|
Chapter 7: Education In Context
Tony Gallagher
Executive Summary
Key Findings and Recommendations
Chapter 1: Introduction and Background to the Study
Chapter 2: Population Statistics: Belfast and Donegall Pass, 1971-2001
Chapter 3: Internal Migration and Community Dynamics
Chapter 4: Housing and the Environment
Chapter 5: Health and Wellbeing
Chapter 6: Children and Young People
Chapter 8: Education and Training Issues in Donegall Pass
Chapter 9: The Role of Community in Regeneration
Appendix 1 Donegall Pass Profile
Appendix 2 Focus Group Topics/Questions
Appendix 3 Recruitment Form
CHAPTER SEVEN - EDUCATION IN CONTEXT
Introduction
In the Government’s response to the report of the taskforce on Protestant working class communities, there was clear recognition that Protestant disadvantaged communities were lagging behind in terms of educational attainment and skills acquisition. The response notes that, ‘of the 15 wards performing worst in educational attainment as identified under the Noble indices, 13 are predominantly Protestant’ (DSD, 2006). For Government, therefore, educational disadvantage is a priority area.
In the Shaftesbury ward, which includes Donegall Pass, only 14% of School leavers (2001/02) achieved 5 or more GCSE's at grades A*- C (DSD, 2005). This was the lowest level of achievement in Northern Ireland, and as Rob Mark goes on to describe in the next chapter, the indices of low levels of educational attainment are consistent with other inner city communities.
A range of factors have brought about this current situation, but perhaps the most important has been the almost total decline in the local manufacturing industries. Generations of Protestant working class school leavers saw little need for formal qualifications and moved instead to take up blue-collar work in industries such as shipbuilding, aircraft-building and in other manufacturing outlets. The decline of these major sources of employment did not, however, see a turn towards formal education and training for the new economy. Indeed in many Protestant inner city areas levels of educational achievement further deteriorated as the more aspirational members of the community moved out.
Recent research confirms all of this. Osborne et al note ‘that working class Protestant communities had still to adjust to the fact that access to manufacturing jobs through informal networks, such as through family and friends, was no longer available. The restructuring of the economy has changed the nature of jobs and fair employment policy had increased the importance of having the right qualifications and training to secure access to employment’ (Osborne, et al, 2006, p 104).
Donegall Pass
The 2001 census records that in Donegall Pass 55% of the population did not have formal qualifications. This is higher than the figure for Belfast as a whole at 42%. And although, as noted above, education is regarded as a very significant issue in the debate about the regeneration of Protestant working class communities, it did not feature very strongly in the Donegall Pass focus group discussions.
A general theme across most focus groups is concern at the negative consequences of not having a local school. Young people from the area attend a variety of schools and this is perceived at weakening the link between parents and school, and not contributing to a strong sense of community (although there is a strong sense of identification with the area regardless of the absence of a local school). Some of the women in the groups, for example, suggested that you got to know people through meeting other parents (mothers?) through their children and/or at school.
The only dissenting voice on this was from a group of young males who felt that if there was a local school then the area would become ‘like a prison’, and that rather there was an advantage in being able to get out of the area to attend school. Indeed, they said that they would leave if they had children as ‘kids are all fucking mental so they are, but the reason why they're mental is cause there is nothing to do and they are all smoking now at five years of age and all like that there, it's fucking mad’ (14-17).
The over-60s group felt that a local school had the added advantage in that it would attract families to live in the area and that would help its long-term future.
In fact, the most striking aspect of schooling was that it was talked about so little across most of the groups. Only in one group was there any extensive discussion of education, and that mainly focused on a concern that the community (and perhaps Protestant working-class communities in general) were not taking advantage of the opportunities provided by education, in contrast to Catholic working-class communities. They felt that their children did not benefit from education, with one citing the School of Music as an example of how some kids got a second chance when ‘our kids can't even get a first one’. Some felt that the lure of benefits and welfare was more attractive to some kids, especially in a situation where the traditional routes into employment and trades were no longer available, but contrasted the generally negative experience of their children with the middle-class children on the Malone Road.
There were contradictions in the way they spoke about education:
- They thought it was of value, but questioned whether alternatives were actually more attractive;
- They lamented the fact that Catholics seemed to take better advantage of educational opportunities, but did not seem to want to press this on their own children, and;
- Some would like a return to the days when there was a local school in the local community, but others thought this would make the local community too insular.
Some felt that a local school would cement local networks, and by implication felt that the absence of a local school weakened the community, but it was clear that there was a strong sense of identity in which education seemed to play little or no part.
As an inner city community Donegall Pass is well located in relation to a range of third level educational facilities. The main buildings of the Belfast Institute are within walking distance of the area, as is the Queen’s University campus. However, as is noted elsewhere in this report, there is a reluctance to use facilities outside of the area that are perceived to be the domain of the ‘other community’, or even ‘shared’. This is confirmed in Osborne’s research report. It notes the ‘observation by some teachers and community leaders of the narrow, confined areas from which disadvantaged pupils would be prepared to travel. Leaving the immediate area of home and school was regarded as very problematic thereby compounding the inaccessibility of educational resources’ (p105).
A significant issue, therefore, for regenerating an area such as Donegall Pass, relates to the willingness of the community to make use of existing facilities within a wider geographical area. And arguably too, the willingness of institutions such as the Belfast Institute and Queen’s to reach out to such communities and to break down perceptual barriers.
References
Department for Social Development (DSD) (2006) Renewing Communities: the Government’s response to the report of the taskforce on Protestant working class communities, Belfast, DSD.
Department for Social Development (DSD) (2005) Report of the taskforce on Protestant working class communities, Belfast, DSD.
Osborne, B., Smith, A. and Hayes, A. (2006) Higher Education in Northern Ireland: A Report on Factors Associated with Participation and Migration, University of Ulster: Social & Policy Research Institute
|
