ESRI Seminar: "Inequality, Segregation and Sharing in Northern Ireland Schools"

Venue: ESRI, Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson's Quay, Dublin 2

Speakers: Vani Borooah and Colin Knox (University of Ulster)

Abstract
Despite the political progress which has been made in Northern Ireland, it remains a segregated society particularly evident in its schooling system. Some 1,180 schools provide education to 330,000 pupils through a bewildering array of management arrangements: selective and non-selective schools (grammar and secondary schools); co-education and single sex schools; controlled (de facto Protestant) schools and Catholic maintained schools; integrated schools comprising Catholic and Protestant children, those of other faiths or none; and, Irish medium schools. The obvious fault-line of religious segregation overshadows a more insidious problem of access and performance inequalities in Northern Ireland schools. Using pupil performance data from post-primary schools, this paper identifies those factors which impact on the likelihood of pupils leaving schools with good GCSEs. It also examines the potential for a new policy option entitled ‘shared education’ to address inequality and segregation