Hi °C | Lo °C I want to congratulate the First Minister, Peter Robinson, on his admission that sectarian schooling in Northern Ireland has been part of the problem for far too long. However, the path to integration will be long and winding.
In the Scottish shared-campus experiment, the old segregation problem still persists once children walk through the door, or, to be more precise, separate doors. In one attempt at a shared campus in Lanarkshire, the Catholic Church's demands for separate facilities even stretched to different toilets for Catholic and non-Catholic teachers.
The director of the Catholic Education Service in Scotland is on record as stating, "We are very concerned that the sharing of facilities, like staff rooms, will erode the Catholic ethos of a school."
If adults and teachers cannot set an example by sharing staff rooms and toilets, how can we expect children to behave?
The Scottish experiment should continue and deserves to progress through several generations of pupils, parents, teachers and religious hierarchies, before success or otherwise in tackling sectarianism can be measured.
But Peter Robinson should be under no illusions about the scale of the task that lies ahead and the deep entrenchment of attitudes and sense of entitlement that he will encounter.
ALISTAIR McBAY
Methven, Perthshire
