Integrated Education Week ‘Together’

This week has been designated as part of Integrated Education Month. The theme for this year is ‘Together’. The present pandemic has shown how our children, parents and staff have tirelessly worked together through remote learning and as a community supporting one another, exemplifying how we have grown as a school over the last 30 years.

We are the only Integrated Primary and Nursery School in Ballymena, which was originally founded by a group of parents working with the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education. The school has now grown to an enrolment of over 300 pupils and delivers the full Northern Ireland Curriculum. We aim to provide a welcoming and encouraging environment where the children become active and interested learners. We welcome children from a wide range of backgrounds and help them to grow up together in the school.

Integrated Education brings children and staff from Catholic and Protestant traditions, as well as those of other beliefs, cultures and communities together in one school. For the over the past 30 years, in a deeply divided society, Integrated schools have been intentionally and proactively developed to encourage more mixing in schools. 

Integrated Schools ensure that children from Protestant and Catholic religious and/or cultural backgrounds, as well as others who identify differently are educated together every day in the same classrooms. 

It is important to note that Integrated schools are essentially Christian in character but proactively strive to ensure everyone’s tradition is respected and included.

Empowering adults, children and young people as thinking individuals is a priority for integrated schools so that as they grow and mature, they will be able to affect positive change in the shared society we live in.

We aim to promote a society where all children are educated together; confident to express their own identity and culture; and are respectful of, and prepared to engage with, the identity and culture of others.

One of the most important social developments in Northern Ireland over the last three decades has been the opening of integrated schools across the province. The first, Lagan College, was established in Belfast in 1981. Today there are over 60 such schools with more applicants than available places. Together these integrated schools have helped Northern Ireland move on from its troubled past by fostering understanding amongst young children of religious, cultural and social backgrounds different to their own.

Braidside Integrated Primary was founded in 1989. Now, over thirty years later, Braidside is not only still standing but has undergone huge growth. From its makeshift beginnings in a former factory, the primary school and nursery has now moved into a new modern state of the art building, next door to the former mobile building site. Pupil numbers have also soared from the fifty students that originally made up the school.

Over the years, despite other changes, Braidside has remained steadfastly committed to the principles that inspired its foundation. Primarily this is a belief that integrated education provides children with the best start in life. An equal ratio of the two main Christian traditions in Northern Ireland, Catholicism and Protestantism, is maintained with the rest of the pupils coming from other backgrounds. It is the express aim of our school to bring the two main cultures of Northern Ireland together to help build a more peaceful, harmonious future.  Braidside also adheres to other important principles such as its commitment to bringing out the full potential of each and every child that passes through its doors.

In 1996 the establishment of an integrated secondary school in Ballymena, Slemish College, meant that Braidside children could opt to continue their integrated education. Many of our P7 leavers progress to Slemish each year.

Today, Braidside has approximately 305 students, including the nursery, drawn from a variety of backgrounds. A healthy balance in terms of religious intake is always maintained, not just among the students but also among the staff and the board of governors. Braidside continues to pride itself on its diversity, which it feels is beneficial in continuing to offer children an excellent education. Braidside has clearly come a long way from its beginnings on the factory site, whilst never moving away from the principles that have governed it since foundation three decades ago.

So during this week we will be encouraging our children to think about what Integrated Education and what being part of our school means to them. With this in mind we would like each child to write a short sentence expressing what it means to them to be part of an Integrated school such as ours, under the heading of ‘Together’. For Nursery, P1 - P3 this task  will be completed in class. For P4 - P7, this can be sent to their class teachers via Teams. These sentences will be collated and displayed throughout the school.

                     Each one of us can make a difference. Together we make change.

Mr. O’Sullivan (Integration Coordinator)