To ask the Minister of Education to publish a copy of the Area Plan report that shows how the Department has met its statutory duty to ‘encourage and facilitate’ integrated education.

Providing Pathways is the 1st Strategic Area Plan for education provision, published by the Education Authority (EA) in 2017. Underpinning this are three Annual Action Plans (AAPS) for the years 2017/18, 2018/19 and 2019/20 (now extended to 31 August 2022).

The AAPs are published at the following link:

https://www.eani.org.uk/school-management/area-planning/annual-action-plans

The EA has overall operational responsibility for planning of provision within the policy and strategic framework set by the Department. It collaborates with the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS) as the planning authority for Catholic maintained schools and through engagement with sectoral bodies representative of the integrated, Irish-medium and controlled sectors and with the Voluntary Grammar Schools (VGS), either though representative bodies or individual schools.

My Department has no role in the planning of provision, but sets the framework by which area planning priorities are developed.

The three AAPs provide the detail of the workstreams and actions that have been agreed through the Area Planning structures (specifically the Area Planning Local Groups and Area Planning Working Group) and where changes to provision are required, Development Proposals (DPs) are published by the EA.

At this point the Department is engaged in the assessment of the proposals and recommendations on them are made to me.

With regard to the statutory duty to encourage and facilitate the development of integrated education, where any of the Department's statutory duties are engaged through the publication of a DP, full consideration is given in the assessment of the proposal and the submission to me and my decisions are published to the Department's website.