This piece was originally published in the Spring 2018 issue of the Yale Review of International Studies.
Photo caption: Education Minister, John O’Dowd, pictured with pupils at the official opening of Gaelscoil na mBeann, a new Irish-medium school in Kilkeel.
The period in Northern Irish history known as the “The Troubles” was brought to an end in 1998 with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, but sectarian tension has not dissipated in the nearly thirty years since then, even with the successful reduction in violence. In fact, the “interface barriers between communities (so-called ‘peace’ walls) have increased in number” and “more than [seventy percent] of social housing estates are [ninety percent] single identity occupied.”[1] One of the modern manifestations of this historical sectarian tension is the religiously segregated schooling system in Northern Ireland.
The legacy of schooling in Northern Ireland dates back to before the Irish War for Independence, the creation of the Irish Free State, and the partitioning of the six counties in the northern part of the island that would become Northern Ireland. In the 1830s, when the National School System was established, the government declared that “preference would be given to joint applications from Catholic and Protestant clergy to establish new schools,” but over time “any semblance of integration was lost and most of these national schools took on the complexion and ethos of their majority community.”[2] That carried through until the upheaval caused by the Irish War for Independence and the ensuing Civil War.
After the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland was drawn following the Irish Civil War, the new government in Northern Ireland began reorganizing the education system and in 1923 “the official preference was that the Churches would hand control of their schools to the new local authorities, and that schools would be open to pupils from all denominations.”[3] However, both the Catholic and Protestant Churches rebelled against this. Immediately post-partition, the Catholic Church and nationalist politicians in Northern Ireland “felt very much under siege and actively promoted a boycott of the Northern Ireland government,” which proved a clear obstacle to any efforts towards an integrated school system.[4] Although initially less obvious, since the Northern Irish government represented Protestant interests, the Protestant Churches were also not prepared to hand school control over to the government either, “unless they received guarantees that gave them effective control over the schools anyway, without the burden of ownership.”[5] Because of the boycott of the Northern Irish government by nationalist politicians, the new parliament consisted almost entirely of British unionists with deeply entrenched anti-nationalist and anti-Catholic beliefs. Nonetheless, a few remaining politicians did argue forcefully for integrated education—most notably the parliament’s first Minister of Education, Lord Londonderry—but his efforts faced opposition from all sides and demonstrated that “the processes of government were already deeply tinged with the divisions that would persist in the future.”[6] The government did pass an Education Act in 1923 that attempted to create a unified system, but with widespread Church opposition, by 1930 “the government was forced to establish a de facto segregated education system.”[7]
The resulting system of education was one in which some schools were controlled by the Ministry of Education (henceforth: controlled schools), other schools in which the management was split between two ministers from management committees and four from the relevant church (henceforth: maintained schools), and still others were independently managed voluntary schools (henceforth: voluntary schools).[8] The controlled schools became de facto Protestant schools while Catholics predominantly attended Catholic maintained schools. Fewer students attended voluntary schools (akin to American private schools). The opportunity to integrate Irish education had passed and the above system still exists in Northern Ireland today.
The status of schooling in Northern Ireland reflects the greater sectarian divide facing the region today. As of 2012, around ninety percent of children attend either controlled schools or Catholic maintained schools, with less than six percent attending integrated schools.[9] Looking more closely, almost half of the students in Northern Ireland are being taught in schools where “[ninety percent] or more of the pupils are of the same religion.”[10] In 2012, 180 schools had no Protestant students on their roster and 111 schools had no Catholic students.[11] This reality means that for many people, “their first contact with a member of the opposing religious tradition and culture may not be until they attend university or enter the workforce.”[12] Students can go their whole adolescence without ever meeting someone from the other group.
This deep division poses serious concerns. At the level of classroom curriculum, “a Catholic is likely to study more Irish history than a Protestant, and a Protestant will study more British history than a Catholic.”[13] As a result, different groups of students have different conceptions of Northern Irish history. In terms of social effects, research has found that “separate schooling is more likely to contribute to ‘own’ group bias, stereotyping and prejudice” in polarized communities.[14] In addition, the segregated educational system has been identified “as a key contributory factor in perpetuating the conflict,” although empirical evidence on the subject is sorely lacking.[15] On the other hand, some in Northern Ireland consider segregated schooling a good thing “for protecting culture, promoting faith-based values and… providing safety for children in what at times can be a volatile environment.”[16] The continued debate over segregated education in Northern Ireland reflects concerns that exist at a global level “regarding the right to a separate education based on ethno-religious identity and the role that separate schools may play in sustaining and creating negative group relations.”[17] The question at stake in Northern Ireland is not so easy as saying that segregated schooling is the root of sectarian divisions and abolishing the parallel system would solve all of that society’s problems because, of course, many varied and complex factors are at play in Northern Irish society. Nonetheless, research has suggested that “in the context of societies in conflict, the general model of schooling ‘does more to contribute to the underlying causes of conflict than it does to peace.’”[18]Although not enough research has been done on the exact effects of segregated education in Northern Ireland, the system certainly does not work to heal divisions.
At least one government official, former First Minister and DUP leader Peter Robinson, has described the education system in Northern Ireland as a “benign form of apartheid which is fundamentally damaging to our society,” so concerns about segregated education are being registered.[19] At the same time, however, the Department of Education, in a recent policy document, cut the amount of funding available for “the promotion of equality and good community relations among children from £3.6 [million] to £1.1 [million]” and limits what it will support with regards to personnel training.[20] The instances in which controlled schools, maintained schools, and sometime integrated schools compete lend legitimacy to an economic argument against segregated education at the scale of the state. A study in 2006 estimated that “53,000 places ([fifteen percent] of the total capacity) in existing schools were unfilled.”[21] Still, the political impetus for effective lasting change is not yet a reality in Northern Ireland.
In addition to religious segregation, the Northern Irish school system also perpetuates a system of academic segregation. In Northern Ireland, students attend primary school until about age eleven, after which they go on to either grammar school (which is explicitly academically focused) or secondary school (less academically focused but also not explicitly vocational). That access to post-primary education hinges on “controversial assessments of children’s ability to benefit from a grammar school education.”[22] Students take a test at age eleven, which dictates the rest of their academic career, and this system disproportionately hurts working-class students (both Protestant and Catholic) and advantages middle-class students. The DUP and other unionists defend the system of grammar school admittance which makes them appear to treat working-class Protestant children as “mere ‘education fodder in this middle-class system’ when it comes to educational achievement.”[23] In 2002, with the Northern Irish parliament about to cede rule directly to Westminster, the last move of the Sinn Féin Minister of Education was to “abolish the transfer tests with effect from 2004.”[24] This was an attempt to force the system to become more inclusive, but after typical politicking, this attempt failed and “many grammar schools continue to run ‘unregulated’ tests to select pupils.”[25] The effect of this is that Catholic and Protestant grammar schools have separate test systems “of uncertain technical reliability and validity, no comparability of outcomes between them and no significant government oversight.”[26] The education system in Northern Ireland continues to fail working-class students at the same time that in entrenches religious divisions.
With regards to antagonism between ethnic, racial, and religious groups, much has been written on the subject of intergroup contact theory. Contact theory posits that under the right conditions, “contact between members of opposing groups can effectively promote more positive group relations.”[27] Also known as the contact hypothesis, the idea was developed by Gordon Allport in 1954. The four conditions that Allport developed as integral to successful contact are “the equal status of groups, the requirement for co-operation, the avoidance of social competition and the legitimization of the situation through institutional support.”[28] Significant research has been done on the practical applications and effects of contact theory and in general the findings reveal that “intergroup contact may be useful for reducing prejudice in a variety of intergroup situations and contexts.”[29] With regards to Northern Ireland, there is research evidence to “substantiate the reconciliation benefits of sustained contact between the school children in Northern Ireland,” but the empirical data is not robust.[30] Still, contact theory holds a lot of promise for the case of schoolchildren in Northern Ireland.
Integrated education has existed in Northern Ireland since 1981 when the first integrated school was started by the All Children Together parents’ group. For the first eight years of its existence, the government did not recognize the school. Then in 1989, the school was recognized after the Education Reform Order of 1989 endorsed integrated schooling.[31] Integrated education has since expanded, although not without problems: for many years the Catholic Church “refused to minister to the spiritual needs of Catholic children in integrated schools.”[32] New integrated schools also sometimes faced antagonism from “some sections of communities when the creation of a new integrated school threatened the sustainability of existing local schools,” but nevertheless the growth of integrated education has continued slowly.[33] There are two mechanisms by which integrated schools can be created: new schools can be started, or controlled schools can be converted into integrated schools. That conversion process comes at the behest of parents at a given school in question who can request that their school be integrated thereby rendering the process as “voluntary integration by parental consent rather than compulsory desegregation.”[34] Those schools that “transform to integrated status are known as controlled integrated” and “new planned integrated schools are ‘grant maintained.’”[35] The convoluted system of school categorization in Northern Ireland has only gotten more so with the development of integrated education.
Rather than encouraging the integration controlled schools, the government’s preferred option in the past few decades has been to “close schools below certain arbitrary threshold enrolment levels and retain fewer but larger schools” which perpetuates “the segregated status quo.”[36] The effects of this can be seen in the fact that as of 2012, there is not a single integrated grammar school. There are about forty integrated primary schools and about twenty integrated secondary schools, but all grammar school education in Northern Ireland is currently segregated.[37] Another source of government-related tension surrounding the issue is that, in the mid-1990s, “government attempts to restrict educational expenditure discouraged further integration.”[38] Because of that, the expansion of integrated education has slowed significantly in the past twenty years, even with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.
People in Northern Ireland, without regard to government policy, consistently support integrated education, even though it remains a niche sector.[39] And in some places people are acting on the theoretical support since “the two most oversubscribed schools in Northern Ireland are integrated colleges.”[40] Indeed, the history of integrated education in Northern Ireland rests firmly on parents: the main activists for integrated education, rather than government or Church officials, “have been parents and the motivation has been a community development process involving parents from different traditions working toward a common goal.”[41] That thread of parental engagement has persisted from the opening of the first integrated school on. Still, in practice, very few students attend integrated schools, even though general support for integrated schools is much higher.
One critique of integrated education is the potential loss of cultural identity, the magnitude of which should not be understated in a place as culturally divided as Northern Ireland. That critique stems from the perception that, in an integrated school, students of different backgrounds sit in classrooms together, but “the school simultaneously requires them to surrender their identities: for the time that they are in school these are subordinated to an ‘integrated’ identity.”[42] Whether or not students actually feel that way in an integrated setting is up for debate because the data on the effects of integrated education is spotty at best. Another point of concern is that research shows that “limited social interactions occur outside of school,” which raises raising questions about whether “the reduction in social distance in school between the two groups is transferable outside the milieu of the integrated experience.”[43] One issue of implementation of integrated education is the “extent to which students and teachers in integrated schools openly confront issues of sectarianism,” namely students and educators in Northern Ireland tend to shy away from actually discussing contentious issues of sectarianism in schools.[44] That’s a problem across society in Northern Ireland—the reluctance to actually talk about things—but in order for real reconciliation to actually take place, latent problems need to be discussed in open and healthy ways and integrated schools would be an excellent place to start that process.
Overall the evidence that does exist about integrated education in Northern Ireland points towards predominantly positive effects. Studies that compare outcomes for students in integrated schools “have found them to have higher levels of contact, more moderate political views and more favourable [sic] views of the other community” than their peers at controlled or Catholic maintained schools.[45] Those students from integrated schools also took “a liberal position on mixed marriage and integrated education,” compared to their segregated peers.[46] Recent more general research has also indicated that integrated education “may impact positively on identity, outgroup attitudes and forgiveness, with potential to help rebuild the social cohesion fragmented by protracted conflict,” which has clear implications for the case of integrated education in Northern Ireland.[47] One study found that 93 percent of past students felt that “integrated education had a significant positive impact on their lives.”[48] If the purpose of integrated education is to lessen the strength of identity categories of students, then it does not generally succeed at that, since that same study say that “religious identity was unaffected and there was also little impact on political identity,” but the argument for integrated education is generally for the possibility of greater social cohesion not a more homogenous society.[49] More support should be leant to integrated education from the government in terms of funding, public support, and research.
A much more recent development in the educational fabric of Northern Ireland is the idea of what is called “shared education.” The Shared Education Programme (SEP) was launched in 2007 with funding from the International Fund for Ireland with the goal of fostering partnerships between controlled and Catholic maintained schools. Collaborating between separate schools wherein teachers and students move between schools “to take classes on a regular basis would allow for a degree of mixing and contact, while at the same time protecting the ethos and existence of separate schools.”[50] SEP allows for a semi-integrated experience for students, since they take classes with students from the other religious group while still attending their own school. In a shared education system, schools are seen as part of “an interdependent network within which changes in one part of the system will have consequences for other schools in the system.”[51] The introduction of SEP to schools in Northern Ireland requires a recalibration with respect to ideas about how schools should operate as independent, individual pieces towards viewing schools as part of an interconnected web.
There is somewhat of a precedent for the SEP in that Northern Ireland has attempted semi-similar contact programs in the past that brought together Protestant and Catholic youth on a joint project. The impact of these earlier programs was generally limited “as contact was generally not used to address issues related to conflict or division and often lacked any real ambition to promote change.”[52] Also, these programs tended to be one-off that did not focus on sustaining longer-term contact between groups. SEP also draws from similar shared education models in England and Scotland where the evidence suggests that, “despite their different goals, the Scottish and English initiatives had been largely successful in leading to educational and social benefits, and protecting denominational ethos.”[53]
Shared education has clear academic benefits, alongside the less definitively clear social ones. School partnerships allow for “the pooling of resources, expertise, and professional development, which has the potential to raise educational standards and ultimately improve pupil attainment.”[54] That means that if two schools do not have the resources or enough students to offer a particular class, a partnership between the two can allow one of those schools to offer that class to both sets of students, thereby benefitting all parties involved. In order to qualify for SEP funding, partnering schools must have “sustained, regular engagement working towards the development of students working together, in shared classes, in each other’s schools, on core examination subjects.”[55] The situation is in general a net positive for schools and students in terms of resources and academic opportunity.
In the programs that have been implemented since 2007, very few sectarian incidents occurred, and when they did, the schools “normally dealt with this in an open and explicit way—the over-arching, and public, framework provided by SEP seemed to provide a context when these issues could be dealt with openly” compared to the usual response in schools with sectarian tension which would be to suspend activity until things quiet down on their own.[56] The main issues with SEP have been logistical ones, specifically the “problems of timetabling and busing arrangements needed to make it happen,” since cross-school programs involve the physical movement of students from one school to another.[57]
The advantage of being a less radical approach, in some sense, compared to outright integrated education is that working within the existing segregated framework can help facilitate experiences that would not otherwise have any chance of happening. In the first group of SEP partnerships, for “as many as [forty percent] of the pupils, intergroup interactions that occurred through the programme marked the first time they had ever interacted with someone from a different religious community.”[58] That is a staggering number of students so insulated in their own community that they have never even interacted with someone from another group. SEP allows for those first interactions to occur earlier than they otherwise would have and in a controlled environment that can help promote social cohesion. Shared education also exists as a more appealing alternative for parents who support the idea of integrated education, but still send their children to a segregated school. The practice also exists at the intersection of the idea that separate education is “a fundamental right in liberal democratic societies” and the concern that integrated education is “the only solution to ethnic/racial divisions.”[59] Northern Ireland’s positioning as a deeply divided society within a larger western democracy means that the balancing of these principles is of the utmost importance.
The effects of SEP are hard to judge because the program is so new, but initial results look promising. Even at a basic level, the crossing of “physical boundaries to get to each other’s schools amounted to transcending long established cultural barriers,” which takes a key first step towards achieving a more lasting impact.[60] Evidence from the first stage of SEP implementation suggests that the program “positively impacts intergroup attitudes and behaviours of participants,” although the effects of those attitude changes have not been sufficiently measured.[61] One study found that students who participated in SEP, compared to those who did not, experienced “a reduction in ingroup bias; greater outgroup trust; reduced anxiety towards the outgroup; more positive feelings when in the company of outgroup members; and more positive outgroup action tendencies,” including the desire to pursue contact, support, help, and learn more.[62] The observed effects of shared education differ across kinds of schools in Northern Ireland. The positive outcomes occur more strongly in relatively less divided schools compared to more divided schools, but even so, in schools with more intense historical tension and lower engagement, “pupils expressed initial trepidation about contact but following the programme reported feeling less anxious and more comfortable interacting with members of the other community.”[63] Even if the effects of shared education vary across student populations, the benefits have, so far, outweighed any anxieties about the program.
Much like with integrated education, the government in Northern Ireland has not been as proactive as it should be if it is genuinely interested in supporting anti-sectarian work. With regards to shared education, the Department of Education has been “criticized as lacking a coherent policy framework and attaining insufficient professional development training for teachers.”[64] For a system so new and rife with delicate issues, the policies behind it need to be clear, so that effective implementation can be sustained. Alongside that, teachers participating in the program need sufficient training for running a mixed classroom and navigating issues that may arise from that. A lack of teacher training probably factors into teacher reluctance to discuss contentious issues in both integrated and shared education environments. But since shared education is new, a policy window is open with the potential to “embed shared education through a structural reconfiguration of the schools estate in Northern Ireland,” which will hopefully result in “a more efficient system of education with fewer teachers but one which confers education and reconciliation benefits on its pupils.”[65] And indeed, after the passage of the 2014 Education Act in Northern Ireland, the Department of Education released a document entitled Sharing Works: A Policy for Shared Education that stated, “The Department is conscious of its duty under the Education Reform Order 1989 (Article 6) to encourage and facilitate the development of integrated education and will continue to do so alongside the advancement of Shared Education.”[66] Policy in Northern Ireland has been decidedly drifting towards the promotion of shared education in favor of integrated education, even though the Department of Education has a mandate to support and promote integrated education.
Both integrated education and shared education programs have great potential to help lessen sectarian tension in Northern Ireland, but as evidenced throughout this paper, more research needs to be done about the effects of both potential options. It will be much easier to make concrete policy proposals regarding integrated and shared education if the direct effects of both options have been thoroughly researched with the collection of large-scale empirical data.
One such study might attempt to interview as many graduates of integrated schools as possible from three stagings (say graduating classes of 1985, 1995, and 2005) to more fully track the effects of an integrated education on students’ lives after leaving school. Do these students have more moderate political and religious opinions? Do they have more intra-community relationships? How do they view their integrated educational experience? These kinds of questions need to be studied at a national level to more fully understand the benefits and drawbacks of an integrated education. More research needs to be done on the effects of shared education as well, even if the same kind of generational study is not yet possible because of the relative newness of the initiative. Still, there is a group of students from the past ten years that have experienced shared education in the classroom, so they are a good place to start in looking at the possibility of longer lasting impacts on students’ cultural and social consciousnesses.
With regards to integrated education, the Department of Education needs to reaffirm its commitment to the development and support of integrated education with financial support and sufficient training for teachers and administrators in integrated environments. That training needs to include concrete ways to approach sectarian issues in the classroom because integrated education will not reach its full potential if the divisive issues underlying the need for an integrated system are not directly addressed with students from all backgrounds. This training should be implemented for teachers in shared education programs, as well, because the same predicament exists in that environment even if the environment is less drastic. Overall, there is potential for Northern Ireland’s school system to be a place of reconciliation between the next generation of Protestants and Catholics if integrated and shared education are properly studied supported.
Bibliography
Ben-Nun, Merav. “The 3Rs of Integration: Respect, Recognition and Reconciliation; Concepts and Practices of Integrated Schools in Israel and Northern Ireland.” Journal of Peace Education, vol. 10, no. 1 (2013): 1-20.
Blaylock, Danielle, and Joanne Hughes. “Shared Education Initiatives in Northern Ireland: A Model for Effective Intergroup Contact in Divided Jurisdictions.” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, vol. 13, no. 3 (2013): 477-487.
Borooah, Vani, and Colin Knox. “The Contribution of ‘Shared Education’ to Catholic–Protestant Reconciliation in Northern Ireland: A Third Way?” British Educational Research Journal, vol. 39, no. 5 (2013): 925-946.
Gallagher, Tony. “Shared Education in Northern Ireland: School Collaboration in Divided Societies.” Oxford Review of Education, vol. 42, no. 3 (2016): 362–375.
Gardner, John. “Education in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement: Kabuki Theatre Meets Danse Macabre.” Oxford Review of Education, vol. 42, no. 3 (2016): 346-361.
Hayes, Bernadette, et al. “Integrated Education, Intergroup Relations, and Political Identities in Northern Ireland.” Social Problems, vol. 54, no. 4 (2007): 454-482.
Hughes, Joanne, and Rebecca Loader. “‘Plugging the Gap’: Shared Education and the Promotion of Community Relations through Schools in Northern Ireland.” British Educational Research Journal, vol. 41, no. 6 (2015): 1142–1155.
McGlynn, Claire. “Negotiating Difference in Post-conflict Northern Ireland: An Analysis of Approaches to Integrated Education.” Multicultural Perspectives, vol. 13, no. 1 (2011): 16-22.
McGlynn, Claire, and Zvi Bekerman. “The Management of Pupil Difference in Catholic-Protestant and Palestinian-Jewish Integrated Education in Northern Ireland and Israel.” Compare, vol. 37, no. 5 (2007): 689–705.
Pettigrew, Thomas, and Linda Trop. “A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup Contact Theory.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 90, no. 5 (2006): 751–783.
Santi, Raffaella. “Devolution and Education Policy in Northern Ireland, 2013-2015.” Agathos, vol. 6, no. 2 (2015): 118-135.
Smith, Alan. “Religious Segregation and the Emergence of Integrated Schools in Northern Ireland.” Oxford Review of Education, vol. 27, no. 4, 2001, pp. 559-575.
Torney, Kathryn. “How Integrated Are Schools Where You Live?” The Detail, November 23, 2012. Accessed December 14, 2017. http://www.thedetail.tv/articles/how-integrated-are-schools-where-you-live.
Endnotes
[1] Vani Borooah and Colin Knox, “The Contribution of ‘Shared Education’ to Catholic–Protestant Reconciliation in Northern Ireland: A Third Way?” British Educational Research Journal, vol. 39, no. 5 (2013): 925.
[2] Tony Gallagher, “Shared Education in Northern Ireland: School Collaboration in Divided Societies,” Oxford Review of Education, vol. 42, no. 3 (2016): 363; John Gardner, “Education in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement: Kabuki Theatre Meets Danse Macabre,” Oxford Review of Education, vol. 42, no. 3 (2016): 348.
[3] Gallagher, “Shared Education in Northern Ireland,” 363.
[4] Gardner, “Education in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement,” 348.
[5] Gallagher, “Shared education in Northern Ireland,” 363.
[6] Gardner, “Education in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement,” 348.
[7] Bernadette Hayes, et al., “Integrated Education, Intergroup Relations, and Political Identities in Northern Ireland,” Social Problems, vol. 54, no. 4 (2007): 457.
[8] Gardner, “Education in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement,” 349.
[9] Borooah and Knox, “The Contribution of ‘Shared Education’ to Catholic-Protestant Reconciliation in Northern Ireland,” 925.
[10] Kathryn Torney, “How Integrated Are Schools Where You Live?” The Detail, November 23, 2012, accessed December 14, 2017, http://www.thedetail.tv/articles/how-integrated-are-schools-where-you-live.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Hayes et al., “Integrated Education, Intergroup Relations, and Political Identities in Northern Ireland,” 456.
[13] Ibid., 457.
[14] Borooah and Knox, “The Contribution of ‘Shared Education’ to Catholic-Protestant Reconciliation in Northern Ireland,” 942.
[15] Hayes et al., “Integrated Education, Intergroup Relations, and Political Identities in Northern Ireland,” 455.
[16] Gardner, “Education in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement,” 351.
[17] Danielle Blaylock and Joanne Hughes, “Shared Education Initiatives in Northern Ireland: A Model for Effective Intergroup Contact in Divided Jurisdictions,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, vol. 13, no. 3 (2013): 479.
[18] Merav Ben-Nun, “The 3Rs of Integration: Respect, Recognition and Reconciliation; Concepts and Practices of Integrated Schools in Israel and Northern Ireland,” Journal of Peace Education, vol. 10, no. 1 (2013): 2.
[19] Kathryn Torney, “How Integrated Are Schools Where You Live?” The Detail, November 23, 2012, accessed December 14, 2017, http://www.thedetail.tv/articles/how-integrated-are-schools-where-you-live.
[20] Borooah and Knox, “The Contribution of ‘Shared Education’ to Catholic-Protestant Reconciliation in Northern Ireland,” 926.
[21] Gardner, “Education in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement,” 352.
[22] Ibid., 347.
[23] Ibid., 355.
[24] Ibid., 356.
[25] Borooah and Knox, “The Contribution of ‘Shared Education’ to Catholic-Protestant Reconciliation in Northern Ireland,” 926.
[26] Gardner, “Education in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement,” 358.
[27] Blaylock and Hughes, “Shared Education Initiatives in Northern Ireland,” 480.
[28] Claire McGlynn and Zvi Bekerman, “The Management of Pupil Difference in Catholic-Protestant and Palestinian-Jewish Integrated Education in Northern Ireland and Israel,” Compare, vol. 37, no. 5 (2007): 690.
[29] Thomas Pettigrew and Linda Trop, “A Meta-Analytic Test of Intergroup Contact Theory,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 90, no. 5 (2006): 766.
[30] Borooah and Knox, “The Contribution of ‘Shared Education’ to Catholic-Protestant Reconciliation in Northern Ireland,” 942.
[31] Ben-Nun, “The 3Rs of Integration,” 4.
[32] Gardner, “Education in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement,” 350.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Claire McGlynn, “Negotiating Difference in Post-conflict Northern Ireland: An Analysis of Approaches to Integrated Education,” Multicultural Perspectives, vol. 13, no. 1 (2011): 18.
[35] McGlynn and Bekerman, “The Management of Pupil Difference,” 691.
[36] Borooah and Knox, “The Contribution of ‘Shared Education’ to Catholic-Protestant Reconciliation in Northern Ireland,” 944.
[37] Kathryn Torney, “How Integrated Are Schools Where You Live?” The Detail, November 23, 2012, accessed December 14, 2017, http://www.thedetail.tv/articles/how-integrated-are-schools-where-you-live.
[38] Hayes et al., “Integrated Education, Intergroup Relations, and Political Identities in Northern Ireland,” 458.
[39] Blaylock and Hughes, “Shared Education Initiatives in Northern Ireland,” 481.
[40] Borooah and Knox, “The Contribution of ‘Shared Education’ to Catholic–Protestant Reconciliation in Northern Ireland,” 931.
[41] Alan Smith, “Religious Segregation and the Emergence of Integrated Schools in Northern Ireland,” Oxford Review of Education, vol. 27, no. 4 (2001): 564.
[42] Borooah and Knox, “The Contribution of ‘Shared Education’ to Catholic–Protestant Reconciliation in Northern Ireland,” 930.
[43] Ben-Nun, “The 3Rs of Integration,” 6.
[44] Ibid.
[45] Gallagher, “Shared education in Northern Ireland,” 364.
[46] Hayes et al., “Integrated Education, Intergroup Relations, and Political Identities in Northern Ireland,” 460.
[47] McGlynn and Bekerman, “The Management of Pupil Difference,” 692.
[48] Hayes et al., “Integrated Education, Intergroup Relations, and Political Identities in Northern Ireland,” 460.
[49] Ibid.
[50] Gallagher, “Shared education in Northern Ireland,” 367.
[51] Ibid.
[52] Ibid., 364.
[53] Ibid., 366.
[54] Blaylock and Hughes, “Shared Education Initiatives in Northern Ireland,” 484.
[55] Ibid., 482.
[56] Gallagher, “Shared education in Northern Ireland,” 370.
[57] Borooah and Knox, “The Contribution of ‘Shared Education’ to Catholic–Protestant Reconciliation in Northern Ireland,” 943.
[58] Blaylock and Hughes, “Shared Education Initiatives in Northern Ireland,” 483.
[59] Ibid., 477.
[60] Borooah and Knowx, “The Contribution of ‘Shared Education’ to Catholic-Protestant Reconciliation in Northern Ireland,” 942.
[61] Blaylock and Hughes, “Shared Education Initiatives in Northern Ireland,” 477.
[62] Joanne Hughes and Rebecca Loader, “‘Plugging the Gap’: Shared Education and the Promotion of Community Relations through Schools in Northern Ireland.” British Educational Research Journal, vol. 41, no. 6 (2015): 1147.
[63] Blaylock and Hughes, “Shared Education Initiatives in Northern Ireland,” 484.
[64] Ibid., 481.
[65] Borooah and Knox, “The Contribution of ‘Shared Education’ to Catholic-Protestant Reconciliation in Northern Ireland,” 944.
[66] Raffaella Santi, “Devolution and Education Policy in Northern Ireland, 2013-2015,” Agathos, vol. 6, no. 2 (2015): 130.