Exploring Young People’s Experiences of Integrated Education

An Educational Response to Division in Northern Ireland

Abstract

Integrated education was established in Northern Ireland in 1981 as an educational response to division, with the aim of promoting mutual respect and understanding by encouraging interaction among students from different and conflicting backgrounds. Currently, these schools largely exist in two models: grant-maintained and transformed. In the context of a renewed policy drive to enhance support for integrated education, coupled with an increasingly diverse society, this study explores the unique challenges faced by both models in fulfilling the sector’s stated aims. The findings suggest that while students in both types of school shared values of respect, understanding and interaction, these processes were articulated and implemented differently. The study also highlighted the dual challenge now facing integrated schools: addressing intergroup divisions beyond the Catholic-Protestant dichotomy, while also combating online misogyny.