David Baxter: Could new report be starting point for change in our education system?

Why?

It’s largely to do with the publication of a recent major report from the well-respected think tank at Ulster University, the UNESCO-funded ‘Transforming Education’ initiative.

According to them, the suggestion is that for Northern Ireland to move forward, we need to scrap our Christian focused RE and daily acts of collective worship and instead teach more controversial issues reflecting the wider nature of a more diverse society.

The paper also calls for an end to religiously segregated schools and instead, focus on joint community schools and colleges, ultimately leading to a single educational system in the province.

The paper is hard-hitting and pulls no punches in its criticisms of the current state of play and its findings have been given airspace on major news channels both here and elsewhere.

As research papers go, it’s as heavyweight as they come, authored by a wide panel of academics all well-known for their work in this field.

It’s not only about that, though.

The criticisms raised also overlap with the whole way in which education is delivered in the province and it is especially poignant that such calls for rationalising compulsory age group education are gaining traction.

This is for many reasons but the growing sense of the economic realities of having too many schools for, in most cases, relatively small numbers of pupils, means it makes a lot of sense.

A generation ago all this would have been unthinkable, but irrespective of emptying wallets, recent studies have meant that more and more people are starting to favour a secular and all-inclusive approach to education.

The growth of the integrated sector has proved this and they would stand to be potential losers were any of the more-established schools suddenly starting to admit all and sundry.

As if the financial costs of streamlining off a perceived more academically able group of children and placing them in separate schools wasn’t a big enough factor to make such supporters of selection think twice, a huge nudge from a major research body may focus the minds of the powers that be.

In today’s multicultural world, such calls are not unexpected but it would be a very optimistic commentator that would suggest that this will happen in the next few years.

On this topic, all but a handful of faith schools in Northern Ireland are Roman Catholic, so the beam of critical light will be especially focused on them to open up.

With state schools effectively becoming homes for ‘the rest’, they are de facto Protestant schools. So irrespective of any schools’ ethos, the reality is that the vast majority of schools are faith focused.

In the words of the report: “The influence of a Christian-centric perspective pervades not only the daily routine (act of worship) and timetable (the content of the RE syllabus) but also the operational day-to-day and strategic management of schools and, to some extent, the management of the entire education system.

“In effect, the current system ensures that most of our children are segregated by community background from the age of three.”

The problem is incredibly deep-rooted, with state funding for schools being permitted only on the compliance of schools to teach Christianity. From the core of politics and communities we have now a system which is so endemic in society and so ‘old boys’ based, it’s going to take more than a few well-intentioned and left-of-centre reports to knock our divided society back into shape.

‘The Troubles’ has provided power for many people, even in education. Because of this, many people will find it hard to let go of the status quo; just ask the smaller political parties about this and you’ll get a full and comprehensive answer.

Critics will argue that church-going attendance in Northern Ireland is higher than all of the UK and that both Protestant and Roman Catholic faiths invest hugely in the wellbeing of their charges, caring deeply for their spiritual and moral wellbeing as well as their curricular success.

In today’s litigious society, with so few people wanting to even be school governors, should we not be encouraging them rather than trying to get rid of them?

Other areas are touched on too, of course, and with so many single-sex and academically selective schools in even Enniskillen, we have a situation where at least economically speaking, there are far too many buildings housing small numbers of pupils. This is a picture mirrored across the province.

Such segregation is rare in the western world, where most countries have single education systems with pupils, irrespective of faith, creed, ability or gender taught in uniform-less schools. They seem to do okay and produce the same number of doctors, vets, teachers, mechanics and caretakers so why are we clinging on to what many see as a Victorian model of schooling?

If you wish to argue that this is just 'newfangledness', then consider the aims of the then all-Ireland National Schools movement when it was introduced in 1831, which was to “unite in one system children of different creeds” and “to look with particular [financial] favour” on those schools jointly managed by Catholics and Protestants.

Well, that worked, didn’t it?

To be blunt about it, schools are facing huge costs and anything from doors lying open that burn KWs of energy to empty desks not generating income are open for scrutiny.

Because of this, there’s the whole question that society now faces, do we ditch our principles in favour of more money in your pocket?

Is this a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ditch prejudices?

The churches will argue that just because it’s the modern way of doing things, it doesn’t make it right. Wider society, on the other hand, may view things differently, especially if they look at vibrant world communities where pupils are taught more inclusively.

How many of them have dog collars as chairs of boards of governors? Yes, the landscape of education is slowly screaming and kicking its way into the 21st century.