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Much of the education provision in Northern Ireland’s schools is exemplary, and teachers in Northern Ireland are rightly held in high esteem in the community.

However, there are aspects of the education system which are not as effective as they might be, and sometimes there appear to be inefficiencies or inequity which limit the effectiveness of the overall system, particularly in a period of stretched budgets.

The Transforming Education project aims to highlight some of those aspects of Northern Ireland’s education system by developing a range of Briefing Papers and Infographics.

Many of them will focus on policies relevant to integration and separate schooling; pupil demography and enrolment patterns across school types, sectors and geographic areas; current arrangements for school governance and teacher education, recruitment, and employment practices, including implications for fair employment and statutory requirements for religious education and worship in schools.

There will be new GIS analysis of issues such as levels of integration and segregation, and school planning and transport arrangements. As new research becomes available, further Briefing Papers and Infographics will be added to this webpage.

The purpose of this project is to stimulate debate among teachers, educationalists, decision-makers and the wider public. We encourage you to link to and to share these widely to encourage further discussion and debate around these topics.

There are currently five researchers involved in the project:

  • Dr Stephen Roulston, School of Education (Project Lead)
  • Dr Matt Milliken, School of Education
  • Dr Sally Cook, School of Geography and Environmental Sciences
  • Dr Clare McAuley, School of Education
  • Sammy Taggart, School of Education

Read the Reports

In this section

Isolated Primary and Post-Primary Schools in 2024: Duplicating Provision in a divided society?

This Briefing Paper updates one looking at duplication in education, completed in 2019. It concludes that duplication, in the form of Isolated Pairs of Controlled and Maintained Primary schools, has not diminished in the intervening years. There is also evidence of duplication across other sectors and in Post-Primary education.