Education minister Paul Givan challenges MLAs on child safeguarding as he seeks ban on disruption of school inspections

Paul Givan will bring proposals for new legislation to the Executive – saying that “a failure to safeguard inspection is a failure to safeguard children”.

He says a recent consultation showed while a majority of teaching staff opposed the changes, “a significant number” of parents had expressed support.

The move has been opposed by teaching unions – who have denied that their members have attempted to disrupt checks during action short of strike, and accused the Department of Education of using inspections as a “big stick” within schools.

The DUP minister has now written to Assembly colleagues urging support for the legislation banning disruption of inspections in schools and other educational facilities.

In the letter, seen by the News Letter, Mr Givan asks whether Stormont politicians are content to allow schools to operate “without consistent external inspection of child protection and safeguarding procedures” – given the “stark lessons of history”.

He argues that the move is a “necessary and critical step” to safeguard children and ensure that the education system “remains accountable, transparent and focused on continuous improvement”.

School inspections in Northern Ireland are carried out by the Education and Training Inspectorate (ETI). The education minister says that for almost a decade, their work has been “significantly disrupted” by industrial action.

“Three-quarters of ETI inspections in the last eight academic years have been impacted by Action Short of Strike and therefore the resulting reports concluded that the ETI was unable to assure parents/carers, the wider school community and stakeholders of the quality of education being provided for the pupils and was unable to evaluate fully the outworking of the arrangements for safeguarding”, the minister told MLAs.

He says that while he fully respects the right of teachers to strike, school inspections must be treated differently.

“Inspection is not simply a workplace duty—it is a mechanism of public accountability. It is the only independent process through which we can verify that schools are meeting legal standards, safeguarding children and delivering quality education”, Mr Givan’s letter argues.

Current legislation does not require co-operation with inspectors, as is the case in the rest of the UK and in the Republic of Ireland, a situation the minister says makes Northern Ireland an “outlier”.

“Organisations across public life are inspected– care homes, restaurants, hospitals, prisons and the police service. Cooperation is not on a voluntary basis. It is an offence to obstruct the inspection of employment agencies, of health and social care services and of all workplaces in the enforcement of health and safety law. Non-cooperation with inspection is not, therefore, part of industrial action within these contexts. The absence of a similar protection for children in our schools, colleges and other educational settings is a significant issue, which concerns us all”, Mr Givan said.

Responding to trade union claims that the move is about criminalising teachers, the education minster says it is about “aligning our laws” with neighbouring jurisdictions – where he says the “mere existence of such legislation has been sufficient to ensure cooperation” and prosecutions have not been necessary.

“The goal is not punishment, but prevention. It is about ensuring that inspection can operate as intended, even during periods of industrial action”, he said.

Justin McCamphill from the teaching union NASUWT said the legislation “is simply not necessary and is more likely to upset industrial relations rather than improve them”.

He added: “The Minister should instead build on the good progress that was made last term and allow the independent review of Workload panel complete their work without this distraction.

“The proposed legislation was rejected by the majority of teachers and FE lecturers as well as the majority of parents.”

The chair of Stormont’s education committee Nick Mathison has previously said that action short of strike “has been damaging for the education system” – but said that teacher workload was a factor in teachers taking that approach.

“I think it is concerning to me that the Minister is bringing forward legislation to potentially criminalise teachers before he has actually reported back from his own independent review of workload, that was one of the key outworkings of the pay deal, tackling the workload crisis that has driven action short of strike”, the Alliance MLA said last year.