RESEARCH ON INTEGRATED EDUCATION IN NORTHERN IRELAND

Early day motion 1544, tabled 31 January 2006 by David Anderson (Labour). Signed by 47 members.

That this House welcomes the publication of a report by Professor Bernadette C Hayes, Professor Ian McAllister and Lizanne Dowds entitled, In Search Of The Middle Ground: Integrated Education and Northern Ireland Politics; notes that the report is based on data from a range of social attitudes surveys to explore whether people who have experienced an integrated education are different in their outlooks compared to those who have attended segregated schools and examines whether attending an integrated school can have some positive long-term benefits in promoting a less sectarian outlook; further welcomes the report's key findings that respondents who had attended an informally or formally-integrated school were more likely to reject traditional identities and allegiances than those who had attended a segregated school; and believes that the report's tentative results add weight to the studies which have shown that integrated schools can and do have an impact on the outlooks of the pupils who attend them and that the positive effects of integrated schooling extend into later life, with the potential substantially to soften sectarian attitudes and help create a new common ground in Northern Ireland politics.

Signatures by party: Labour 32, Liberal Democrat 14, Conservative 1.