Ms Claire Hanna:

I apologise for being a wee bit late. As I notified the committee, I have a constituency surgery on Thursday afternoons. I thank the witnesses for the presentation. I missed it being delivered, but I read their papers with interest yesterday evening. My party and I come from the position that this society is not going to change until people are living and being educated together. It very much needs to change in the context of the reconciliation aspect Mr. Osborne is addressing. The project in that regard is to increase integration and sharing in education. The challenge is how we do that. The witnesses will know that this is not the case because they are doing this every day, but sometimes there is a perception that the problem would be solved if everybody would just decide that they wanted to share. My worry concerns our inability to undertake that transformation and our general culture of poor governance here.

I make the comparison with health. We have failed to reform health and to reorganise and remodel some 20 hospitals. My concern is how we are going to undertake a similar process with approximately 1,000 schools, each of which has its own identity, governance structure and interests. It is a core part of this issue as well. Some of this context, then, is about that practical level of transformation. Picking up on the issue raised by Deputy Brendan Smith, there is a question regarding how much of this relates to political blockages and how much is really an inability to manage transformation.

The other bisecting issue is selection. To me, that is as egregious in some ways. The system, almost from the start, has at its core an educationally unsound and socially unjust method of separating children out. The rest of the education system, and I am just commenting as a parent because I am not a policy expert in this area, seems to be hinged around this poor core. This issue is partially about how an integrated model can help to address some of this social segregation. Lagan College is a good example of that. It is modelling the good behaviour of all-ability schooling. There is a perception that it provides great outcomes for bookish, academic children and for those developing in different directions or at different speeds.

I will give the witnesses a barrage of questions and then they can take them apart. How we get to the point I referred to is the major question. How do we disaggregate the technical barriers and the political barriers? How do the witnesses propose that we address the transfer issue? Some of this context is concerned with another aspect. Before I had kids, I thought that all I would want from a school was the ethos. Then as a parent, I realised that I also wanted the school to be five minutes away and to have a breakfast club costing £1. Most people make their educational choices on practical issues, such as where their childminder can collect from and where good after-school services are available, for example, in addition to the educational outcomes.

Like every sector, some schools are performing less well academically. One of the easier wins among the low-hanging fruit in respect of the current position could be training teachers together. Where does that stand now? It is seen as important by many people. When I consider the blockages that will arise from trying to reorganise schools, it is also the case that each school will have its own vested interests. I do not mean that negatively, but everybody has their attachment to their school and its history. I do not think that is a sectarian thing; it is just their project. Teacher training should be a little bit easier. I ask the witnesses to answer whichever of those questions they wish.