In the latest of our Guest Blogs, former Chair of the Community Relations Council Peter Osborne talks about Peacebuilding and the transformative potential for rethinking how we deliver education in Rural Communities.
This is one of those crossroads periods. We have had them before. No doubt we will have more of them in years
to come.
The 2020s will be a decade that either cements
a hard-won peace process or epitomises a lost opportunity for peace that this
generation has carelessly, wastefully, whimsically tossed away.
Be in no doubt a forward flow to our peace
process is not inevitable. We can go back,
or we can go forward. This crossroads moment
means that we cannot afford to stand still.
Over the last years the energy and intellectual
drive for building the peace has come from civil society and the
community. Ordinary people doing
extraordinary things – then again it was ordinary people doing extraordinary
things within communities who protected this place from itself during the
darkest days too.
They are people that get little recognition
but who selflessly and skilfully keep on going, understanding that the core to
reconciliation in a still divided and segregated region is about relationships. It is about what you do with your neighbours,
and how towns and villages collectively explore the future together.
In rural areas the community tensions and divisions
may be less visible than at interfaces in the big urban areas – but they exist
nevertheless. People live their lives
differently. Children and young people often
socialise apart, play different sports, attend different clubs. Adults often have different patterns of
behaviour, shop and socialise in ways and places that might speak to our
background more than we’d care to admit.
It is getting better. The absence of violence certainly eases constraints
on behaviour and ambition.
It is, though, time to better recognise the
value of cross community work and it is time to start taking bigger steps
forward.
Beyond the good relations activists, we also
need to acknowledge and tackle the reasons why this society is divided in the
first place – if systemic change is not addressed this society will be just continually
trying to manage dysfunctional relationships rather than stopping the
dysfunction at source.
Relationship dismantles prejudice but people
are not born behaving differently; it is a habit that forms over our early
years.
The Ulster University UNESCO centre has recently
published a report “Isolated
Together” that recognises while rural towns and
villages may appear mixed there is often markers and behaviours that
differentiate between Catholics and Protestants.
This new UNESCO report suggests there are 274
of 817 schools in Northern Ireland below the sustainability threshold of 105 pupils. It identifies 32 pairs of schools in rural
areas (64 schools in total) one Controlled and one Catholic Maintained, that
are less than a mile apart and are struggling with numbers. Of these 32 pairs of schools, ten of them
have fewer than 50 pupils, yet just a few hundred yards away a similar size
school may be struggling with similar numbers.
In order to keep the positive benefits of
small local schools (the peer learning, handiness for children and parents
alike) is it time to start a hitherto unimaginable conversation about whether
the schools and children should now come together?
The report shows that for each of those 32
pairs of schools the average cost per pupil per year is £4,250 compared to an
average cost in a school the size of both combined of £3,163. That would be a saving to the school system
of over £1,000 per pupil if amalgamation took place.
So, here is an ambitious idea. For ten years after an amalgamation of rural
schools the money saved should be kept within the local area, for parents to
decide, together, what to spend it on over and above the money that would be
spent anyway by the Department on the amalgamated school. For an amalgamated school of 105 pupils that
would be an additional investment of over £100,000 per year or £1 million over
ten years.
What would your priority be? Tackling transportation challenges for schools
in rural areas, tackling educational under-achievement, extra tuition, extra
books and educational tools? Something
else?
On top of that the village would have the
social benefit of all those children and young people learning and developing
together. It would be a huge boost to a
reconciliation process that needs fresh ideas and new impetus.
