AQW 37939/22-27


Mr Nick Mathison
Alliance Party
Strangford


Tabled Date: 12/01/2026
Answered On Date: 19/01/2026
Priority Written: No


Question:
To ask the Minister of Education for his assessment of the implementation of the Fair Employment (School Teachers) Act (Northern Ireland) 2022.


Answer:
I am satisfied that the Fair Employment (School Teachers) Act (Northern Ireland) 2022 has been successfully implemented.
To ensure the smooth implementation of the Act a working group was established with management representatives from all of the education sectors, who worked in partnership with the Equality Commission Northern Ireland.
The Equality Commission delivered a series of training webinars specifically on the recruitment and selection guidance. Guidance for schools was published by the Equality Commission with the support of Management Side of the Teachers’ Negotiating Committee. The Guidance, ‘School Teachers A Guide on Recruitment & Selection after the commencement of the Fair Employment (School Teachers) Act (Northern Ireland) 2022’ is available online.
My Department does not collect or hold data in relation to the Fair Employment (School Teachers) Act (Northern Ireland) 2022.
Education Authority (EA) and Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS) are the employers of teachers and carry out the monitoring for their teachers and submit the returns directly to the Equality Commission Northern Ireland.
There is no proposal to incentivise the completion of the questionnaire used by schools for monitoring the community background of staff.
The EA, CCMS and the teaching trade unions have encouraged all teachers to use the online computerised system to input and update their personal equality data profile.
It is now a compulsory requirement for teaching applicants to complete the monitoring form when applying for a post and this is used to populate the equality data profile for teachers. By utilising this data substantial progress has been made in the capture of teacher records for monitoring purposes.