Only as it is happening; on a voluntary basis. Integrated education is a growing sector in NI. The fact of the matter is that a dual or now 3 part education is unsustainable economically. Take the small town I'm from: since the introduction of the integrated PS, the state PS (protestant) and maintained PS (catholic) numbers have dropped beneath those the DE require to keep a school open. They will stay open longer for political reasons but eventually one or both will close.
HS have started sharing resources such as sports pitches and science Labs.
Obviously there are areas where due to the dominance of one side politically in the community this won't happen voluntarily.
It's why I want to see two things to speed it all up.
Devolved tax powers. The rest of the UK subsidises our current system to both their economic and academic disadvantage. NI is always at or near the top of the tables results wise. This is down in some way to the continuance of the grammar school system but I also believe it is down to the smaller class sizes and so greater teacher to pupil ratio. We get what most in the uk would love as the ideal because we insist on 3 schools for a population England would have one. (Got to take into consideration we are still largely a rural community however)
But if our elected officials had to tell the electorate it's only possible to stick with the current system at the expense of higher taxes or the removal of another service..it may speed it up. People don't like spending their own money.
Remove religion from school's. If it can only be taught as a general all religion encompassing subject but is removed from the structure and culture of state schools all over the UK then it's easier to argue for it here. I'm not saying remove the ability to set up a faith school but remove all state funding while still insisting the state curriculum including an unbiased fact based multi religion class is adopted by all schools. That will counter any attempt at indoctrination on either side. It will also price most folk out of opting for a faith school.
In effect it would render faith schools meaningless outside of Sunday school.
Now neither of these things will happen so all we can do is hope the large majorits of the population send their kids to the integrated schooks until it's ludicrous to keep the others open.
Will this help community coherence? Needs more than that. I mean I went to state schools so wasn't taught Irish or GA sports. These are thinns that belong to an "Irish identity" I would have liked to have them. Mix up the sports, music, culture, language at PS level and it becomes less them and us as kids grow. It's part of your culture not some strange mysterious one across the road.
We've got to rent separate the ideas of nationality, politics and religion at young age to ron the bigoted of their lazy generalisations. Harderfor the nutters to convince if everyone has been immersed in each others culture fro a young age.
I agree totally on education standard being relative to class size for obvious reasons.
Part of the problem for me DF is politics and the media as well as academia. Much of Academia is morally bankrupt these days and pushes a narrative of the elite class.
The bottom line I guess for me is parenting and community, we need to produce less jingoistic more thoughtful kids. Again Grass Roots.
Instead they groow up, get funneled through education systems that teach them to be subserviant and conform to the standard norm whether that norm is right or wrong.
School and higher education is where you learn there are things you can say and cannot say, things you can write and cannot write, all dictated by the elite class and furthered by banktupt academia.
The media are so destructive to youth
Just to point out the academic corruption, there are academics that say that Iraqis are better off now than before their country was annihilated.. reasoning that they can say things htey could not before, the fact that all that is there to hear them is fire and rubble seems ot be besides the point, this is morally bankrupt, just one example of millions.
Lets not forget who dictates education standards and cirriculum, the elite class, via academia.
Parenting is a huge issue.
It should be Families connected via communities, but ets face it, theese days in cities especially, people don't even know their neighbours after living next to them for several years.
I do have one small example of how socialist ideal can actually lower cost. We have a management company, but all us residents do a lot of the work, we resew the gardens after winter and clean the place and hire a skip twice a year to get rid of all ur junk in the two apartment blocks.
This reduces the management fee significantly and we do the work to a high standard cos it is our own area.
I firmly believe 3 and 4 is far too early to start school. Not starting school till 7 will save a fortune in education costs and teachers have kids that are a bit more mature.
Granted I don't have all the answers but I do believe it starts with us, not politicians.
If we did much more the cost of maintaining society is far less. Paying someone else to do it is wasteful
