A viability audit within six months will identify schools experiencing difficulties in enrolments, standards and financial feasibility, following an announcement by the Education Minister.

Schools will be judged against the six principles in the sustainable schools policy which have not been implemented rigorously to date: quality education, a stable environment, a sound financial position, strong leadership, strong links to the local community, and stable enrolment trends. This overhaul comes as the region faces “the most challenging budget settlement in modern education history.”

In the absence of an Education and Skills Authority (delayed due to political wrangling between Sinn Féin and the DUP), the strategic planning of the schools estate cannot be put off any longer. Therefore, John O’Dowd has commissioned the five area boards and the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS) to work together on a strategic exercise that will shape the future pattern of education delivery. They will look at the post-primary sector first. The CCMS’ post-primary review and previous reports by the boards will contribute to the exercise and it will be completed in six months.

As schools identified in the audit could close, proposals on safeguarding the education of children at those schools will also be made in six months.

The region has 85,000 spare places; one- third of the 863 primary schools have less than 100 pupils and that one-fifth of 217 post-primary schools have fewer than 400 pupils. However, O’Dowd said this was “not a numbers game.”

He quoted the 2006 Bain report which stated that Northern Ireland’s education provision is both educationally and financially unsustainable.

On oversubscribed schools, O’Dowd said they would be allowed to grow, only if they “accept the responsibility to provide a curriculum that meets the needs of all the pupils it accepts.” He added that pupils being asked to leave schools because they don’t meet the needs of a school is “untenable”. Future provision would be dictated by the needs of the 21st century i.e. “an economy that requires a diverse, educated workforce with an array of skills.”

Targeting social need is not sufficiently considered in the current funding scheme, and a major review will be undertaken. Its recommendations will be implemented before the 2013-2014 school year.

Criteria for new build projects will be outlined soon and will be based on the sustainable schools criteria. New school builds will need to be part of an area- based plan, agreed by the sectors and approved by the department. A new process for capital planning will be put in place and all proposals for new builds, including those in the investment delivery plan, will be assessed accordingly. The Minister clarified that schools could consider amalgamations and must remember that “we simply do not have the resources for a new build solution on every occasion.”

The impact on teachers’ jobs will be discussed at a later date, O’Dowd claimed, however, a “flexible school workforce” will be a necessity.

The entitlement framework will be phased in because of Budget constraints. From 2013 it will be put on a statutory basis and schools will be required to provide between 18 and 21 courses. This will rise to24in2014andto27in2015.

Alliance education spokesman Trevor Lunn noted the absence of a reference to segregation, claiming it is “the elephant in the room [that] must be addressed.”

SDLP’s spokesman Conall McDevitt claimed that 380 schools “face the axe”, which the Minister denied.

DUP MLAs Mervyn Storey and Jonathan Craig called for fairness when deciding closures. The Minister replied that he has made CCMS and the boards work together because he wants a concise policy across the board which will ensure “equality of educational provision for young people regardless of what sector they attend.”

Capping student fees at £3,465 will cost the Executive £85 million over the next three financial years: £15 million in 2012- 2013; £30 million in 2013-2014; and £40 million in 2014-2015. The recurring shortfall will then be £40 million.

The Department for Employment and Learning will contribute £41.5 million. This will be matched by the Executive by ‘top-slicing’ the budgets of eight other departments (health, education and justice are exempt). Overall, DEL must save £150 million by 2015, when previous budgetary commitments are factored in. This will be done through better estate management, controlling staff vacancies and travel and subsistence, according to Employment and Learning Minister Stephen Farry. In practice, this means managing vacancies as they arise, leaving posts unfilled and less office accommodation.

Barriers

Students from Northern Ireland will be more inclined to study here as opposed to the rest of the UK now that student fees won’t be increased. The number of students from Great Britain studying in the province (1,530 in 2009-2010) is expected to decrease because they will not be eligible for that fee. Instead, they will be charged up to £9,000.

Parliament voted in December 2010 to allow English universities to increase their fees from £3,375 to up to £9,000. This was in response to the economic crisis and a review of higher education funding by former BP Chief Executive Lord Browne.

In spring this year, English, Scottish and Welsh universities announced how much they would charge students entering from September 2012. However, the Executive only announced its decision on 12 September; UCAS applications for 2012 entry were due to begin in mid- September.

Alliance had prepared for the prospect of increasing fees by stating in its manifesto that it would resist increases to the levels in place in England. However, the decision was essentially taken out of its hands by the DUP, which continued to oppose an increase in tuition fees and Sinn Féin, which pledged to block any attempts to increase fees.

The Scottish Parliament decided to retain free fees for Scottish students and Welsh students will pay fees up to £4,000 but their universities will charge up to £9,000 for others.

Students from other EU countries (including those from the Republic) can’t be charged any more than local students in each jurisdiction due to the EU Directive on the free movement of citizens within member states.

Students from Northern Ireland studying in the Republic are subject to the €2,000 registration fee and this is paid for by DEL.

The consensus in the Assembly is that keeping fees at £3,465 will ensure participation from students from poorer backgrounds and that the future workforce will be up-skilled. The UUP and DUP have clashed, with the former accusing the latter of parochialism by protecting local students at the expense of other UK students, which could weaken the union. DUP MLA David McIlveen claimed that this was “a good deal” for local students, who otherwise would have been “saddled” with excessive debt after leaving university.

Farry contended that he wanted to “protect the market for local students” by avoiding a flood of English, Welsh and Scottish students. Losing the opportunity to upskill local graduates and encourage them to work in the Northern Ireland economy would have been “absolutely catastrophic,” according to the Minister.

An English public interest lawyer is brining a legal challenge against the Scottish Parliament, claiming that its decision to charge UK students while Scottish and European students get free fees is discriminatory. When questioned about whether he has taken legal advice on this anomaly, the Minister said he has been assured that DEL’s actions are legal. The department does not expect a large influx of students from the outside the UK because their fees are largely paid for by their governments.

DEL’s savings

Farry assured the Employment and Learning Committee on 14 September that the £40 million funding gap in 2014- 2015 will be met. When pressed by Jim Allister, the department’s Permanent Secretary, Alan Shannon, conceded that the overall shortfall from 2012-2015 is £85 million.

The Minister explained that “the reason why we talked about a gap of £40 million is, in many respects, about trying to explain the gap as simply as possible.” As students will enter university in 2012- 2013 and work their way through, “the pressure will build up over the next three years.”

He added: “That £40 million pressure, in essence, will roll forward through the system as a recurring pressure.”

The following departments will face cuts in order to match the amounts coming from DEL: DARD, DCAL, DETI, DoE, DFP, DRD, DSD and OFMDFM.

If these cuts had not been agreed, the shortfall would have been left to the universities, resulting in further staff cuts and course closures.

The Executive has also agreed to provide £1 million in 2012-2013, £2 million in 2013-2014 and £3 million in 2014-2015 to create a number of extra student places. These are estimated to be “in the low hundreds” and only in STEM subjects.

Savings made following a review of education maintenance allowance are expected to between £4 million and £5 million.

Future student flows will highlight the impact this decision has had. The department will continue to fund loans for local students who wish to study in Britain but this could be reviewed in the future.

Queen’s Pro-Vice Chancellor Tony Gallagher has welcomed the freeze as a “spectacular success.” He said the university will have certainty for the next number of years and can get on with plans to provide “a quality student experience and make the best possible contribution to the economy of Northern Ireland.”

University of Ulster Vice-Chancellor Richard Barnett also welcomed the decision, saying: “This is leadership. Let’s be clear, if we had direct rule our students would now be facing fees here of up to £9,000.”

He also called for the Minister to “make a positive announcement” on the university’s bid to replace its Magee campus in Derry, considering the expected high demand for places.

Trevor Lunn MLA
Alliance

I believe it is crucial that we urgently address the issue of early years education. We need a strong and coherent early years strategy which will help all our children maximise their potential.

Another key priority for Alliance is promoting and delivering more shared and integrated education in Northern Ireland. We need to tackle division in education to help deliver a shared future, address the duplication of services and stop money being wasted on segregation.

Urgent progress also is needed on the creation of the Education and Skills Authority. The political stalemate on this important issue has to end and there must be movement to establish ESA.

The savings that we could realise through ESA are vital, particularly at this difficult economic time, and ESA would also help us improve governance and strategic planning in our education system.

Daithí McKay MLA
Sinn Féin

Reform of education administration must be a key objective for all political parties in the year ahead and we will be seeking to work to achieve that in the months ahead in a constructive manner. In a time of financial austerity, it is vital that education structures are modernised and operate efficiently and effectively.

Addressing educational disparities is obviously a key priority for Sinn Féin. There has been a steady increase in young people achieving five GCSEs (including English and maths) and those leaving school with at least two A-levels. However, disadvantaged pupils on free school meals are less likely to do well at school, Protestant school leavers are less likely to achieve two or more A-levels, and boys continue to lag behind girls in educational attainment.

We must raise standards across the board to drive out these inequalities and we must also ensure that we have an education system that is responsive to pupil needs and fit for purpose.

The DUP declined to respond but its manifesto priorities are as follows:

• pursue the best education outcomes for young people;

• produce a comprehensive long-term plan for the education sector;

• introduce an individual education plan for every pupil;

• legislate to implement a special educational needs strategy;

• review the revised curriculum;

• conduct a value-for-money review of the autism centre at Middletown;

• the entitlement framework to be considered aspirational rather than compulsory;

• assist unemployed teachers to take training modules;

• ensure access to youth services, particularly for disadvantaged young people;

• produce a comprehensive, cross- departmental youth strategy.

Conall McDevitt MLA
SDLP

The SDLP is committed to a world class education system in Northern Ireland built on the three principles of educational excellence, social equity and choice. We continue to work for the removal of privatised selection and want to see leadership from the new Minister to break this unnecessary deadlock. It is time to put children before ideology.

Early years and primary education is underfunded. This needs to change. Any Minister serious about building an education system which provides every child, irrespective of their family background or economic standing, with

the same opportunity must start investing much earlier in a child’s life. Special education must also be properly supported. The SDLP supports a baccalaureate-type system for our region as we believe it provides children with the greatest opportunity and choice.

David McNarry MLA
UUP

The UUP’s priorities are:

• early intervention taken forward by the education department in order to genuinely to begin to tackle educational underachievement, poverty and all the related cycles of deprivation;

• a post-primary transfer process that identifies a child’s individual strengths, both academic and vocational;

• a thorough review of the schools estate, including calling for the introduction of the community use of schools strategy; and

• better central personnel planning in education with a teacher workforce plan which links teacher training to existing workforce levels, the numbers of unemployed teachers, the retirement schedule of existing teachers, and pupil-teacher ratios.

The current Education Minister must not be allowed to carry on the ideological crusade of the former. We have previously proposed, and continue to do so, introducing a single assessment test for the period of two years, giving the space to agree a permanent resolution.

Tina Merron
Chief Executive
Integrated Education Fund

Our education system has to courageously face up to the continuing economic crisis, which has brought unparalleled cuts in the budget for schools, against a background of tens of thousands of empty desks in separate schools for different religious and cultural backgrounds.

More than ninety per cent of children in Northern Ireland attend schools where pupils are overwhelmingly from a single tradition.

We need a radical approach to sharing out our resources, to ensure that we deliver quality education for all our children.

A fundamental rethink of our education system, ensuring that public money goes to schools which demonstrably welcome and nurture those of all faiths and backgrounds, would mean the efficient and effective use of the public purse.

Recent surveys show overwhelming support for such a system. It’s time the Executive took notice of what voters want.

Paul Bell
Principal, Botanic Primary School

Speaking from a primary school perspective, government priorities should be:

• getting proper funding sorted out for primary schools.

Currently primary pupils are funded at approximately 63 per cent of what pupils in post-primary schools receive for ‘historical’ reasons.

• securing nursery provision in nursery schools for all children in their pre- school year.

Whilst recognising the valuable contribution pre-school playgroups have to make, there is no substitute for nursery education in a school setting with a qualified teacher in charge.

• broadening the approach taken to integrated education to give greater recognition to our multi-cultural society.

When attempting to explain to foreign parents their child’s various education options, one realises how ludicrous the whole concept is. It is worth remembering that the main Protestant and the Catholic churches have an agreed core syllabus for religious education.

The Education and Skills Authority needs to become a reality to save a lot of duplicitous administration.

Additional financial resource for pupils who have English as an additional language is essential. The current system, where there is one standard payment unit per pupil, does not recognise the diverse needs presented or their magnitude. Also the current system, where the Inclusion and Diversity Service as a regional body does not work directly with newcomer children, needs to come under review.

Tony Carlin, Senior Official (Industrial Relations and Equality), INTO

Overall, the view of INTO is that in progressing change and reform, government must ensure that front line services to schools are protected and that children are taught by professionally qualified teachers.

In taking forward this principle, INTO believes that the three key priorities should be:

• A root and branch review of the funding of schools to develop a system where the funding reflects the needs of the school rather than focusing on the number of pupils present;

• An investment in the teaching workforce by ensuring that newly qualified teachers are given guaranteed employment for at least one year post-qualification; and

• Rationalisation and reform of the external management structures which have sustained the present system.

South Belfast has long been known as a melting pot and today’s mix is very clear in one of its inner city primary schools. Botanic Primary’s 185 children come from 23 different nationalities and speak 21 languages. Fifty-five per cent of the enrolment is white and indigenous with 45 per cent coming from indigenous ethnic minority or foreign backgrounds.

A controlled school, it was established in 1939 and has always had children from overseas backgrounds, whose parents worked at Queen’s or in local hospitals.

agendaNi met principal Paul Bell, board of governors chair Hilary Sloan and teacher Vijay Tandon to learn more about life in a multi-cultural school; Mr Tandon is its Head of English as an Additional Language (EAL).

Botanic’s ethos is that children should “delight in effort, delight in achievementand delight in acceptance.” Mrs Sloan summed this up in one word: welcoming.

As with any school, its prime task is education but Mr Bell emphasised that it also wants to develop the child holistically. Not all children achieve high academic success so the school gives them opportunities to develop their musical and sporting skills.

It uses the nearby Queen’s University Physical Education Centre’s pitches and facilities. After-school clubs cover cookery, ICT, cycling proficiency and wall- climbing, again at the PEC.

Most primary schools have a steady intake of pupils who will be with them from P1 to P7. However, Botanic’s situation is more fluid e.g. with parents working in the university for two or three years. The staff sees this as an opportunity and each term, the whole school looks at one country.

Chinese history, culture and language, for example, have been studied and celebrated. The children and parents from that country contribute to that and the whole school learns from them.

Language

Last year, 91 children had English as an additional language. Their main mother tongues are Roma, Chinese and Lithuanian.

At the outset, Mr Tandon would interview a newcomer family with an interpreter if necessary.

“This is actually the start of the baseline assessment of the newcomer pupil because I will try to speak to some of the children that have no English or maybe have some English, just to ascertain the response,” he said.

In January, the school set up an ‘induction and intensive support class’ for pupils with no formal experience of education. It has 12-13 children, mostly Roma.

Children with no English at all need daily support and a structured EAL programme, beginning with survival language. From that point, it takes around two years to reach ‘social fluency’ but a child still needs to develop their reading and writing skills, and keep learning new words. Learning enough English for academic purposes takes five to seven years, and the work will continue at post-primary level.

Dual language books tell a story in both English and a foreign language. The mother tongue can therefore be used to learn English. These children slip back into their normal class in the afternoon for art, PE, ICT, music and sport. They are therefore encouraged to make friends within the wider school.

Staff recognise that Botanic is “somewhat individual,” Mr Bell related, but “that cannot ever be allowed to impinge on the fact that we want to provide high academic standards that a child can achieve so that each child can achieve their potential regardless of the circumstances.”

He commented: “Many schools provide a wide range of activities. In this school, I would argue that we’re one of the best in the opportunities that are provided but at the same time coupling that with academic achievement and development of the whole person.”

Mrs Sloan, a retired teacher, explained that when the new board was set up in 2009, it found that the increasing numbers of Roma children were challenging, particularly because of the language barrier. A class, for example, would have four or five children with no school background and no English.

“So we looked at this,” she remarked, “and we thought of an idea where we could possibly have some sort of induction class into which these newcomer children would go, irrespective of what age they are because they weren’t coming in the traditional route at P1. They were coming in at whatever age they were when they arrived in the country.”

The attendance of Roma children in the induction class is improving, from a very poor level, and the Education and Training Inspectorate has agreed to evaluate the group towards the end of term. That said, the school is currently paying for this work from its own funds.

While Botanic is often highlighted for its ethnic minority children, Mr Bell stressed that the education of all its children is a priority. Each classroom has interactive whiteboards. A special needs co-ordinator works with local special needs children and foreign children who have attained a certain level of English.

“It’s a very holistic approach, which is all developed and celebrated through having so many nationalities,” Mr Bell stated. “We’re obviously capitalising on that.”

Botanic’s parent teacher association is due to be named as the New PTA of the Year for Northern Ireland. Parents have also been surveyed and staff found the responses “very encouraging”.

The school received £10,000 from the Big Lottery Fund towards £25,000 of new playground equipment, which was opened in April. It has also invested in new classroom furniture and repainting the inside of the school building, to make it a “smart, attractive environment”.

Potential

The interviewees understandably did not want to get drawn into the contentious transfer debate. An academic route, they affirmed, suited some children but not others.

Mr Bell has seen it from both sides, as a parent and head teacher, and added: “All I can do is seek to meet the expectations of parents. We have, as a school, a primary objective which is that each child reaches their full potential.”

For an inner city school, it achieves “significant success” in transferring children to grammar school: 13 out of the 29 P7 children went to grammar school route last year. However, it is very difficult to explain Northern Ireland’s complex education system to newcomer parents.

Separately, local inner city families need to realise their child’s potential: “We would see children who we view as having a large degree of academic potential from the inner city that we know would be able to cope academically in a grammar school. And we have to almost suggest it to the parents.”

Essentially, Botanic sees itself as “a truly integrated school with a small i” in Mrs Sloan’s words. It has children from several different religions and teaches RE strictly within the limits of the core syllabus. Catholic children can leave slightly early in the school day for first communion classes.

“I don’t need to engage with another school because I have everything here. Any school trip I go on is an integrated education trip,” Mr Bell quipped. Asked for a message for policy-makers, he encouraged them to “start thinking beyond the two perceived traditions in Northern Ireland” when considering education.

Why should the Protestant churches have a role in education?

The Church of Ireland, and Presbyterian and Methodist Churches in Ireland have historically had a significant role to play in education in Ireland. They were original owners and managers of church schools which in Northern Ireland were transferred into state control following partition in 1921.

In return for this significant investment in the schools’ estate, the churches that transferred their schools (the transferors) were given rights of representation on all primary and secondary school boards of governors. They also received rights at area level to nominate to what are now education and library boards.

The state has over the years added many more new schools and replaced older ones; the group of schools created is now known as the controlled sector. There were a smaller number of others who transferred their schools (e.g. mill and estate owners) and they too have rights of nomination to some schools.

Transferors are fully committed to education in the public sector as demonstrated through the involvement of approximately 1,900 church nominees serving as governors on primary and secondary schools. A number of church members also serve as governors of other schools (e.g. voluntary grammar schools). In addition there are currently 10 transferor members serving on education and library boards.

We seek to contribute a vision of education based upon the values of the Christian faith. The churches acknowledge that schools have a diversity of beliefs present among pupils, parents and staff. However, it is clear that Christianity continues to be the most widely held religious belief in Northern Ireland. It is also our view that the impulse of many parents is to have their children educated in schools within the context of Christian faith.

How do you think shared education can best be encouraged?

Developing understanding and co- operation across our divided school system has been difficult throughout the years of conflict. The churches have worked hard to encourage schools to be open, to promote tolerance and mutual understanding and to take some risks in participating in cross-community schools’ projects.

The most successful encounters, however, between schools are those with a curriculum rationale: sharing and collaborating with a purpose. Recently, some of us have been involved in the independently funded work of the Shared Education Project at Queen’s university which has developed some very interesting examples of schools across sectors collaborating on curriculum areas.

At post-primary level, area learning communities are generally working well and have the potential to enable pupils at key stage 4 and post-16 to find shared access to courses where they may study with others in neighbouring schools or colleges.

The churches sense that a growing number of parents are beginning to think seriously about more creative approaches to the schooling of their children. We see it in a recent attitudinal survey¹ about integrated education, a very high percentage of those polled said that integrated education was important in promoting a better and a shared future.

The formal integrated sector will continue tohavearoletoplay,butatatimeof budget cuts it is more likely in the larger school sectors – controlled, maintained and voluntary – where the significant work of co-operation and sharing must be in greater evidence.

It is at primary level where perhaps the greatest challenges to co-working remain. There is, I believe, a common ground which could shape our discussions about shared education. Many parents, Protestant and Catholic, seek a learning context for their children that has at its core is an ethos centred on the Christian faith. Is it time, then, to begin thinking seriously about developing a new type of school jointly managed by the Protestant and Catholic churches?

Sharing could also be about staying as we are but developing more shared resources, staff, space and facilities. All of this should be part of an urgently required discussion about sharing. As churches with a major stake-holding in controlled schools and as people called to be reconcilers, we must be open to seeking new ways of enabling children from different communities to share learning together.

What other matters are priorities for the churches in education?

Underachievement has existed here and in Great Britain for some time. However, it is only recently that we have been able to see a fuller picture of its nature and effects. Within the past year two studies have been undertaken – one a Northern Ireland Assembly Education Committee inquiry into successful post-primary schools serving disadvantaged areas, and a second was a study by a group of educationalists and community workers into underachievement and the Protestant working class.

These reports and others tell that a growing number of working class Protestants, particularly boys, are underachieving. In the year 2007-2008 in socially disadvantaged areas, just one in 10 young Protestants went on to university compared to one in five young Catholics from a similar background².

The reasons why underachievement is more of an issue in Protestant communities than in Catholic communities are complex. Some have suggested that disadvantaged Catholic communities had traditionally placed a greater emphasis on education. The loss of traditional

labour markets and skills have been a factor affecting working class Protestants who had seen getting a trade as the main form of educational requirement.

These reports tend to agree that the solution is multi-faceted and will require a long-term and wide-ranging strategy by government. Measures include more investment in early years education, better involvement of parents and local communities, supporting and rewarding exceptional teaching and leadership in schools and better co-ordination between different departments.

There is also the wider issue of poverty and its effects upon educational pathways; it is of great concern that in 2011 the percentage of pupils entitled to free school meals at secondary (non-grammar) schools is 26 per cent while at grammar schools it is just 7 per cent³. The question must be asked: why does a child’s family income background seem to have such a strong determining effect on school type attended?

As churches we would support the above measures and urge a new Education Minister to tackle this inequality as a priority. However, schools alone will not be able to solve this problem; it is vital for the Executive to undertake a comprehensive response across several government departments.

The churches have supported the principle of streamlining educational administration in Northern Ireland.

As the Review of Public Administration policy in education was developing, the churches were faced with a threat to their historical rights to be nominated to education and library boards. They resolutely defended their legislative rights to nominate to future ownership and decision-making bodies for the controlled sector. However, they sought to do so constructively by suggesting a way in which the Education and Skills Authority (ESA) could be established, which would ensure the churches’ involvement in education could be continued as of right.

We are pleased to notice support for this idea in the manifestos of some political parties. Now that the new Assembly is up and running, we ask the parties to reconsider this proposal and to engage with stakeholders to develop these ideas.

An important consideration is the future support for controlled schools; the churches have a concern that this sector of schools needs a sectoral support body energised and advocating for schools in this sector. Again, this is a matter of equality of treatment as the Catholic maintained schools sector has enjoyed support from CCMS, a publicly-funded body since 1989, and is expected to continue through the newly-formed Northern Ireland Commission for Catholic Education.

1 Attitudinal Survey on Integrated Education, Integrated Education Fund & Ipsos MORI, April 2011

2 Call to Action, working group report on Educational Underachievement and the Protestant working class, Dawn Purvis MLA, March 2011

3 Department of Education statistics, February 2011

“There has been a massive breakdown in trust and that has allowed organisations to retract into very defined, well held positions,” Mervyn Storey remarks.

With the education system in disarray and a dissipating relationship between the department and education’s key stakeholders, he says it is difficult to find a way forward to deal with many of the challenges.

Taking up the chair of the Education Committee in June 2008, Storey says his interest in the sector came from having a young family.

At present, the main concern for the committee is impending budget cuts. At the time of interview, the education committee had still not been shown a breakdown of the draft education budget.

It will be a challenge to make substantial savings within education, he claims, as around 85 per cent of the current budget is “tied up in salary costs”. But whatever the budget dictates, Storey says protecting education’s frontline services, such as classrooms, is a priority.

The cost of transport is one of the main budgetary problems facing the department. The committee is also concerned about the amount of money being put into extending free school meals: “We need to be absolutely clear that is going to give us good outcomes,” comments Storey.

While he argues that the rationalisation of governance arrangements could raise some additional finance, he believes the main problem within the department is that there are too many different types of schools.

“We cannot continue to have a duplication of a number of schools that we have in Northern Ireland and the cost that incurs and still believe we can find savings somewhere else in the system. That is the biggest challenge, I think, in terms of being able to deal with the overall budget for the education system.”

ESA

From a personal perspective, Storey claims that there are “fundamental flaws” with Caitríona Ruane’s proposals for an Education and Skills Authority. He states that the legal position of Protestant church transferors is not protected in the proposals.

Another problem, he contends, is that Ruane “wanted to have a board that was made up of ‘yes men’,” appointed by her. He comments that whoever sits on the board should be “reflective of the communities that make up the educational system”.

While Storey believes that rationalisation is necessary, he argues that it should be based on current legislation, which protects the rights of transferors, allows councillors to sit on the board and states that only 20 per cent of board members can be appointed.

The way forward, he says, is “to create a single education board for Northern Ireland” but this should only be done when a local sub-structure is put in place and the community is represented equally.

However, he isn’t hopeful this will happen before dissolution in March: “I think it will be left to a new Assembly when there is a new Education Minister in place who will hopefully be more amenable to debate and dialogue, and not driven by a very defined, ideological position.”

Single schools system

However, coming up with an alternative to the current schools structure is an ongoing debate. The committee has looked at the single schools system but Storey says there needs to be a lot more work done to ensure that system restores confidence and achieves positive outcomes.

The ultimate challenge, he believes, will be creating a system that can educate a large number of children in an effective and efficient way.

With such a wide range of educational sectors in place throughout the province, Storey says that to make progress it is crucial that the Education Minister gains the consensus and agreement of those sectors.

Academic selection is another issue which was high on the education committee’s agenda in 2010. Storey says he, and the education committee, share “the frustration of the public at large” on the matter.

In 2008, the Education Committee sought the view of all organisations in education and considered the Minister’s proposals for transfer, and other alternatives. While the committee “struggled to reach consensus”, it highlighted two main points to Caitríona Ruane. It found that some of the parties were concerned that there should have been a period of reflection “before any permanent arrangements were put in place” and that the development of academic streams, which could be selective schools within clusters of schools, should be considered.

Branding the Education Minister’s abolition of the 11-plus as “a delving into the dark”, Storey believes reflection should have come before action. “Despite the fact that we knew in 2001 that the 11-plus was going, there was no alternative worked up or agreed and put into place, even as an interim arrangement. That created difficulties and challenges for everybody involved.”

It is still a large issue and will become “very prevalent and focused in the weeks and months ahead, especially leading up to the new Assembly elections”, says Storey. However, he admits that academic selection is no longer a priority for the committee as the third batch of unofficial entrance exams are set to go ahead this year.

“Our difficulty in putting transfer as a priority is that in the absence of political consensus, all you will do is discuss and discuss and you won’t get outcomes. So, reluctantly and unfortunately, what we now have to recognise is that the process is already in place.”

Post-primary inquiry

“The transfer debate has been the wrong debate because we have too many children leaving our schools in post- primary and too many children leaving primary school that don’t have the relevant and adequate competencies in numeracy and literacy,” comments the Chairman.

The committee has therefore decided to make a post-primary school inquiry a top priority to identify good practice among successful schools in disadvantaged communities. The inquiry started in November 2010. As a guide, it has taken the number of school meals in a particular school and has set this against their outcomes.

Storey believes the only way to tackle these problems is to find out what makes a school successful: “We haven’t got a conclusive issue that we can identify and say: ‘Look here is the key ingredients and if you have these ingredients in a post- primary school we can almost guarantee that you will have a better outcome.’”

The committee will visit schools across the province and take evidence from principals, school governors and pupils. It hopes to report the findings to the Minister in March.

Improvements

Before consensus is reached on education in Northern Ireland, many improvements will have to be made, says Storey.

In his personal view, Caitríona Ruane has “failed in that she hasn’t been able to get the trust of the people involved in education”. This is a huge problem, he remarks, because “if you don’t have the trust of the people in education you will find it invariably more difficult to move forward to new arrangements and a new environment which delivers for children”.

The Chair argues that a better working relationship between the department and education stakeholders is vital. A breakdown of trust has left organisations in “very defined” positions and while they remain in those positions it is “an impediment to make progress to find a way forward to deal with many of the huge issues”.

On a practical note, Storey would like to see teachers have more control over the classroom. He comments: “The Minister repeatedly tells us that the revised curriculum is about freeing teachers in the classroom. Well, the teachers in the classroom need to be free of the unnecessary bureaucracy that surrounds them and allowed the time to concentrate on educating the children.”

He suggests that instead of spending millions of pounds on policy, processes and consultants, government should spend the money on putting direct programmes into schools, which would boost the performance of pupils as well as creating opportunities for newly graduated teachers.

While there are many problems to be resolved within education, Storey argues that the system will not be effective until all schoolchildren “come out with a good sound, solid and basic education”.

“Learning matters because it changes lives,” John Hayes remarks. His enthusiasm for education is clear throughout the conversation but he also warns that falling behind in skills will hold back the UK’s economic recovery. Visiting Northern Ireland for the first time, he has just addressed the Institute of Careers Guidance’s conference.

As education is devolved, Hayes’ remit covers England and also representing the UK in meetings with skills ministers from other national governments.

The 2006 Leitch report found that, out of 30 OECD countries, the UK ranked 17th on low skills, 20th on intermediate skills and 11th on high skills. Hayes emphasises that unless skills gaps are

filled: “Britain will struggle to succeed, to compete internationally. Frankly, our only chance to succeed will be to be a high tech, high skills economy.”

Under the spending review, an extra £250 million has been allocated for apprenticeships in England; the 2010- 2011 budget for this work now stands at £557 million.

Apprenticeships represent a “great vehicle” to build practical skills while further education colleges are the “engine room” where that can take place. Those colleges are “the great unheralded triumph of our education system” and, along with other providers, are training the “technicians of tomorrow.”

“They have an immense role to play and already do incredible work,” Hayes says of colleges. “Further education colleges not only provide a vehicle for the teaching of all kinds of academic subjects. They also are the principal route by which people gain learning opportunities through informal learning and community learning.”

However, in England, he has found their work has been held back by bureaucracy. “We need to set them free to innovate so they can excel,” Hayes adds.

For inspiration, he looks back to Rab Butler’s idea of learning for democratic citizenship, outlined in the 1943 white paper. This concept means “allowing people to enjoy learning for the changes it makes to their lives, their outlook, their sense of satisfaction, their feelings of achievement, which both individually and collectively build a sense of worth.”

This sense of worth can be experienced at an individual, communal and national level.

“We certainly wouldn’t want learning to be entirely utilitarian,” he comments, adding that practical learning can combine both “beauty and utility” even in software development and advanced engineering.

“When someone can learn to make and do things,” Hayes surmises, “their sense of value changes and others value them more too.”

Career in brief

John Hayes graduated with a BA in politics and a PGCE in history and English from Nottingham University, before going into business. While working as director of a software company, The Database Ltd, he also sat on Nottinghamshire County Council for 14 years.

Hayes was elected MP for South Holland and The Deepings, in Lincolnshire, in 1997.

As Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, he works across the Departments for Business and Education.

Married with two sons, his interests include painting, architecture, English literature and boxing.

A map, based on Department of Education statistics, has highlighted the number of schools that are below enrolment targets and therefore considered “unsustainable”.

Under targets set out by the department, the number of pupils for a primary school to be deemed viable is 140 in urban areas and 150 elsewhere. For post-primary schools the figure is 500 pupils for years eight through to 12 and 100 at a sixth form in an 11-to-18 school.

The map suggests that in Belfast alone around 30 schools fall below official enrolment guidelines. Also, 81 per cent of post-primary schools in Fermanagh are thought to be unsustainable. However, there is no indication that any of the 400 will be closed.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Education said that the map “would not be used to decide on the future of any school”. The department’s policy for sustainable schools outlines a range of factors, including accessibility and financial position, which are considered before closure.

Caitríona Ruane has approved three school closures this year, stating the “steady decline in enrolments over a period of several years” as a reason for each one.

Frank Bunting, northern secretary of the Irish National Teachers Organisation, said there are too many schools in Northern Ireland and that this is demonstrated by agreed ongoing school rationalisation, amalgamations and closures.

“There is complex school provision,” he commented. In any one area there can be Catholic, controlled, integrated and Irish medium primary schools. All this as well as excessively generous home- school pupil transit arrangements that are simply not sustainable.”

However, Bunting said that successful school communities should be funded, even if they do not meet enrolment targets. He claimed that pupil numbers required for schools are “too high and inflexible.”

According to Bunting the department’s strategy is to halve the 1,200 existing schools in the province but “the INTO view is that small is beautiful and big schools are not necessarily best for pupils”.

Speaking about the possibility of more integration between schools, Bunting said conflict from the past “seriously inhibits any real integration of rural communities” and “the leadership of the Catholic and Protestant churches in this area to date has been lamentable”.

Avril Hall-Callaghan from the Ulster Teachers’ Union also thinks that “there are too many types of school” in the province. She said a strategy to bring all the different sectors together would help in terms of budget, but it must be done sensitively.

Each school should be considered individually, she remarked, as some under-subscribed schools are doing “excellent” work.

She claimed that the teacher unions had been attempting to negotiate a school closures agreement with the Department of Education for some time but “there seems to be little will on their part to acknowledge that this would be beneficial”.

However, a department spokesman said: “The department wishes to see a more strategic approach to planning to ensure that we have a schools estate comprising sustainable schools which provide high quality education that meets the needs of young people.”

He added that it is the responsibility of the school managing authorities to “bring forward proposals” that would shape the schools estate and that a school closures agreement is currently

being considered by the Teachers Negotiating Committee.

Progress is being made on “integration and integrating” in education, according to Caitríona Ruane, but she claims that focusing on the Catholic-Protestant divide is too narrow a view to take.

Her three years as Education Minister have been dominated by the transfer

controversy and she has rarely commented on the province’s segregated system of schools.

Ruane counts the ongoing reform process as her main achievement. Many people, she acknowledges, just think of transfer but there is a “jigsaw of interconnected policies” including the revised curriculum, collaboration with further education colleges, STEM subjects and improving careers guidance.

As for sharing, she pointed to increases in the number of integrated school pupils, funding for integrated schools and shared classes, and her support for Omagh’s Lisanelly shared campus.

Figures show that since 2006-2007, the number of pupils in the formal integrated sector has grown by 2,597; its share within the system has increased by 1 per cent.

That said, the Department of Education’s community relations budget has fallen from £4.0 million to £1.1 million.

Responding to that point, Ruane says that she is widening out the definition – her new policy is named ‘community relations, equality and diversity’ – and will put more money into that work.

“The community relations programme that we had in place was quite outdated,” she claims. “It didn’t take into account our new communities from different countries that have come in here. It didn’t take into account our gay and lesbian community.

“It’s not that I’ve cut the budget. We’ve a new policy which is out for consultation, which is community relations, equality and diversity. And we’ve actually more money going to equality, diversity and community relations than went in the past.”

Divides

The main problem, it is put to her, is still the Catholic-Protestant divide and the other problems are small in comparison.

“I would argue, one of the biggest [divisions] actually in our society now is class,” she responds. “When I came in here in 2007, 12,000 young people left school without five good GCSEs … it’s the first rung of the ladder.”

That accounted for 47 per cent of school leavers at that level. The rate has now dropped to 41 per cent, and she puts the change down to the department’s policies e.g. on literacy and numeracy, Transfer 2010, the revised curriculum and school leadership.

“That’s not good enough, still. I want to make sure that figure goes down significantly,” she continues. “What that means is 12,000 people leaving with nothing [in 2007]. That is a worry because where do they go? You know how important GCSEs are. They do a CV and they present a CV. They don’t even get past the starting line.”

The “very small” numbers of children going to grammar schools from the Shankill, Falls and New Lodge troubles her: “It’s not ‘cos they’re not intelligent. It’s because there’s greater barriers placed in front of them.”

History

Ruane then turns to the divisions between Catholics and Protestants, and between immigrants and locally-born people.

“What we have to do is create a system that meets the needs of all our young people,” she states. “Now, if you were starting right now, you wouldn’t start with having Catholic grammar, Protestant grammar, Catholic secondary, Protestant secondary, Irish medium, integrated. Of course, you wouldn’t.”

She predicts that there probably would be two systems based on which language parents chose for their children’s education: English or Irish.

“But we are where we are. We are in a society that’s a very divided society. We have legacy issues where, in many cases, the Catholic community felt very marginalised and alienated from the state,” Ruane comments. “We had the first prime minister of the Northern Ireland state, as it was then, saying: ‘A Protestant state for a Protestant people.’”

The province’s first education minister, Lord Londonderry, did attempt a single integrated system. As a radical, she is asked, did she not admire that?

“Of course, I admire good progressive politics that’s trying to change things. Of course,I do.So what I have to do is to ensure that, during my watch, I make the maximum change in relation to social division and also in relation to divisions within [the] community.”

Explaining her approach, Ruane focuses on the area learning communities which involve pupils from different post-primary level schools sharing classes: “We have much more young people in the same classrooms but [with] different uniforms studying together.”

Funding is granted to schools which work together in clusters. However, the policy does not specifically require schools from different sectors to work together.

At a staff level, she had spoken at the North Belfast Area Learning Community’s open day earlier that week, attended by 600 teachers from all sectors. “There is much more integrating going on than people actually realise,” she adds, “and that needs to continue, absolutely.”

Integration: assessing the trends

Pupil numbers and percentages refer to primary, secondary and grammar schools together.
Source: Department of Education

Despite generous funding for school buildings, £107 million was not spent and money is now in shorter supply. agendaNi analyses the underspend.

The Audit Office has found a “pressing need to progress” capital investment in schools after major under-spending. Its ‘School Design and Delivery’ report explains that £107 million set aside for school building work between 2005 and 2010 was not used. The money was sent back to the Executive’s central funds.

Most of the underspend took place under direct rule, with the devolved Education Minister making sure that almost all the money is now spent each year. However, after those years of plenty, major cuts are on the way for the capital budget.

Initially, the Department of Education was allocated £1.2 billion for capital spending between 2005 and 2010, but the final sum spent was £857 million.

The difference (£353 million) can be broken down into two categories:

• £246 million due to in-year reductions in the department’s budget;

• the £107 million underspend.

If the underspend had been used, the total spending would have reached £964 million.

Historically, £1.4 billion was spent between 1997 and 2006. A total of

£3.4 billion in spending over 2008-2018 was envisaged in the Investment Strategy. Cuts have started (£22 million in 2010-2011) and further reductions, rather than rises, are anticipated.

Officials put the underspend down to legal problems around site acquisitions, delays in approvals from government agencies, ongoing reviews of long-term pupil enrolments and a legal challenge to the department’s construction procurement framework.

Any underspends are returned to the Executive at the end of the financial year, so that ministers can decide how to spend the money elsewhere in the province.

Under-investment

Capital projects must be approved by the Education Minister, who will continue to make those decisions after the Education and Skills Authority (ESA) is set up. However, the authority will produce area-based plans and strategic investment plans, which will help to set priorities for capital investment.

“Design alone,” the Audit Office points out, “cannot raise educational achievement, but poor design can be an obstacle to raising educational standards.” Teachers and principals, in brief, should be free to focus on children’s needs rather than the state of their school buildings.

A long of history of backlogs built up after years of under-investment. This repair bill was estimated at £114 million in 1995 and increased to £292 million in 2009 i.e. £900 per pupil.

Back in the 1990s, around £30 million to £50 million was being spent on major capital works each year. Over half of the estate was not fit for purpose.

In April 2004, the department announced that it was investing £222 million, to clear up the “existing known capital needs backlog” by 2010. Just 12 of the 42 schemes in this programme have been delivered to date. However, the number of mobile classrooms halved from nearly 3,000 in 2005 to 1,500 in 2009.

Strategic partnership

In 2005, the Strategic Investment Board and Department of Education jointly published ‘New Procurement and Delivery Arrangements for the Schools Estate’. This report, commissioned from PwC, recommended:

• A whole-system approach to planning rather than sector-by-sector;

• Setting up four ‘strategic partnership’ areas across Northern Ireland;

• A private sector partner and 10-year strategic investment plan for each area;

• Seven to 10-year contracts for maintenance and facilities management; and

• Exclusive construction rights assigned to the partner (subject to past performance).

A ‘dedicated education infrastructure procurement service’ would also be set up, bringing together relevant staff from across the system. PwC estimated that this would make 10 per cent savings in capital costs and that the recommendations could be carried out within 40 months.

However, the Audit Office found that these reforms have not occurred. Asked why the 2005 report was not implemented, the Department of Education said it could not comment as the Audit Office’s findings could be considered by the Public Accounts Committee.

Empty desks

Construction work took place against a backdrop of smaller numbers of pupils in schools. The overall school population peaked at 354,230 in 1996-1997 and fell to 322,713 in 2009-2010. Numbers are expected to pick up again by around 2020.

MLAs on the first Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee warned that public money was being spent on empty places rather than improving full classrooms. There were 35,000 empty desks in 1999-2000, which rose to 54,000 in 2008-2009.

The Bain report in 2006 found that there were too many schools overall and also too many schools with small rolls. Its ultimate aim was therefore fewer and larger schools. Minimum sizes for new schools were subsequently adopted, which resulted in eight capital schemes being withdrawn.

Delays are now the main problems holding up projects. Planning, procurement and legal problems are cited by the department. This means that progress is “slower than expected” despite the large financial allocation.

Design quality in completed projects was praised by auditors as “very strong” and most schools could also be used by local communities in the evenings or at weekends. Extended schools are one example. However, most schools do not open out-of-hours, because of problems with insurance, staffing, maintenance and security.

The Audit Office’s findings are based on an independent assessment of 11 primary schools, four post-primary schools and one special school built or refurbished between 1999 and 2008, at a total value of £100.5 million. A total of 153 projects were completed between 1997 and December 2009.