Submission to the Community Relations Branch DENI from The Children's Law Centre regarding Towards a Culture of Tolerance: Education for Diversity

Introduction

The Children's Law Centre is a voluntary organisation that was established in 1997. It aims to help young people, their parents and professionals work with and understand the laws which affect children. Although based in Belfast, the centre has a Northern Ireland wide remit.

Current priority areas of work include education and training, legal advice and research, all of which have a rights based approach as their starting point. In addition to working directly with young people, much work is also carried out with adults involved in children's lives through mechanisms such as training, involvement in conferences, inter-agency work and responses to draft government policy and legislation.

The Children's Law Centre is founded on the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and seeks to ensure that the equality provisions of the Northern Ireland Act, 1998 and the Human Rights Act, 1998 are upheld with specific respect to children and young people.

The Children's Law Centre welcomes the opportunity to make this submission to the Community Relations Branch of DENI. We would like to make the following points:

1. Training for EMU/Conflict Resolution Work

The Children's Law Centre welcomes the emphasis given to training for all those involved in promoting the appreciation of cultural diversity in education, including education managers and boards of governors. This is an urgent need, which is well exemplified by the fact that members of the board of governors of three schools in Craigavon recently opposed the accommodation of Travellers in the Brownlow area of the Borough.

2. The Role of Informal Education

Reference is made (p4) to informal processes of education and although the youth service is mentioned again later in the document, the main emphasis is on the formal education sector its structures and personnel. There is a need for greater collaboration between the formal education sector and the youth service if education for diversity is to be effective. This is another example of the need for increased co-operation among those who work with and for children and young people.

3. Opportunities to practice inclusiveness in the life of the school community

Reference is made to the above objective (p4) as part of a strategy for building democracy. However, there is little evidence that schools are arenas where inclusiveness (for either young people or parents) is practiced in reality. Our recent research indicates the opposite, where there was an almost universal failure to comply with Article 12 of the UNCRC. Creating an inclusive environment in schools requires a shift in the power base and in the perception of young people and their parents by teachers. Recent legislation such as the Children (NI) Order, 1995 has not made an impact in increasing the voice of the child in decision making, despite being required to do so.

4. The Definition of Core Values for the Education Sector

A genuine commitment to the values expressed on p5 requires a fundamental shift in thinking away from an academic model towards a more holistic vision of education.

Also, some of this section is confusing. Are you referring to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child when you cite the European Convention on the Rights of the Child? If so this a piece of international legislation. It is not an organisation as p5 states.

5. Education for Pluralism in Northern Ireland (p6)

The Children's Law Centre would like to see sexual orientation added into section 13.

6. Recommendations

The Children's Law Centre welcomes the recommendation on adding in the promotion of core values that support pluralism, human rights, democratic freedom and participation in the life of our society to the Mission Statement of the education service.

Regarding Recommendation 5, the emphasis on the word invited is ambiguous and weak. The Children's Law Centre would like to see it replaced with 'required'. If public bodies are required to produce equality schemes, then surely organisations that are run or funded by such bodies also are required to demonstrate these equality provisions by their actions. Article 2 of the UNCRC commits government and its agents to non-discrimination while Article 30 makes special reference to children of minorities or indigenous populations. Article 14 of the ECHR, soon to be incorporated through the Human Rights Act, also imposes obligations regarding discrimination.

Regarding Recommendation 14 on Race Relations legislation, the Children's Law Centre notes DENI is operating an 'apartheid' style education by funding St Paul's School for Travellers in West Belfast.

Concluding Remarks

The Children's Law Centre would like to see the UNCRC being used to promote education for diversity. We believe that the UNCRC has the potential to make valuable contributions to this work and that it could be used within both the formal and informal education sectors as a tool for such important work.

Further, the Children's Law Centre trust DENI are taking cognisance of their new statutory obligations under the Northern Ireland Act, 1998 and the Human Rights Act, 1998 when developing Education for Diversity.

The Children's Law Centre is keen to develop a dialogue with service providers in this area. I enclose a copy of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and also a summary copy of Getting it Right? for your information.

Should you require any further information or if you have any queries in relation to this please do not hesitate to contact Children's Law Centre, Philip House, 123-137 York St, Belfast, BT15 1AB. Telephone 028 90 245704. E-mail info@childrenslawcentre.org