Poots says schools ‘will suffer’ due to legislation to promote integrated sector

A DUP minister has warned that schools will “suffer” due to new legislation to promote the integrated sector.

Edwin Poots, filling in for Education Minister Michelle McIlveen at Assembly Questions, claimed the largest sector are now “at the bottom of the pyramid”, blasting “unfairness”.

The Integrated Education Bill, proposed by Alliance MLA Kellie Armstrong, includes provision for setting of minimum targets for the numbers of pupils educated in such schools.

Currently 7% of young people in Northern Ireland are educated in schools which have official integrated status.

Responding to a question by TUV leader Jim Allister, Mr Poots said the education minister “does not think equilibrium across the education sectors is possible under this bill”.

“The bill places duties on the Department of Education and the education authority (EA) that do not exist for any other sector. As she has stated throughout the debates on the Integrated Education Bill, there is one finite education budget from which all educational provision must be funded,” he told MLAs.

“Due to how support is defined in the bill, the department and the EA will be required to identify, assess, monitor and provide sufficient places to aim to meet the demand for integrated education. This in itself will generate costs.

“The department must prepare and maintain an integrated education strategy to include provision for resources to encourage, facilitate and support integrated education and for the protection of the ethos of integrated schools.

“The department must include targets and benchmarks for integrated education and report against these. The department has no other such duty in relation to any other sector but rather seeks to ensure as far as possible, with regard to high quality sustainable education and cost to public purse, that children are educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents.

“To suggest that any of the statutory requirements can be delivered without impact on every other sector is disingenuous.

“The minister of education is clear, the Integrated Education Bill will impact on every other sector and that this will be to the detriment of schools in every other sector.

“As she stated at further consideration stage and final stage, the Integrated Education Bill does no service to integrated schools either. To put it simply, no child, no school, no sector wins under the Integrated Education Bill.”

Mr Allister questioned whether the “supremacy which is being bestowed upon the integrated sector, that in fact it would now be unlawful to restore equilibrium to other sectors”.

Mr Poots responded: “The ethos of integration is actually taking precedence over the actual education of children.

“In terms of the impact on other schools, I have to say it is hugely significant and hugely damaging and the consequences of it are that other schools will now be placed on a lower pyramid, with the controlled and maintained sector at the bottom of the pyramid, then Irish language language sector in the middle of the pyramid and the integrated sector at the top of the pyramid. And that is unfairness and discrimination.”