Letter: Criticism of minister’s decision over Bangor schools is based on poor understanding of legislation
A letter from David Brooks:
Dr Matthew Milliken’s criticism (Refusal over integrated status is bewildering, January 14) of Paul Givan’s decision not to approve the transformation of two Bangor schools suffers from the rather fundamental defect that he clearly doesn’t understand the legislation on which the decision was based.
He demonstrates no understanding that, pursuant to Article 92(6) of the Education Reform (Northern Ireland) Order 1989, the minister is statutorily prohibited from approving a transformation unless it is likely that the school would be able to provide integrated education - that is to say including education together, in an integrated school, reasonable numbers of both Protestant and Roman Catholic children or young persons.
That is entirely irrespective of how parents at the school might have voted.
This error is compounded by his misquoting of the legislation and the fact that he seems to believe that it states that the school enrolment should represent “a reasonable balance for the area”. A cursory Google search would reveal that the legislation simply refers to reasonable numbers with no reference to the demographics of the area.
Unsurprisingly, the minister concluded that three per cent of Catholic children at the school did not constitute reasonable numbers and he did not believe that it was likely that reasonable numbers could be achieved.
It is hard to understand how Mr Milliken believes that inter-community tensions would be resolved by granting integrated status to a school with such numbers from the Catholic community.
Much of the rest of the personal and political invective in his letter can be viewed in light of his fundamental mistakes of both fact and law.
Mr Milliken describes himself as an “award winning” author. I trust that work was of a higher quality that his letter criticising the education minister.
David Brooks, East Belfast DUP MLA