Integrated Education with Emma Black, Calum Irvine, Sean Spillane, and students Bashanti, Dylan, Emma, Laila, Nina & Sophie
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Welcome to Stories of Impact. I'm your host, writer Tavia Gilbert, and along with journalist Richard Sergay, every first and third Tuesday of the month, we share conversations about the art and science of human flourishing.

If you have lately found yourself despairing at the world, the desperate reality so many children face, wondering what their futures hold as history painfully and endlessly repeats itself, if you've questioned what radical vision can ever answer the need for humans to make progress, this episode is for us.

Earlier this year, we aired a deep dive episode that explored the groundbreaking education of some Northern Ireland high school students, curriculum designed to teach them to think critically about governance, political polarization, and the legacy of often bloody societal division in their nation throughout the generations known as the Troubles.

We heard how these young adults were writing their futures with new ideas about reconciliation and peacemaking. If you haven't listened to that episode, it gives awesome context for today's story, so be sure to check it out. We'll link to it in the show notes. That story and today's stand alone, but they definitely inform each other.

Today, we bring you another story about revolutionary education in Northern Ireland, this time exploring the impact of teaching young children to not just tolerate difference and diversity, but to seek it out, embrace it, and celebrate it.

Our episode explores the history of Lockview Integrated Primary and Nursery School, a school founded 30 years ago to intentionally create a space where diverse points of view and religious and social practices could come together. And what's remarkable is that this vision came to life fully five years before the Good Friday Accords birthed a fragile national peace that

Lockview was established in Belfast by a group of parents who didn't want to send their children to a segregated school that would perpetuate bias and prejudice that had fed the decades of violence between Protestants and Catholics. Instead, this small group created a totally different paradigm for their children and their children's education.

So today we hear from students and educators at Lockview who tell us how this radical education has impacted classroom culture and individual lives and how it might contribute to peace building across the nation and potentially the world.

First, what defines Lockview? What sets it apart? Lockview Vice Principal Emma Black says... So lots of schools in Northern Ireland have a mix of children, but in our school, it is what we do with that mix of children that is really important. What we do in our school is intentional and planned. It doesn't happen by accident in our school every day. We plan for integration. We look for opportunities to enable our children to be able to talk about the differences between themselves and

We teach our children that integration is about taking every opportunity to be able to celebrate what is different about our children. So we look at different traditions and cultures and how they celebrate to enable the children that we have in Lockview to be able to share their experiences about their home and their cultures or their lives with their peers. Educator Callum Irvin, whose year 7 students, ages 10 and 11, are the oldest children in the school, says...

The main thing that makes the school different from other schools is the fact that it's an integrated school. But not only is it an integrated school, we're a rights respecting school.

And that means at the heart of everything we do, we are talking to the children about what it means to be integrated, which touches everything in their lives. Obviously, integrated schools in this country were set up initially due to the Catholic-Protestant sort of divide, if you like, the two sides of the community. But now integration is so much more. It's about gender. It's about race. It's about ability and disability. It's about social class. And I think

Everything we do in this school, we intentionally talk about that with the children and create opportunities for them to talk about it with each other. We encourage the children to have a voice, to lead so much of what we do in the school.

because ultimately the school's only as good as what it does for its children. And I'm quite proud of what we do as a school in enabling them to have a voice and have a say in everything that goes on. - Why do schools that celebrate diversity and integrate education matter?

Sean Spillane, Lockview principal, says... At our school, our culture has always been someone has a belief and another person may think the polar opposite of that. But we come back to our core value, which is that we have come together for 30 years at this place to try to educate our children and work with our families to create contributors to society.

The way that Northern Ireland continues to evolve, I think it's becoming increasingly more important. We seek that diversity from entry to the school. It means we automatically have it here. It's not done by accident. It's becoming increasingly important because of not only the national and even the UK issues that are faced, you know, things like Brexit and migration issues that have become so important.

but also international issues, the conflict in Gaza and the conflict in Ukraine. It's really important for children who will go on to be future leaders, future politicians, to have those values of respect for diversity instilled at a very young age.

So what's it like to be a student at Lockview? Eleven-year-old Emma says... I love that every child gets their own voice and every child gets to speak up about what they believe and every child gets to also listen and learn about that. Different people can have their own

thoughts and no person should ever be made to believe something that they don't and every person has to have a say. Ten-year-old Nina agrees. It's really good to go to this school because you learn about other people's beliefs and cultures. I feel that it's important because

Everyone gets a chance to learn different things. What Bashanti, age 10, appreciates about learning at Lockview? Everybody has their own chance and you all have to be treated the same. Even if you're different, that doesn't mean you have people be rude to you. If you believe different from someone, it doesn't mean you have to agree to everything that they say. You have your own voice and you have to speak up for it and that's

Your own right. Ten-year-old Dylan likes that. There's loads of different religions here and cultures. And you're open to different cultures and religions and world faiths all around the world. It's important because you don't just say, this is my religion, this is how we do it. We don't do it any other way. There's no other way for us.

But if you go to an integrated school, you know all the other ways that people do things and you are open to it. Eleven-year-old Sophie's favorite thing about the school is... That it's integrated and that you get to learn about other people's cultures and...

religions and it's really good to grow up with people that are Protestant and Catholic and not just be on one side. It's good to be with other people. Mockview students are aware of how unique their education is and how extraordinary it was for the founding parents to intentionally mix their children and encourage them to embrace diversity.

The students are proud of their school's origin story, which they learned more about as they worked on an oral history project about the founding of the school and its inclusive values. Leila says the parents who established Lockview during the Troubles had to have courage.

I think it's amazing how brave and how important it was to those founding parents who created this school because there would have been quite a bit of hate as well, like why are you mixing Catholics and Protestants together to make this school? They felt that it was right to do that, that you should just go for it and they should just be together and it will be okay and

They were right and look where we are now and it's been so important. It has worked out and now we are a whole big community. We wouldn't be the same people today if they hadn't started this and

Without those parents, we might not have the same belief system and be able to explore different religions the same way that we do now. The interviews with some of Lockview's first pupils, parents, teachers, and principals gave Emma valuable perspective about the power of individuals and small groups to make a big difference.

We've learnt that at the very start it was extremely small, but because the first parents were very keen on getting it started, more people were joining and learning about integration, so they wanted to make it bigger. And it started off with one small building and now we've grown it into a whole community. Nina says the oral history project has made her consider her own contribution to the school. I think that it's important to learn the history because it's really interesting and

And it makes you think about what you could do in the future to make the school, like, maybe a better place. Making the school a better place, and making the world a better place, has been part of Lockview's culture since it was first established. And those values continue to influence curriculum today, says Vice Principal Black. Part of what we try to do with our children as well is

to make them be mindful about what they do on a daily basis. And we would talk a lot in our school about restorative justice with our children. So when there has been an incident, there is no school in any day that isn't going to have any form of incident or confrontation or where children maybe aren't agreeing on someone.

but it's how we deal with that again. So again, we go back to the questioning, it's the way we talk to our children. Can you tell me about what happened? How do you think that person was feeling at that time? How did you feel at the time? So it isn't just dealing with that has happened, okay, that wasn't okay and here is the consequence for that, but it's enabling our children to understand why things have happened,

how they were feeling when it happened and how it potentially has impacted on other people. And I suppose that for me is a big, big part, not just of the integration side of things, but us enabling our children to be the people that we want them to move on to be. And just listening to some of the people who have been at our school, the founder children who have maybe came back and spoke to us over the last few months with it being our 30th year.

They speak of such a positivity around how they genuinely believe they had such a start in life from being at an integrated school and they do believe that they had a different experience growing up because of the foundation that they got by being in an integrated school. And that's what we see on a daily basis with all of our children. You're only seeing a very small snapshot today of how our children can interact with each other and interact with adults but

The positive, confident children who are able to talk about diversity and talk about themselves in depth and talk about others in depth is exactly what we see leaving us and moving on into the community every year and that's exactly what we want to achieve in an integrated school.

How have Lockview educators ensured that across the years its students embrace diversity and speak with confidence? Vice-Principal Black answers: We find that by nurturing our children from the very beginning, that enables them to have a greater understanding about themselves, which then leads to them wanting to share about themselves with other people. So right from nursery in our school, we're encouraging their independence, encouraging them to talk about what's important to them as a person first,

And if you have a child that feels happy, safe and comfortable within themselves, they then feel safe to be able to talk about their own beliefs and to talk about what is important to them and share that with their peers. But also the other side of that is enabling all of our children to be good listeners, to listen to what people are saying and to try to understand. So I suppose in our school that begins from a very early age, but it is developmental and age appropriate.

as they progress throughout the school. And we find that by the end of year seven, we have really confident children who are confident within themselves, but also confident to go out into the world and learn about other people. - Mr. Irvine agrees. - What we're aiming for is respect and respect for other people, respect for others' opinions. And again, we start by trying to create safe, happy, confident individuals

And if you are safe and happy and confident in yourself and your own thoughts and your own beliefs and your own person, then other people's differing thoughts, differing beliefs don't threaten you. And you can be respectful of those and tolerant of those because that's not going to impact on me and what my beliefs are because I am safe and confident in myself.

And I think that needs to come from that place first where the individual is happy in themselves and therefore they can listen to something. And if they don't agree with it, we need to be at a place where we can disagree with each other amicably and disagree comfortably with each other and have those arguments. Vice Principal Black says that the language used in the school also contributes to creating an integrated culture where people can comfortably disagree.

So in our school it is very, very important that we say some people believe, some people experience and that the children are not taught that this is what we believe or what they should believe. We are always trying to look for different sources and different opinions. So it's always trying to give our children a balance

not looking at one side or the other of any incident that they look at. It's providing them with a balance of opinion and encouraging them to talk about the differences, but also what's common around the facts that are there as well for them. So it's constantly challenging how they think

and listening to what each other thinks about that. Our children are given so many opportunities to discuss, to debate, to have conversation and to listen to different opinions that people may have. Sustaining this kind of culture takes long-term attention and commitment, says Mr Irvin. I think what you need to do is make sure it's happening all the time. Is this

constant repetition. Whatever we're teaching, if it's around beliefs, we'll say some people believe this and that this is how they practice it and this is how they act it out and this is just their beliefs and then the next time it's and this is what this set of people believe.

and encouraging the children to think for themselves. Regardless of the subject matter, whether it's a lesson in math, religious education, geography or history, says Mr. Irvin, Lockview educators want students to be comfortable expressing their individual perspectives.

When we have a new topic in class, we would always say to the children, "Well, what do you know already? What do you want to find out about?" And again, that's just fostering the idea that they have a voice and that everything we're doing is geared around them.

Often we'd watch news round during snack time or things just as a way into discussing current affairs and if the children ask a question to answer it as best we can in an age appropriate way. And we can't give them all the information because sometimes it's not age appropriate.

But we'd encourage them potentially to follow it up at home or they can go and look for answers for themselves and sort of empower them to say it's okay for teachers to not know things. Often we don't. And we say, well, why don't you go and look that up and come back and tell me about it? So just giving them that chance to take ownership of their own curiosity, ownership of their own learning to try and empower them.

Lockview also teaches students that there are multiple right answers, multiple paths to find them, and mistakes are not failures, says Mr. Irvin. Encouraging problem-solving, critical thinking in a range of different lessons and a range of different environments.

promotes that idea that the children can think for themselves and they can make mistakes and get it wrong. And they're encouraged to do that. We focus on growth mindset a lot so that children do challenge themselves, do make mistakes, do reflect on their own sort of learning and thinking.

And by making it all-encompassing across a range of different lessons, I think that really helps the children find their own voice and find that they're willing to say what they believe and say how they learned something or how they worked something out. So what do the students learn from this integrated approach? Nina says... Everyone has the right to believe in different things to each other and you should have different beliefs. But if someone says something to you and...

If someone says something that you don't believe, like, respect it as well. Emma says... Everyone should have their own personality and everyone should be able to have a voice and everyone should get to believe different things and you should never be forced to believe something that someone else believes and nobody should be able to tell someone, well, you should have to believe this. That's actually wrong. Leila says she's come to understand that... There is...

so many sets of facts that are true. Whatever is true to you is what you believe in and it might not be the same for anyone else but there's not just one fact that's true. It's whatever you believe in and your facts that you find true might not be the same as someone else's and those should be respected and celebrated.

And the Lockview students have developed the skills to respectfully disagree. Emma shares what she has learned. Well, if you disagree with another student, you should always think about what they're saying and then think back to what you're saying and then try and agree on what's most in common about what you're arguing about. Try and explain what you're...

arguing about and try and make sure that it's always resolved and not being built up and built up and being like really tense and then you're not friends with them anymore or you're like being distant from them. Dylan adds, You can definitely debate things but in a good, not rude way, not arguing. In a respectful way, you can definitely debate things.

as long as you're respectful to the other people. You definitely have to have a tolerance when it comes to these, because if you don't, then you can get annoyed about other things that are being taught and are happening, and then...

It's not really, you're not being the integrated person. And Sophie says... If you're arguing about stuff, it's good because then you learn what other people are saying and they might argue about something and you might argue about something as well, but then you might think, well, maybe they're right and maybe you're wrong. For Bashanti, what she learns at school helps her understand and celebrate the differences she sees at home.

My mum, I think she's Protestant and then my dad, he's from Uganda and they both have different religions but they agree to each other. And then if I grow up, I will have my own life truth and I will be my own person. Everybody has their own voice and everybody has their religion and you respect yours and if it's another person, you should also respect that even if it's not the same as yours.

How has embracing diversity, asking questions, and learning to respect a variety of beliefs helped Lockview students reject bias and stereotypes? Emma says... Say you looked at someone and you said, oh, well, they don't actually look really good, so why are they out in public? And, like, I don't really want to be friends with them. But then you get to know them, and, like, they were maybe...

doing something where they had to wear not as nice clothing and then you actually get to know them and they're really kind and they're really respectful. So you always need to get to know them before you judge them. Nina agrees. If you see someone who's maybe a refugee, then you think, oh, well, I don't really want to be friends with them or something like that. But then when you get to know them, they are nice and you would want to be friends with them.

When meeting people who are different than she, Bashanti has learned to act with compassion rather than make assumptions. Because they might be lonely if they're sent away from home, they might feel unwanted. And so you might want to help them. And even though you think that they aren't that good, you will go with them and you will help them. And then you'll find out that they're a better person than you actually think.

But not every student sees diversity embraced in their home or community like Bashanti. So how does Lockview break down biases, stereotypes, or misunderstandings that might be learned outside of school? Principal Spillane says that the school engages whole families in the curriculum.

We would sometimes get asked about why we are learning about a particular world faith that may be, you know, controversially or not linked to a conflict that's going on in a different part of the world. And again, our answer would always be that we are trying to, to,

to lure children up to contribute to a sort of shared society, not only in Northern Ireland where they are most likely to grow up and have a family, but as many people know now, lots of people emigrate to different parts of the world to start a career, start a family. So they need to have the skills of tolerance and respect for diversity. But also I think it's important to be able to be familiar with different cultures and traditions

and defend your right to have your own belief system and your own moral compass as well. It's ultimately about creating time and space for conversations and some of those conversations are more difficult than others but we get asked a lot of hard questions but we ask a lot of hard questions as well so we ask challenging questions back to our parents. Vice Principal Black adds that Lockview challenges all of the adults right along with the students.

We all do have our own bias and we all have our own level of prejudice but it's what we do with that that is really important moving forward. Our whole school community to be given the opportunities to be able to have those conversations to become even more open-minded than we already are. And that comes from the challenge, from the talk, from the safe environment, from enabling staff, children, parents, governors.

Mr Irvin recognises how different Lockview is from many other schools in Northern Ireland, and he understands why that is. I've only been living in Northern Ireland for eight years. I qualified as a teacher in England, and when I moved over here, I suppose naively, having not been fully aware of Northern Ireland's history, assumed, of course every school is like this, of course every school is giving the children a voice, of course that if they ask questions which might be uncomfortable, they'll be addressed.

And it was only really having been to a couple of other schools where those sorts of things aren't on the table for discussion. And then having those conversations in the staff room with other adults saying, yes, when I was 17 and I had a job in a shop in town, we had to check the shelves for bombs every morning. And we had to do that as, you know, a 17-year-old doing your first job. And it was only then that I realized, actually, the people I'm working with had vastly different childhoods, grew up

at a place that was, although they got on with their lives, often very unsafe. And that is the background that we are teaching in now. And that does make a huge difference. And unfortunately, because of that, I suppose progress, if you want to call it that, in terms of having those discussions and being respectful of other people and just being able to talk about different beliefs and disagree isn't always there in every school. Whereas I think here,

we openly talk about our different views and I know what lots of people's different views on lots of things would be because we have those open conversations and I think ideally all schools would be like that but I know that a lot aren't and I think it comes from where the country has been before and there's just a bit of hesitancy to have these sort of conversations.

Lockview was recently awarded the Excellence in Integration Award for reaching a high standard in equality, faith and values, parental responsibility and social responsibility. And Vice Principal Black hopes that Lockview can be a model for other schools that, despite the challenge, want to move toward integration.

7% of schools in Northern Ireland are integrated but more and more schools are looking towards integration and wanting to have an integrated status within their schools as well. What we are doing in integrated schools we firmly believe does make a difference.

I personally have come right through the integrated sector. I attended Ligon College, which was the first integrated secondary school in Northern Ireland. Integration was hugely important for me and I've been really lucky to have taught my whole teaching career in an integrated school. I for one wouldn't want to be anywhere else and I really hope that more and more people in Northern Ireland will

be brave as our very first parents were. And it is about being brave. It is challenging. It's not always easy. And we do have those difficult conversations sometimes with our parents, with the community, with our children, but that's okay. We are meant to have difficult conversations and it's those difficult conversations that move us on as a school and hopefully as a community as well.

Principal Spillane says he believes that the integrated model can and should be replicated anywhere there's a desire for progressive education. There are very different challenges amongst parents who maybe have had their own upbringing in a very different period, in what was even an early post-conflict society or even having lived through the troubles themselves.

where they will come to our school wanting their child to go to an integrated school but maybe carrying a bias from their own experience and sometimes it can be a challenge initially to break that down but our job and my job in particular is to challenge those attitudes and that bias

to educate parents as well, to say, here's what we are trying to do. Here's how we want your child to grow up and contribute to society. But we need your help to do that. It's incumbent on us to help other schools in Northern Ireland or beyond who

who wish to create or replicate how we deliver our education here. And we try to do that respectfully and with understanding, not coming at it from a point of arrogance or we're the finished product because ultimately the work is never done when you are living in a post-conflict society and particularly living in a society where it's

It continues to evolve in terms of the number of nationalities that are represented here and the number of shared world events that are impacting all around the world. Schools like this are a result of conflict society, but I do believe that a school that is set up to enable children to contribute to society can be created and function anywhere in the world.

Eleven-year-old Layla understands that the point of integrated education isn't just about the impact it's making in the lives of the children today. It's preparing leaders like her for their future.

I like that we are able to believe in what we want to believe and we can gather everyone else's beliefs and make our own truth and what we want to believe in for ourselves. We are an integrated school and we're not going to all be the same and it is very important that we celebrate that and we get to respect what

what every child wants to believe in. And we also celebrate that to make sure that we have so many differences in our school and it's really, really important that we have a mix of different children. Because when we are older we will be able to mix with other people who don't believe the same things that we do and that we can respect them.

This episode leaves me feeling hopeful. I needed to hear today that embracing diversity can break down walls and nurture empathy and connection. That children who are taught to use their voice develop courage, confidence, and curiosity. That education can be a dynamic and creative force in sustaining healthy and compassionate communities.

We need roadmaps for a better future, and I'm grateful to the students, educators, and founders of Lockview for shining a light in the darkness.

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This has been the Stories of Impact podcast with interviews by Richard Sergei. Written and produced by Tavia Gilbert for TalkBox Productions. Senior producer Katie Flood. Assistant producer Oscar Falk. Production support by Mandy Morish. Music by Alexander Filipiak. Mix and master by Kayla Elrod. Executive producer Michelle Cobb. The Stories of Impact podcast is generously supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation.