of the two-month statutory consultation, the Minister will make his decision based on all the pertinent facts. The school then becomes a controlled integrated or a grant-maintained integrated school in law, and that is the process. The parental ballot allows the school to go forward with publishing the proposal. It is not the end of the process. In looking at a development proposal for transformation, one of the factors that the Minister will look at is the community balance in the school and the community balance in the surrounding area and the likelihood that the school may, in future, achieve the community balance.

Mr Craig: But, as my colleague quite rightly pointed out, Suzanne, if the balance is never achieved, but, more importantly, if local community support for the school actually lessens because of the integrated status, what mechanism is there, or what triggers the mechanism, to revisit the integrated status? I do not believe there is anything.

Dr Kingon: It is a matter for the individual managing authority to consider the status of the school. As I said, it can only be reversed through another development proposal.

Mr McCausland: If they did reverse, what would be the implications for the school financially?

Dr Kingon: There would be no significant implications for the school financially in terms of its LMS budget. As I said earlier, some transformed schools get a very small amount of funding from the Department. The LMS budget is per pupil and would be unaffected.

Mr McCausland: Finally, it seems to me that the process is somewhat fraudulent, in that the status does not get removed even though there are criteria there. The criteria are meaningless, in a sense.

Dr Kingon: In looking at the proposal, the Minister will carefully take into account —

Mr McCausland: I mean, five years, 10 years or 15 years on they become meaningless if the school either has never achieved the criteria or has achieved them and then slid back and fallen out.

Mrs Graham: I think that we have to be careful here. We are reverting back to the concept of integrated education meaning just a balance of religion, as opposed to — as Suzanne articulated earlier — the whole concept of ethos. Every school will aspire to a particular ethos, whatever that is, depending on what the governors set as the ethos of the school. The truth of the matter is that we have integrated schools, controlled schools and maintained schools that do not actually fulfil the ethos that they aspire to. In any of those situations, what becomes important is what the school is doing in the round in order to meet the needs of its pupils.

In terms of the five-year process, as you said, obviously inspection will come along to all schools at some point in time and will look very carefully at ethos. Unfortunately we do have schools where we have found the ethos to be unsatisfactory, horrifying as that may seem. For any school, if the ethos is not being fulfilled, that is irrespective of the numbers and the religious balance. All of the other elements around moral, spiritual and ethical education of children and young people are what come into play in ethos, and that is what has to be looked at. We have had lengthy discussions around that whole concept and we have to look at it in the round, particularly with regard to the integrated sector. The fact that a school aspires to achieve that does not mean that it always will. In those situations, whatever the issue, that school has to be supported in order to allow it to realise that ethos again. That is the important thing for the children and young people.

Mr Newton: I thank the members for coming this morning. I will just ask you a few short questions around the shared education programmes themselves. You will be aware of Sir Robert Salisbury's comments around shared education programmes and his thoughts that educational improvement should be the first step, but that that should be quickly followed by improvements in reconciliation between communities, and that he would measure the success of shared education in those two ways. How does the Department suggest that shared education should be measured? Is that likely to be tied in with any funding mechanism that would be offered?

Mrs Graham: The important thing in looking at shared education was for us in the Department to try to learn and benefit from what has happened in the past by analysing what worked and did not work in previous programmes. The key concept in shared education is ensuring that it is totally focused on the Northern Ireland curriculum. I saw Sir Bob's comments and, to me, they were very much in keeping with what I have said this morning. He was very clear that educational improvement is always, first and foremost, really important in a school. That is what it is there for and, obviously, that is the aim of the Department. He also saw, as I have said this morning, no tension between the concept of educational standards, as I call it, and reconciliation outcomes. At times, there has been a suggestion that the two things are separate. Integral to our curriculum are the thinking skills and personal capabilities, the attitudes and dispositions, and the subject areas that I talked to you about this morning — citizenship, learning for life and work, and PDMU in the primary curriculum. Earlier, you made a comment about lip service. In the past, we have seen programmes which have been interesting but quite superficial. There is something for all schools in ensuring that they can see what the value of this is for them. They are busy; they are doing a lot of things; they are trying to get through all of the programmes that they have. How is this going to be valuable to them, their principal and the pupils? Ensuring that all of those programmes are very definitely curriculum-based helps people to see that this is about improving both educational standards and reconciliation, and that both of those things are educational outcomes. We are trying to educate our young people to achieve highly, obviously, but also to be contributors to society in the future and to be contributors to the economy.

The concept of measuring reconciliation outcomes is one that we have all struggled with. We have worked on this, and, certainly, the Education and Training Inspectorate, in designing the work that it has done for evaluation, is working very closely with Queen's in looking at how we actually get at the heart of measuring this, as opposed to hoping that it is all going to work out. There is probably no one else who has done any more detailed work than what we have done here. I think that we are at the cutting edge of looking at how we measure progression when it comes to the concept of reconciliation and, obviously, respecting difference, tolerance and all of those things.

We started the process of articulating how progression is achieved in the evaluation of the IFI project that Andrew has talked about. I think that we made good progress in doing that, but we are not there yet. That is something that we will, hopefully, gain from and learn from by way of interacting with all of the schools and, ultimately, the youth and early years organisations over the next period.

Mr Newton: You have agreed that the educational end, and success in that field, is fairly easily measured. Reconciliation is a bit more difficult to measure. How would funding be tied into a measure that is fairly nebulous at times?

Mrs Graham: Andrew and Suzanne have referred to the application process that has been put in place for the DSC programme. It is about schools demonstrating how they are going to work together and set targets for themselves over a period. The continuum that ETI has developed is looking at the various stages of improving educational standards and reconciliation outcomes. That, at the minute, is a guide that allows schools to look at where they think they are at the moment. That will be tested by ETI on its baseline visits to the schools, when it will ask, "Is this an accurate self-reflection of where you are at?" and "Where is the evidence to demonstrate that?". Over the course of the four years, each school will demonstrate how it has progressed. Along the way, ETI will refine that continuum in order to make those performance indicators sharper and clearer for everyone and something that all schools can use over that time. We already have indicators under the CRED policy for looking at community involvement. Beginning to combine all of those things and looking at what is the best of those should give us a more rounded product.

Mr A Bell: It is probably worth saying that overlaying that level that Faustina is talking about, at the project level, the business case has identified three measures that Queen's, which has done a lot of work around this measurement and reconciliation, has come up with. They are across good friendship, positive action tendencies and inter-group anxiety. So we have very clear measures for the Delivering Social Change signature project that we will expect to be moving, and we set out targets for those. Part of the difficulty is that we need to make sure that this work does not become a bureaucratic overhead for schools and that it is understandable to teachers. We have asked the inspectorate, over the four-year period, to consider other measures that we can use. As Faustina said, we are at the forefront of work to make that measurement easier, so that people are not trying to understand what cross-group friendship means, or positive action tendencies, or inter-group anxiety.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): That is quite important from the point of view of the burden it would place on schools. We have all seen, I am sure, whether in education or in other sectors, that, if you have projects which are effectively getting funded, quite often the money goes to the organisation that can produce the best paper copy — the best form-fillers — rather than necessarily where the greatest need is. Adopting criteria and conditions that are clear and understandable to people will be of significance; it is not just the person who can fit the most jargon into a particular application form.

Mr A Bell: Do not forget that, through the Education Authority, we have put development officers in place to work with schools, and part of their role is working with schools through the application process. All schools, for example, in both the first and second tranches have attended workshops on the whole application process. Development officers will work with individual schools to try and overcome that problem, because as you say, some schools are better at filling out forms than others, and we do not want anybody penalised because of that.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): It is the same with any sort of funding application.

Mr A Bell: Absolutely.

Mr Newton: I just want to build on the point that Peter has raised. In evidence to the Committee there was a strong feeling that there needed to be support for building shared education — not just professional support to the teacher directly involved, but more widely to the board of governors and the parents. Am I right in thinking that the Department has accepted that training and support will be provided, and if so, what form will that take?

Mr A Bell: That is the work that Faustina referred to in her opening statement around a capacity-building strategy. That strategy will cover all those areas: teachers, schools, types of support and how to deal with parents. All those issues will be covered. We are working with those in the area and have invited them, as Faustina said in her opening statement, to bring forward a proposal on how best to achieve that. There are already a number of programmes out there, but the last thing we want to see is everybody doing this in a very piecemeal fashion. We want a very strategic approach. That is what we tried to achieve through the IFI programmes, which resulted in programmes such as the CREDIT programme at Stranmillis and St Mary's coming to fruition, which was very well accepted by teachers. The Committee heard that referenced in a number of previous witness statements. We are very much seeking that strategic approach.

Mr Newton: I take up a point that Nelson made earlier about the cultural certainty of schools participating in these programmes. The phrase "capacity building" is often used. I am never sure what it actually means, either in this context or in others. How would capacity building address the cultural certainty or cultural identity of pupils?

Mrs Graham: The capacity building that Andrew referred to — apologies if that sounds like educational jargon — is professional learning for teachers. It is about providing training that allows them first and foremost to address their own bias and what they perceive to be difficult issues in interacting with children and young people in the same forum. For example, we talked about section 75 this morning. A skilful teacher will be able to handle the cross-community issues and any other issues around identity that a young person might bring — they will seldom have only one issue — in a safe forum, first and foremost, as those young people deal with all of the challenges that they have. So the capacity-building focus is first on us as adults. Very often what we see is that it is we, the adults, who bring more problems and are less open to all the things that we are considering here regarding the future than our children and young people.

Equally, if those children and young people are not taught in a condition and a situation in which such openness about who they want to be and who they feel they are, there can be more damage than progress. It is about teachers exploring the various identities that they feel that they bring and, ultimately, from the Department's perspective, the approaches that teachers will use to work with children and young people and their experiences in training mirroring what we expect to see in the Northern Ireland curriculum. We should see all the things that we expect in the curriculum in teacher education as well, and all the issues that we have talked about today are in our curriculum. We are talking about tolerance, empathy, a respect for difference and being able to articulate your concerns clearly.

I am sure that you are aware that we have examples of the schools or children that Sir Bob talked about. There was, in fact, a young woman in a school who had not contributed at all in an entire day. That is quite shocking, but it happens. We need to ensure that our young people can be articulate in expressing their views, whatever those views are, without necessarily causing offence but still being confident in expressing them. Our teachers also need to be able to do that. Sometimes, particularly in a teaching situation, people will avoid things that may in any way suggest conflict rather than addressing them, because they are worried that they might do more damage than good. We have to equip our teachers with the skills to feel confident and comfortable about doing precisely that.

Mr A Bell: Before I worked in the Department, my post was in training. A general definition of capacity building is: what skills do you require to deliver something? In this case, the definition is: what skills do you require to deliver shared education? You then do a needs analysis to see what skills are out there and identify where the gaps are. The capacity-building strategy is simply about how to address those gaps. What is the strategy for addressing those gaps to get from where you are now to where you want to be?

Mr Newton: Faustina, my question is on the Minister for Employment and Learning's role in the teaching of the skills for the new intake of students at Stranmillis or St Mary's. What changes are there in their teaching programmes to include shared education and skills? What are the knowledge gaps, as Andrew outlined them?

Mrs Graham: It is important to say that, particularly across the IFI programmes, a number of courses were introduced for teachers through our teacher training colleges.

Mr Newton: Are you telling me that changes are now in place in their curricula?

Mrs Graham: In initial teacher education?

Mr Newton: Yes.

Mrs Graham: As Andrew said, we have asked the educational stakeholders, working collaboratively, to bring forward their ideas to us. I will be attending the Committee to talk about teacher education in a few weeks' time. It is important that all our teacher educators work collaboratively. It is not a case of everyone doing something different or separately. We have asked for that work to be done so that it will be an agreed strategy, and I like to think that that will definitely impact initial teacher education. As you recognise, that is not our responsibility as such.

Mr McCausland: I accept that it is not your responsibility, but the two things are utterly and totally inseparable. There are two factors: a psychological factor and a practical factor. The psychological factor is that, quite often, people have come from a socio-economically deprived background, done well, become teachers and moved on. How do they relate to the community that they initially came from? Do they turn their back on it, or do they retain some affinity? The practical factor is that, in many of those socio-economically disadvantaged areas, I do not know anybody who plays the recorder, but I know an awful lot of people who play the B-flat flute. So what instrument is taught in schools? What affinity with and interest in it do the children have? Cultural issues are at the heart of this, which is why the identity of culture, which we discussed earlier, needs to be teased out and honestly answered. For years, people have shied away from the issue. There is a cultural confidence and assurance in certain sectors that is only starting to come into the controlled sector in particular. Some schools are doing really good work. We need to push and promote that, and that is where teacher training and — [Inaudible.]

Mr A Bell: Sorry, to address that point: it is probably worth mentioning an addition to what you have previously seen. Following public consultation, we have picked that up in the policy. The Department has a commitment to liaise with higher education institutions and other relevant education providers on aligning their approaches to professional learning for shared education practitioners. So we have recognised —

Mr McCausland: What paragraph is that?

Mr A Bell: This is a new paragraph under key action 9, "Develop the Workforce". It has gone into the policy as a result of the public consultation, so it is now specified.

Mrs Overend: Thank you very much for attending and for bearing with us through all our questions. I will pick up on a few earlier points. You talked about the highly important role that schools' actions have in the community. How is that measured? Is it how the school building is used or how students participate in the community? Is there a measurement of that? Do you have certain set criteria, or is it done case by case?

Mr A Bell: That is made clear under community connections in the shared education framework that ETI has developed and is continuing to develop. It outlines that, in the early stage of sharing, we would very much expect engagement with parents in the wider community. As you move through, it builds, and indicators of what should be done are given at each stage. The basic level is "defining" schools at a very early stage. They then move to the "developing" stage, and community connections will build to do more work in the community. By the time they reach the top level of "embedding", we expect schools to have good connections with the community; parents to be well aware of what the shared education programmes are doing; schools to be using community resources; and, when possible, bringing in people from the community with experience of different areas — for example, if history is being taught, there may be people with a recent experience.

There are all those levels, and the school should also be aware of what is happening in the community. The curriculum sets out minimum standards, but one thing that we want schools to do is to take those standards and apply them to that group of children and young people as well as possible. If they understand what those children and young people face in their local community, they can better address that. It is all those levels, and maybe that answers your question.

Mrs Overend: It is interesting to hear those details. Thank you. Another question occurred to me during our discussion. Has the Department looked at other policies, such as the entitlement framework, that may work against the ideal of promoting shared education? The shared partnership in Magherafelt in my area promotes all schools working together, but people back off and want to deliver subjects on their own because of the entitlement framework.

Dr Kingon: Our experience of the applications process has been that schools being initially paired with each other through area learning communities has helped them to deliver on the entitlement framework requirement, because those schools may not have been able to deliver on their own. Some of these partnerships have come through strongly in the applications to shared education. That experience of collaboration and cooperation with another school and the practical difficulties that that can sometimes entail in timetabling and so on is a good basis from which to go forward with shared education. We do not see any particular tension there at all.

Mr A Bell: As we have developed the policy, we have looked to other policies in the Department. Obviously, there is a suite of policies, so this needs to fit with others. Part of the work we do is to try to identify whether there are contradictions or difficulties or whether another policy is working against what we are trying to do. That would have been part of the policy development route that we went down.

Mrs Overend: The Department's stats identify that 24% of schools are not involved in sharing. In order to ensure wider and non-tokenistic participation, does the Department believe that a legal obligation is required for schools to be involved in shared education?

Mr A Bell: The experience that we have built up over a number of years and all the research indicate that you need community support. If we started obliging communities to go down that route, you are going against that. We know from our knowledge in this area in this Province that, once you start forcing people to do things, that is when people will walk away from the position. We want to encourage and facilitate shared education as opposed to imposing it on communities.

Mrs Overend: In respect of employment practices in schools, the Minister suggested that section 75 obligations might be extended to all schools but that a public consultation would be required. Will the Department comment on whether it believes that a legal obligation might be usefully placed on schools to promote good relations and perhaps normalise employment practices in schools?

Mr A Bell: That was one of the recommendations from the ministerial advisory group report. That group did a lot of work and a very widespread consultation process before coming up with that. That happens in other jurisdictions. There were a lot of concerns in some of your previous sessions about the bureaucracy that would be involved. Other jurisdictions have what is sometimes referred to as an "equality-lite" scheme for schools. It is light on bureaucracy as opposed to light in ensuring that they meet the groups. There are other ways to move that forward, and we would want to explore this area as part of that. OFMDFM is in the lead on that process. The Minister has written to the First Minister and deputy First Minister to ask for their views initially about moving this forward.

Mrs Overend: When did he write to them?

Mr A Bell: He wrote to them a number of months back.

Mrs Overend: What is "a number"? Twelve? Twenty-four?

Mr A Bell: I do not know the exact date off the top of my head, but it is probably more than six months ago.

Mrs Overend: That is a reasonable amount of time in which to have expected a response.

You might find that some schools will amalgamate because of school numbers or will work more closely together because of the risk of closure. Do you look on that favourably?

Mr A Bell: Again, there are criteria, particularly for the Delivering Social Change signature project. As we work down through the policy level, we set out more detailed criteria in the individual programmes that deliver that policy. The criteria in the Delivering Social Change signature project state that, first, schools must be sustainable. When they come together for the shared educational experience, the expectation is that they are doing it for the right reasons. That is one reason why they have to set that out in their action plans. Each school individually self-assesses against the continuum model, and they then work as a partnership to see where it sits. We have made the process fairly robust while not being too bureaucratic for schools to follow so that we avoid the situations that you are talking about, where they are coming at it from the point of view that it allows them to continue to exist as a school.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): I have a couple of final questions. Drumragh and Methodist College highlighted their individual circumstances. They are concerned that shared education, according to the definition, cannot really happen in a single site or school. Why is there a requirement for more than one school to be involved?

Mr A Bell: It goes back to what I said earlier about the dual aims of improving educational outcomes and, as part of that, reconciliation outcomes. There is a lot of international evidence that, when a school collaborates with another school, it can raise standards. It is based on that evidence. A very good school can raise the standards of other schools and share with them how it has reached that standard.

Mrs Graham: You referred to two schools that I am not familiar with. I do not know what those two schools are doing. However, we would have to ask questions. If someone is saying that they are doing all these things but is unwilling to work with somebody else, it raises questions.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): Although I was not here when that evidence was given, to be fair, it is maybe somewhat pejorative to say that they are unwilling to do that. They are saying that they are providing a particular setting in which communities are mixing.

Mrs Graham: That is great.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): They are simply asking why they are being excluded from that as opposed to —

Mrs Graham: We need those schools to participate. The very fact they are doing those things makes it all the more important that they participate. As Andrew said, whether it is educational attainment, reconciliation outcomes or both, a stronger school that works with another school that is in need of support, needs to improve and recognises that need will pull up what is happening in that school. Hopefully, the stronger school will be able to take credit for the support that it provides.

Dr Kingon: If you look at the practicalities of the Delivering Social Change programme, you will see that the funding that is available is to assist with transport and provide substitute cover. Andrew referred to that. It is funding to facilitate inter-school collaboration, which is recognised as having additional costs over and above a school's LMS budget. A school on its own will not incur those types of cost in the very good work that it is doing by itself.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): Trevor, you have a final question on the Moy situation and the shared campus.

Mr Lunn: I am not going to go down to the Moy again. The question was about the measurement of education and the societal benefit of shared education schemes. You have answered it at least three times, so you are off the hook.

Mrs Graham: Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): On that note, I thank you for your evidence. There are a couple of issues that we could clear up. It may be useful for the witnesses to hear this. This is a two-stage process. An inquiry report will be drafted for debate, if we can get agreement on it, before the summer recess. We are also acutely aware that the Department hopes to take the legislative situation to the Executive, and we are keen to help with that. Given the time frame, I made a suggestion earlier. Members should email Peter with any thoughts, and we could give an initial view to the Department. The aim is to get something drafted next week so that we can give our initial view — one or two pages — to the Department.

The Committee Clerk: This is about the Bill, Chair.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): Yes. It is specifically about the Bill.

Mrs Graham: That would be helpful.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): Hopefully, we can then agree a line and get it to the Department. That would be useful for next week's meeting.

Mr McCausland: I am thinking about that phrase "equality of identity". There is a lot to be said for the old Community Relations Council model: equality, diversity and interdependence. It is the three-legged stool. It is a simple way of expressing what is in there.

The Chairperson (Mr Weir): If members have any thoughts, I ask them to send them to the Clerk so that we can have something drafted for next week. Hopefully, we might be able to agree something, but maybe that is the naivety of the honeymoon period.

Thank you for your forbearance. We have had two hours' worth, so there is a lot of meat on this, and I suspect that this may be stage one of a number of stages.