Sex Education in Northern Ireland Schools: a Critical Evaluation.

To date there has been little research on young people and sexuality in Northern Ireland. This paper draws on the first major study in this area to analyse the delivery of formal sex education in schools. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to access young people's opinions about the quality of the sex education they had received at school. Overall, they reported high levels of dissatisfaction, with notable variations in relation to both gender and religious affiliation. In one sense their opinions mesh well with those of young people in other parts of these islands. At the same time the specificity of sexuality in Ireland plays a key role in producing the moral system that underlies much of formal sex education in schools. Underpinned by a particularly traditional and conservative strain of Christian morality, sex education in Northern Ireland schools is marked by conservatism and silence and by the avoidance of opportunities for informed choice in relation to sexuality on the part of young people.

Handbook of International Special Education:Northern Ireland

The intent of the Handbook of International Special Education is to provide a concise overview of special education services in countries across the world using the Article on Education in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as the analytical frame. The Handbook will provide concise, data-driven contributions from across the globe using two primary frames: the relationship between special and general education in the country and the country’s system as aligned with the Article on Education in the UN Convention on the Rights of Person with Disabilities.

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