Caught in the conundrum: neoliberalism and education in post-conflict Northern Ireland: Exploring Shared Education

Northern Ireland (NI) is emerging from a violent period in its troubled history and remains a<br/>society characterized by segregation between its two main communities. Nowhere is this more<br/>apparent than in education, where for the most part Catholic and Protestant pupils are<br/>educated separately. During the last 30 years there has been a twofold pressure placed on the<br/>education system in NI - at one level to respond to intergroup tensions by promoting<br/>reconciliation, and at another, to deal with national policy demands derived from a global neoliberalist<br/>economic agenda. With reference to current efforts to promote shared education<br/>between separate schools, we explore the uneasy dynamic between a school-based<br/>reconciliation programme in a transitioning society and system-wide values that are driven by<br/>neo-liberalism and its organizational manifestation - new managerialism. We argue that whilst<br/>the former seeks to promote social democratic ideals in education that can have a potentially<br/>transformative effect at societal level, neoliberal priorities have the potential to both subvert<br/>shared education and also to embed it.