Segregation is 'distinctive' in North schools

THE "MOST distinctive thing about education in Northern Ireland, as opposed to the rest of the UK, is segregation", the Parnell school was told yesterday.

Prof Bob Osbourne of the University of Ulster also said that just 9 per cent of children in the North were being educated "outside" schools of their own community, according to one study, though information was not available from some schools.

Another "massive distinction" was that 25-30 per cent of children in the North were being educated in single-sex schools. The same figure in England was 3 per cent. There were also "30 per cent more schools than for comparable areas in the rest of the UK, with costs per pupil 20-25 per cent higher per capita", he said.

He described the division of education between two departments in the North's Executive by the Belfast Agreement as "a disaster".

According to the agreement, schooling is under the Department of Education, with further and higher education under the Department of Employment.

Where the 11-plus was concerned, he said there was "little evidence it will substantially reduce educational disadvantage or increase social mobility . . . the fact is that by age 11, disadvantage is long entrenched," he said.

Michael Wardlow, chief executive of Northern Ireland Integrated Schools, said the North was "built on a seismic fault of sectarianism" and "the problems start before school".

The integration movement had 62 schools in the North, all from the Protestant/state sector.

"There is not one of the other tradition in it," Prof Osbourne said. He was concerned that the present "truce" situation in the North will move to "co-existence, as with the middle classes", and not to transformation.

Seán Ó Cuin of Comhairle na Gaelscolaíochta emphasised that Irish could be part of a person's British identity just as Welsh is in Wales and Gaelic in Scotland.

Unionist parties were "very antagonistic to the Irish language. It is a recent antagonism, orchestrated as well and is not reflected in Protestant and Unionist communities," added Mr Ó Cuin.