The North’s education minister John O’Dowd has published his new Sharing Works policy, which is designed to ensure a high-quality, shared learning experience for every child.
Shared education differs from the established integrated model, in which children from different religious backgrounds are educated under the same roof.
The new policy sets out a series of actions, which include opportunities to develop “innovative options for sharing”, such as new campuses involving schools from different sectors.
The Department of Education is also making £25 million available for schools that are already engaged in collaborative working.
Mr O’Dowd says that shared education enjoys widespread support both politically and within the community.
He explained: “We know that a key feature of high-performing education systems are equality and inclusion promoted through shared education and this policy will sit within a broader education policy framework designed to improve educational outcomes for young people.
“My vision for the future of shared education is one of vibrant, self-improving education communities delivering educational benefits to learners, encouraging the efficient and effective use of resources, and promoting equality of opportunity, good relations, equality of identity, respect for diversity and community cohesion.”
However, not everyone is happy. Assembly member Steven Agnew, of the Green Party, said that promoting shared education is a further failure of the North’s education system.
“Shared education is a clever term that sounds like integrated, it sounds like something you have to support, it sounds exactly like the sort of thing Northern Ireland needs. However, in effect, it is meaningless,” he said.
“Instead of reducing the number of schools by integrating them, shared education is about sharing buildings not classrooms.
“Shared education doesn’t even require the two sharing schools to be ‘different’. Rather, two Catholic schools or two controlled schools could share. That is not integration and nor is it good enough.”