Peace and Conflict Studies - Spring 2014

Peace and Conflict Studies Volume 21, Number 1 33 recognised “the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British or both” and the agreement accepted that the future constitutional status of the territory will be determined by “the wish of the majority of the people who live there” (Northern Ireland Office, 1998). Fifteen years after The Agreement peace is increasingly well established and the former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has claimed that “the lessons of peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland can be learned in other conflicts across the world” (Blair, 2008). The European Union, a longstanding and major actor in the peace process, has held up its role in peacebuilding in Northern Ireland as an opportunity for lesson-learning and modelling as it seeks to expand its capacity for conflict prevention, management and resolution (Tonra, 2011). However, a number of issues remain capable of stalling progress in Northern Ireland (see Fitzduff & O’Hagan, 2009); most recently the flags dispute that began in December 2012 is evidence of a deep alienation within a section of the unionist community from the peace settlement that has emerged (Nolan, 2013). Perhaps most crucially, as Smith (2010) argues, The Agreement deferred a decision on the ultimate sovereignty of the territory: “the agreement managed to ‘transform’ the conflict, but the dispute has not been ‘resolved’” (2010, p. 58). Of particular interest to this study is the role that education and employment linkages played in the lead up to the period of conflict known as the Troubles. When Ireland was partitioned in 1921 the six counties in the North-East became known as Northern Ireland and remained part of the United Kingdom, whilst the other 26 counties gained independence as the Republic of Ireland. At the time Protestant Unionists made up two thirds of the population of Northern Ireland and the state was described by its first prime minister as having “a Protestant Parliament for a Protestant people” (Fitzduff & O’Hagan, 2009, p. 3). The evidence available shows that systematic inequalities in many dimensions persisted for the first fifty years of the newly created Northern Ireland state. The Catholic unemployment rate was 2.6 times the Protestant rate in 1917 and the same in 1971 (McGarry & O’Leary, 1995). There has been much research into the causes of the employment differential and a comprehensive review is provided by Gallagher (1991). Since 1812 and the formation of Catholic schools, Northern Ireland’s education system has been effectively segregated along religious lines. One explanation for the employment differential therefore relates to lower academic achievement: data shows Catholic disadvantage in admission to grammar schools and O and A-level achievements up to the mid-1970s (Stewart & Langar, 2007, p. 21). In