Integrated Education - An historical perspective
by Cecil Linehan, Chair, NICIE Millennium Steering Group
The Integrated Education Fund
The Integrated Education Fund (IEF) was set up in 1992 to be a financial foundation for the furtherance of integrated education. It was endowed with money from the European Structural Funds, DENI, the Nuffield Foundation and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust - a very generous act of confidence on the part of these bodies. The Fund provides interest free loans to assist with DENI approved, capital development schemes. Since it was established, the Fund has received further donations from DENI and from a number of Charitable Trusts and Foundations, and also administered grants from the European Union for specific projects related to integrated education.
Previous Attempts to Establish Integrated Schools
At the start of the 19th century Lord Stanley established the National School System in 1931 in the hope that the children of Ireland could be educated in school together. His scheme failed because the churches were not happy with the provisions for religious education.
In 1921, Lord Londonderry, Northern Ireland's first Minister for Education, tried again to have all children educated together. Given the troubled years and political divisions, he had even less chance of succeeding than Lord Stanley. The schools of Northern Ireland remained segregated.
So what is different now? The movement for integrated education started in the early 1970s and supported now so solidly by the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education is parent led and parent driven. It is the demand of the parents of Northern Ireland for a pluralist system of education for their children. It is a central; part of the process of reconciliation in a country for too long divided by history and religion, and separated by schools and housing.
It is the voice of many parents in Northern Ireland saying: Let not church or state separate those whom parents would bring together in school - their children.
We, the representatives of the integrated schools and their supporting trusts, gathered together as members of the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education, define integrated education in the Northern Ireland context as:
"Education together in school of pupils drawn in approximately equal numbers from the two main traditions with the aim of providing for them an effective education that gives equal recognition to and promotes equal expression of the two major traditions. The integrated school is essentially Christian in character."
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