NI bishop ‘surprised’ at SDLP support of integrated schools

The bishop at the head of the Northern Ireland Commission for Catholic Education (NICCOSA) has expressed surprise at an SDLP manifesto pledge supporting integrated education over the shared campus model.

The Shared Education Campuses Programme was launched in the North in January 2014 and invests in projects where schools from both communities co-locate and share facilities while maintaining individual ethos. Integrated education proposes bringing students from both traditions together in secular schools.

The SDLP’s manifesto states the party will actively promote integrated education as “the educational format of choice”.

Bishop Donal McKeown said that while policies were a matter “entirely for the party”, leading Church figures were surprised by the SDLP’s new commitment as there had been no mention of it at a recent meeting between NICCOSA and SDLP leader Colum Eastwood.

Surprise

“There certainly was surprise – surprise in the sense that I would generally have the impression that an awful lot of those who consciously choose and value Catholic education would be well represented among SDLP voters,” he told The Irish News.

Bishop McKeown said the SDLP policy appeared to present an educational model that was outdated and that he thought “we’d long gone beyond that binary model of good integrated education, bad everything else”.