Religion and diversity in schools in Northern Ireland

Throughout their history schools in Northern Ireland have been largely divided on the basis of religion and it has long been argued whether this contributed to wider social divisions, or simply reflected those divisions. There has also been long-standing evidence of public support for the idea that engagement across community divisions would be desirable. Since the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement, and in some case before it, the Churches themselves have indicated a desire for more diversity in school enrolments. The recent report of the Independent Review of Education also highlighted the importance of schools helping young people to engage across community divisions.

This goal could be achieved by some of all of the following: more religiously integrated schools; schools working collaboratively in shared education partnerships; schools that are jointly managed by the Catholic Church and one or more of the Protestant Churches; or through all schools attracting a more diverse intake. This paper is concerned with the last of these and explores the extent to which the religious composition of individual primary and post-primary schools has changed, or not, since the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement.

For the purposes of this paper schools are categorised as either ‘Protestant’, ‘Catholic’ or ‘Integrated’ based on a combination of their governance arrangements, any formal or informal relationship with one or more of the main Churches, and their traditional intake profiles, rather than simply their management type. Pupils are categorised as Protestant, Catholic or Other (a mix of other Christian groups, other world religions or those who say they have no religion).

The analysis shows a number of patterns of change since the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement:

• The main overall change has been a marked decline in the proportion of pupils identifying as Protestant and an increase in the proportion identifying as Other. This pattern is particularly evident in ‘Protestant’ schools and it is perhaps noteworthy that only a minority of these schools have seen an increase in the proportion of pupils identifying as Catholic.
• There is much less evidence of any change in the composition of ‘Catholic’ schools and where it has occurred, it is in a small number of schools rather than across the schools as a whole.
• The pattern of change in Integrated schools is more complex with a marked increase in the proportion of pupils identifying as Other appearing to result in the proportion of pupils identifying as Protestant or Catholic declining. There has been an increase in the number of Integrated schools which have seen their proportion of Protestant, or of Catholic, pupils fall below a previously designated minimum.

Given the stated aspiration by the Churches that schools should become more diverse, the paper concludes by considering a number of ways schools might move beyond declaratory policy and pro-actively seek to achieve that goal.