Ruadhán Jones
Bishop Donal McKeown The Bishop of Derry warned that a private member’s bill calling for integrated education in the North is a “very narrow piece of legislation”.
Bishop Donal McKeown was speaking as the Stormont education committee took views on the proposed legislation by Alliance MLA Kellie Armstrong.
Currently there is legislation which obliges the Department of Education to encourage and facilitate integrated education.
Ms Armstrong’s bill proposes the setting of minimum targets for the number of children being educated in integrated schools, as well as providing dedicated funding for facilitation of the sector.
Currently 7% of children in Northern Ireland attend schools in the formally integrated sector.
Bishop Donal McKeown said it was “in many ways a very radical piece of legislation”, and also a “very narrow piece of legislation”.
“All our schools would intentionally promote an ethos of diversity and so on, this is a bill which says that really can only be promoted in one sort of school,” he told MLAs, adding it “looks at a structure rather than an outcome”.
The proposed bill, which would promote one sector above others, would be counter-productive, Dr McKeown added.
“Most sectors in Northern Ireland are seeking to move towards a much greater integrating role for education,” said Bishop McKeown, a former school principal.
“There are many schools not called integrated which are much more integrated than integrated schools.”
Asked by committee chair Chris Lyttle if he was concerned about the low numbers of people from outside the Catholic community attending Catholic schools, Bishop McKeown replied: “Some parents wanted to send their child to a particular school and were threatened in their own community that they daren’t dare go near that Catholic school.”
The committee also heard views on the bills from the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS), as well as the Transferor Representative Council made up of the Protestant Churches as well as Children’s Commissioner Koulla Yiasouma.
Gerry Campbell, CCMS chief executive, warned that the bill would create a “two-tiered system”.