As the Government prepares to create hundreds of new religious schools
in England and Wales, the Northern Ireland Secretary, Peter Hain,
says that sectarian schools in Ulster must merge or face being shut
down.
He claimed Northern Ireland could not afford to fund separate school
systems because it was a waste of resources. Mr Hain told the MacGill
Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal, the costs of division were
staggering across almost every sector. He said: “No society
can support this situation, least of all Northern Ireland, with
its high skill standards at the top, dismal ones lower down and
appalling ones at the bottom. The educational future of Northern
Ireland must be shared and focused on what unites, or divided it
will be bleak.”
Northern Ireland currently had 50,000 empty school places, with a projected rise to 80,000 by 2015 out of a school population of 333,000. This meant a huge waste of resources with teachers in the wrong places, empty classrooms and scores of unviable small schools, he said.
Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the National Secular Society said: “If separate religious schools are unviable and divisive in Northern Ireland, why wouldn’t they be unviable and divisive elsewhere? It seems the Government is prepared to see a different kind of lethal sectarianism, with strong racial overtones, develop in England and Wales with the creation of apartheid style schools based on religion.”