All-Ability Education in Northern Ireland

Abstract

My understanding of integrated education has of course been shaped both by my personal and my professional experience. The movement toward integration was begun by individuals coming together, trying initially to persuade the powers that be to take the initiative and, when that proved fruitless, moving forward despite those powers whose resistance to change proved immutable. When the first parents decided that they wanted their children to be educated together in a divided society, schools were either Protestant or Catholic and therefore either Unionist or Nationalist, governed by the state or by the Catholic Church. What became the integrated education movement began with one person placing an advertisement in a newspaper seeking like-minded persons to come forward. The fact that the movement grew not from government initiative but from people power was to prove its strength. In a society where government was seen by some as part of the problem and whose very existence was seen as controversial, any top-down initiative would have been distrusted by many if not most of the citizens of Northern Ireland. So the stories of the individuals who led the movement, who shaped it and established it, are the very building blocks of integration.