THE financial cost of maintaining educational segregation in Northern Ireland amounts to around £600,000 every single day, according to a new report.
Research by Ulster University (UU) suggests that, in an era of austerity and increasing costs, "segregation is a costly luxury".
The study estimates that an additional £226 million is spent every year on a "divided education system" in the north.
It states the "education service was, and is still, located within a divided and polarised society".
One of the major reasons for the high costs, the report suggests, is that services are duplicated throughout the system.
For example, two teaching colleges - with St Mary’s University College drawing its intake largely from the Catholic community and Stranmillis University College, mainly from the Protestant community.
The report also states that "as a result of the divisions in NI society, the vast majority of schools have very few pupils from the ‘other’ community and 30 per cent of schools do not have any representatives of the other community".
The findings are published in the latest 'Transforming Education' papers, produced by the School of Education at UU, and partially funded by the Integrated Education Fund (IEF).
It looks at the cost of a divided education system and aims to stimulate debate among educationalists, decision-makers and the wider public.
One of the paper’s authors, Dr Stephen Roulston, said: “The price of past division, and its consequences in the present day, can be measured in financial, social and even environmental costs.
"Our research would estimate the total additional cost of maintaining a divided education system at £226 million each year, or over £600,000 every day of the year.
"Societal divisions persist and continue to cost our economy, define our confrontational politics and blight the lives of many of the people who live here.
"These costs can also be seen in our education system, where division, separation and duplication all add unnecessary and increasingly unaffordable costs.
"Consequently, funding which could be spent directly on educating children and young people is wasted.
"There will be some cost to addressing difference, reforming school structures, reorganising governance of schools, preparing teachers to engage with contentious issues with their learners and investigating alternatives to our divided education system.
"The alternative – continued division and communal distrust and all the social and economic impacts that may engender – may well be more costly.
"The question is not ‘can we afford to address this?’ Instead, it should be ‘can we really afford not to?'"
IEF chief executive Tina Merron said the research will "help inform the forthcoming Independent Review of Education, the implementation of the Integrated Education Act (Northern Ireland) 2022 and help to inform education policy in the Northern Ireland".
