Integrated Education

While being integrated has always been important to us here in Priory over the last few years we have placed extra emphasis on it and have strived to place it at the heart of all we do.  

We started this journey by writing an Integration In Practice policy which saw us putting integration at the heart of school life and making it part of our day to day actions. This coincided with the development of an integration drive team and the appointment of an integration coordinator. Once these were in place we started to consider how we could best place integration to the forefront of school life in Priory. With this in mind we decided that, as part of our school development plan, we would try and achieve the Excellence in Integrated Education Award.

It is important that every Integrated school is intentional in developing and strengthening their Integrated ethos, and also engages in a process of monitoring and evaluation. This ongoing monitoring and development process is supported through the Excellence in Integrated Education Award which provides insight into the essential elements of a good Integrated school. The first two schools were awarded the EIEA in 2010 and now over 20 schools have achieved the Award, with Priory being the latest to be awarded it at the end of January 2025.

The EIEA audit tool sits alongside and complements the Department of Education’s ‘Every School A Good School’, the Community Relations, Equality and Diversity (CRED) Policy, and the Education and Training Inspectorate’s Self-Evaluation Frameworks. The EIEA is a process for school improvement set within the context of the Integrated ethos and the legal definitions of the new Integrated Education Act (2022). 

The EIEA enables a school to affirm areas of existing good practice and to identify areas for development. The school then works through an action plan based on this, leading to assessment for the Award. The school is supported through the EIEA process by the NICIE Development Team. The award looks at the four core values of integrated education - these being Equality, Beliefs and Values, Parental Involvement and Social Responsibility.    The assessment was very robust and took over two years of gathering evidence from across all departments, all classes, pastoral and academic.  The inspection itself was a full day affair where the inspectors talked to the Principal, board of governors, teaching staff, non teaching staff, parents and of course the pupils. They also visited classes and saw staff in action. 

It is a credit to the school that we have a glowing report from the inspectors and we will endeavour to always be the best integrated school that we can be.