The Scottish experience

Following the commencement of the debate about the future of our education system it is relevant to look at the attempt to move the system on in Scotland.  It highlights the difficulty of the half-way house of sharing campuses.  They have faced Church opposition as the process developed.  Also experiences of a shared campus seem to question if they are genuinely shared at all:

Lauren Morris, 18, from Midlothian, attended St David's Roman Catholic School when it formed Scotland's first shared campus with a non-denominational secondary, Dalkeith High, in 2004. Morris believes the strict segregation of the two schools by teachers prevented any kind of integration between the pupils.

She says: "We shared a dinner hall and some of us had friends at Dalkeith High, but we weren't even allowed to go over and say hello to them or we'd get into trouble. I think teachers used the excuse that we'd fight to separate us, but they should have helped us all integrate and get along.

"The pupils wanted to integrate but the teachers wouldn't listen. It got to the point where you would sneak across the dinner hall to the other side just to talk to your Dalkeith High pals. Even in the playground, we'd take off our school jumpers and go across to their side of the playground. I wasn't scared of the teachers, I just wanted to talk to my friends.

"The teachers used to have walkie-talkies and if they saw a pupil in a different side of the playground they'd radio each other and take that pupil back to their own side.

"One time there was a Dalkeith pupil in front of me as we were walking along the corridor and a teacher stopped him and said where are you going?' He said he was going to his class, and this teacher said get back to your own side, you're not one of us, get back to your own school'. She'd never say you're not one of our pupils', it was always you're not one of us'.

"It was quite confusing for me because I was Protestant at a Catholic school and had been taught that being a Catholic meant you treat everyone as one. Even though you could tell no-one really cared if you were Catholic or Protestant, they'd still call us Fenians', and folk from our school would be shouting Proddies'."

There have also been other practical challenges:

"Look at the case of Broomhouse Primary school and St Josephs RC school, ultra-modern buildings on the same campus but with different entrances and the sole joint facility shared on a regular basis being the dining room. The children don't even play together at break...Added to this unhappy scenario is another serious cause for conflict. The Broomhouse school is larger than St Joseph's but now has a much smaller school roll...Also, St Joseph's is seen as offering a first-class education and so its school roll has swollen...St Joseph's has a simple solution - swap buildings. But this proposal has been met with indignation by Broomhouse parents. The Broomhouse Parents Council has suggested St Joseph's uses two surplus classrooms, but this has been turned down for being too far away from St Joseph's to feel part of the school. The corridors and classrooms would have to be blessed by a priest, iconography would need to be installed and the Catholic children would run a gauntlet of insults when walking through the non-denominational school."

In the same area the situation is comparable at secondary level:

"It will be little better when these children move on to secondary education. Most will either go to Forrester High School or St Augustine's RC High School, two schools in brand new buildings, and, like the primary schools, sharing a campus. Like their primary feeder schools, they share only one facility, but here it is a swimming pool."

Who's afraid of the big bad church?

Martin McGuinness apparently.  Following Peter Robinson's speech on Friday (the main point of which has been missed in the kerfuffle - the proposal of a long-term strategy to transform our school system), the Deputy First Minister who has repeatedly called for leadership, bravery (insert your peace process cliche) over the past decade or so is fearful of 'taking on' certain interest groups:

"If Peter thinks taking on the Catholic Church, the Catholic bishops and indeed the Protestant churches for that matter and other interest groups is a sensible route to go, I think that is a big mistake,"

Abolish it

The Department of Education that is.  It is in the headlines again today on the issue of capital under-spends.  I realise this proposal will not be the most popular in Northern Ireland with the government doing it always a first preference and no it isn't driven by the present incumbent (although she's not a great advertisement to keep it going).

However, considering the range of issues surrounding education would it not be wisest to empower the parents? Instead of a department and boards making the decisions, government restricts its role to setting the curriculum, inspecting the schools and administering the vouchers.  Top-ups to the basic scheme on the basis of need, excellence and access (rural, language, disability) could potentially be included.  The rest of the decisions would be left to schools and parents.  Too much too soon?

Collective responsibility

Perhaps it's something to do with the education portfolio but even with a single party government it appears hard to keep education ministers on the reservation ;)

Learn a lesson

Eamonn Mallie has rather an unusual take on the lamentable situation that Michael Gove has caused with the school buildings programme in England. 

"Education Minister Michael Gove made a horlicks of his announcement on schools building programme. Absolute confusion. Take heart Caitriona." [my emphasis]

If Ruane is to do anything over the Gove debacle it should be to learn a valuable lesson.  Gove quickly acknowledged the error, accepted responsibility for it and publicly apologised to parliament and again to local councils.  He has even offered to go to one of the schools effected to apologise in person.  Ruane's behaviour has been the exact opposite, create complete confusion, try to hide information for as long as possible and blame everyone else.

Mitigation for Gove is that the errors appear unintentional not something that can be assumed with Ruane.

Ruane

Ruane is a small word but it is one that has increasingly guaranteed to result in a highly negative reaction.

In a past life I was part of a team negotiating with Ruane on a topic of particular contention. From that process I drew three lessons about her. First that she had authority within republican circles (at the time I did not know from where but it would appear from the patronage of Gerry Adams). Second that faced with a choice between a compromise that would achieve something useful and the opportunity to appear a martyr she'd choose martyrdom. Third, that she has great difficulty comprehending something beyond her own mindset. So how she has behaved as a minister has come as little surprise.

As a believer in the need to move towards voluntary coalition it is useful to have a minister that is a walking talking advertisement of the necessity to reform our system of government. However, when the inability impacts upon so many this has to be a secondary concern.

Her performance this morning in the Assembly was another 'virtuoso' performance of inability. An announcement about the school capital programme was reduced to a farce as she basically refused to provide any information. This makes her explanation of her non-appearance last week as an accident very dubious. It looks more like she wanted the delay because with the Assembly due to rise tomorrow the chance of further scrutiny is significantly reduced. While the special sitting over Gaza was a particularly dumb idea perhaps one on the future of our schools would be more worthwhile. At least it will show that her petty games can be countered.