Integrated Education: a commitment in the Good Friday Agreement

Workers Party representative in North Belfast, Gemma Weir, has criticised both the Assembly’s Education Committee and its report into ‘Shared and Integrated Education’.

Sustaining division

‘The Good Friday Agreement was very clear that the Assembly had a responsibility to ‘…facilitate and encourage integrated education…’ Today’s report thumbs its nose at that commitment and seeks to substitute integrated education for a shared model based on a ‘separate but equal’ approach’, she said.

‘Shared education sustains division’ Gemma said. ‘It is firmly embedded in ‘two communities’ politics and does nothing to bring about a truly integrated society’.

 Invisible ‘peace’  walls

‘North Belfast has two of the best integrated schools in Northern Ireland which cater for the abilities of all of their pupils by providing religious integration and comprehensive education. Promoting shared education instead of integrated education is akin to building invisible ‘peace’ walls between yet another generation of our school children’, Gemma added.

‘Shared Education is nothing more than a political fig leaf to justify the continued segregation of our children into religious and political tribes and offers no alternative to those parents who want more for their children’, she said.

Independent Commission 

‘It is quite clear that the future of education in Northern Ireland is too important to leave in the hands of the Assembly. Only an independent commission can properly assess and report on how we can progressively reform our current failed structures’, concluded Gemma.