Education in NI: Less than the Sum of its Parts…
Reclaim the Enlightenment aims to revive progressive thinking from the 18th and 19th centuries. Discover how education in Northern Ireland reflects deep social divisions and inequalities.
Education
From Wisconsin to Belfast and Armagh: the beat of The Sullivan Squad’s drums and the Ojibwe language will feel familiar #imaginebelfast
Next week at Imagine! Festival there’s a chance to step outside the usual local context of the Irish language and Ulster Scots to look at an indigenous culture from northern Wisconsin. Imagine this: not everything that looks like a bodhrán and sounds like a bodhrán and is played like a bodhrán is actually a bodhrán. The hand drums brought to life by The Sullivan Squad look incredibly familiar, yet the colourful patterns on the band members clothing suggest that the …
The end of a series
The latest series of Holywell Conversations podcasts began with reflections on the Good Friday Agreement, amidst fears that Northern Ireland’s devolution was over, and that series has now completed at a time when government has actually resumed. Over the series’ 18 episodes two themes have been examined – the challenges holding back reconciliation within our society, and the specific problems that continue to face the North West region. In the first episode, we heard from three people at the table …
Learning to listen – the Thirty Project
There is immense frustration across Northern Ireland’s community sector that the Civic Forum collapsed in 2002 and was not replaced. Demands are increasing for citizens’ assemblies, or similar, to provide an alternative voice to that of politicians, especially in the absence of the Assembly and Executive. Avila Kilmurray was a founder of the Women’s Coalition which led demands for the Civic Forum as part of the Good Friday Agreement negotiations. Avila makes the point that it was also the Women’s …
GRACE: measuring trust for better community relations
On the International Day of Peace, as part of Good Relations Week, research undertaken through a partnership between the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations (Coventry University) and Community Relations in Schools (CRIS) was launched. The research examines the role of trust-building in school-based reconciliation initiatives: “Trust, while taken for granted as important, has not been deeply unpacked or examined to better understand its more particular role in facilitating a move towards reconciliation,” declared the organisers, and the panel …
30 free hours of childcare sounds good, but doesn’t fully deliver
Kate Nicholl is the Alliance Party MLA for South Belfast With many people’s childcare bills outstripping mortgage costs, parents and carers struggling with the strain of juggling careers and childcare, and providers struggling to keep their doors open, you don’t need to look far to see the impact of crippling childcare costs on our children, parents and carers, our economy, and wider society. The lack of affordable childcare in Northern Ireland was at the heart of my decision to run …
Where is the Peace Dividend?
A few days ago the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee of the House of Commons was told that for some communities here, the expected peace dividend from the Good Friday Agreement never arrived. Tim Attwood of the John and Pat Hume Foundation reported on its recent ‘Peace Summit’. “One of the young people said, ‘The conflict was not the problem; the peace is’, because, in so many places, they do not see the dividend. Some working-class people in parts of Belfast …
‘DE bankrolls segregation’: Northern Ireland education costs additional £226m annually
The Integrated Alumni charity, in partnership with the Integrated Education Fund (IEF), hosted an event that looked at the cost of division in Northern Ireland, especially its education system. This included a discussion among a panel of candidates for the upcoming local government elections and an audience of several dozen adding live, interactive responses with their mobile phones. Matt O’Neill (chairperson, Integrated Alumni) welcomed guests and introduced Dr Matt Milliken (Ulster University), who presented an overview of a briefing paper …
Paving the Path to Peace: Civil Society and the Northern Ireland Peace Process #GFA25
Watch back last week’s conference that shone a light on work by trade unions, community groups, artists and faith-based organisations in the road towards peace.
Is it time for education without churches?
Dr Stephen Roulston is a Research Fellow at the UNESCO Centre in the School of Education, Ulster University. Let me take you to a province with a long history of connection with England. The population mainly consists of Catholics and Protestants, with different histories. These communities tend to live separately and, as well as living apart, there is a deeply divided education system, with each religious authority catering for their own community. Often, in areas where both Protestants and Catholics …
We should not be surprised when some kids give up and achieve lower results than those children not damaged by the transfer test labelling system…
Do you believe that intelligence is fixed, that you are born clever, or not clever? If so, you are in agreement with many 11-year-old boys. Some girls share this belief as well, but boys in particular are keen to find out where they rank in comparison with others. It helps them decide whether or not more effort is worthwhile. They believe that if you are intelligent then more effort might possibly mean higher achievement, but if you are not intelligent …
The ongoing revelations about sexual, physical and psychological abuse in schools gives rise to mixed emotions in many of us…
I have previously written of my experiences in covering the child abuse issue for the now-closed Offaly Express. More recently, the coverage of events relating to the Spiritans, Dominicans, Vincentians and other orders has brought the matter to the fore once again. However, arguably less attention has been paid to physical and psychological abuse in girls’ schools, an issue explored in a recent Irish Times article. After I posted that article on Facebook, I must admit I was gobsmacked by …
Slugger podcast: What is behind the University Strike Action? With Professor Dominic Bryan…
This week University staff are on strike across the UK. I talked to Professor Dominic Bryan from Queen’s University Belfast about the reasons for the University Strike Action. We also talk about the increasing commercialisation of education. The two main issues are: Pensions: this is the usual story of being asked to contribute more to their pension scheme but getting less out of it when they retire. Pay: they are looking a 12% pay rise. When you consider that inflation …
Review of ‘Beauty through Broken Windows’ on the World Day of the Poor
Today is the ‘World Day of the Poor’, observed in the Catholic Church since 2017 when it was established by Pope Francis. It’s a day to remind Christians of their obligations to follow Christ’s example to pursue justice for the poor. A new book, Beauty through Broken Windows: Empowering Edmund Rice’s Vision Today, edited by Aidan Donaldson and Denis Gleeson, is an excellent resource for learning more about how Christians around the world are living out such a vision. The …
So much more to small rural schools than pupil numbers…
By Dr Montserrat Fargas-Malet and Professor Carl Bagley QUB Small rural primary schools have been repeatedly in the news as they are being earmarked for closure, with the Education Authority (EA) draft area plan for the next five years stating that there are too many small schools that are not economically sustainable. However, what do we really know about these schools? The last policy report on small rural schools in Northern Ireland was published 20 years ago. We are hosting …
Queen’s and Ulster University come together once again for the annual Festival of Social Science.
This year, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Festival of Social Science in Northern Ireland will run from 31 October to 13 November and will feature 22 free events organised by social science academics from both universities. The UK-wide Festival aims to open up social science research to new audiences by showing how such research influences our everyday lives. Now in its landmark 20th year, the Festival has returned to mainly in-person talks, workshops, walking tours and even a bit of …
The trouble with teaching ‘the Troubles’…
The final episode of Derry Girls (spoiler alert) covered the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement (GFA) with wit and plenty of pathos. After its broadcast, social media was full of older viewers reporting that they had quite forgotten the challenges that many people across the island of Ireland faced when deciding to support unpalatable aspects of the agreement, such as the release of prisoners. The younger adults were open about being entirely unaware of the context of this peace settlement which ended …
A game changer for religion and education?
There’s a world of difference between the jumpers-for-goalposts kickabout in the school playground and the type of free-flowing, high-quality football being played currently at the Euros in England. Most notable is the way in which skilful players read the game and move to occupy empty space rather than engage in a chaotic free-for-all where everyone runs to cluster around the ball. Sadly, the media often bear a greater resemblance to a primary school soccer scrummage than the beautiful game being …
Votes At 16 – Shaping The Future
Northern Ireland has just had its seventh Assembly election since 1998, and come May next year, voters will be casting their ballots in another council election. But only if they are registered and over 18. With every election, the issue of voting age rears its head, and rightly so. At 16, you pay tax and national insurance when you start work, you can leave your parental home, leave full time education, get married, and apply for social security. You become …
Futureproofing our schools…
While the constitutional question appears to have been consigned to the back burner for now, it’s an issue that cannot be avoided indefinitely. A recent Slugger article reflected on the question of pension provision following some future unification of north and south. The integration of State benefits and of services such as housing and health would undoubtedly be challenging, however, unifying the island’s education systems may prove the most difficult task of all. It is worth noting the religious composition …