24 The Nation. September 23, 2019Reminders
of long-
standing
division
and violent
conflict
plague
Northern
Ireland’s
educational
integration
efforts.the minimum 20 percent of signatures needed to trigger
a parental vote on integrating the school.
This parent-led movement is picking up speed. So far
this year, six schools across Northern Ireland voted to in-
tegrate via parental ballots, with huge majorities in favor.O
ne of these is carrickfergus central
Primary, a Protestant school in a pre-
dominantly Protestant town just north of
Belfast. Nuala Hall, the principal, arrived
at Carrickfergus Central in 2015, after 19
years of working at an integrated school.
Shortly after she took the job at Carrickfergus Cen-
tral, she was driving near the school with her husband.
They saw the telltale red, white, and blue bunting of
the UK flag. In Northern Ireland, territory marking is
common, and any native instantly recognizes that such
bunting marks an area as overwhelmingly Protestant.
“My husband joked, ‘Well, there won’t be an integrated
school here anytime soon,’” Hall recalls. “At that point,
I agreed with him.” Yet in February of this year, par-
ents at Carrickfergus Central voted 86 percent in favor
of integration.
Hall didn’t arrive with the intention of integrating
Carrickfergus Central. That started when the IEF sent
the board of governors a flyer asking if the school was
interested. A flurry of conversations among parents,
teachers, and school board members ensued. The school
invited representatives from the IEF and the Northern
Ireland Council for Integrated Education to discuss whatsuch a change would mean. A parental ballot was sched-
uled, and the transformation commenced.
Reflecting on the vote, Hall says, “It was overwhelm-
ing. It showed huge support for transforming the school.
Times are changing, people are fed up with the past,
and the way to get out of the past is to educate children
together.” The school must now work with educational
authorities to prepare a transformation plan, and signs
for the future are good. After the vote, next year’s new
pupil intake was projected to increase.
On the other side of the divide, Seaview Primary, a
small Catholic school in the northern coastal town of Gle-
narm, recently voted on integration as well. Parents and
teachers worked together to start the process, assisted by
the IEF. On June 28, Barry Corr, the school’s principal,
announced the ballot results to more than 100 parents,
grandparents, and children gathered on the school play-
ground. In front of a live TV camera, he declared that
95 percent of parents had voted to integrate.
Joanne Matthews, a school board chair with 6-year-
old twins at Seaview, says, “It was a whole community
that came together, and that was exciting and refreshing.
It was great. It makes me very happy to say my children
are going to attend an integrated school.”
By themselves, the stories of Carrickfergus Central
and Seaview are inspiring but small in scale. The IEF is
talking to about 40 other schools in Northern Ireland
that are interested in transforming. There has been huge
enthusiasm from parents. “In one area, a parent found
out about Integrate My School and shared it with her