Chairperson’s report 2022-2023
This year has presented challenges right across the education sector and the lack of an assembly and the ongoing budgetary constraints have made achieving our strategic aims and objectives particularly difficult.
On a positive note, we have welcomed the opportunity to work with the Implementation Team for the Integrated Education Act. We are providing assistance to the Department as it works to meet its statutory obligation to develop a strategy for Integrated Education and are hopeful that this strategy will have a positive impact on ensuring that the Department assesses and meets the demand for Integrated Education going forward.
We are encouraged that more schools than ever are currently on the journey to becoming Integrated and we feel confident that, if resources are made available, the Integrated Education Act will result in those numbers continuing to grow.
Throughout the year our passionate and dedicated staff have continued to work with our schools to ensure that they achieve excellence in educating our children and young people and to help them to grow to meet increasing demand. I continue to be hugely impressed by the resilience demonstrated by our principals, teachers and other school staff as they overcome such challenging circumstances and our wonderful pupils continue to be a constant source of inspiration.
I feel privileged to work with an extremely talented Board of directors who give so generously of their time and expertise to ensure good governance of the organisation and who, with the expert support of our Finance Officer, Maureen Johnston, have ensured that our budget has been managed efficiently and effectively.
This year our CEO, Roisin Marshall, continued to provide visionary leadership to the organisation, overcoming obstacles and hurdles to ensure that our staff stayed focused on achieving the objectives set out in our business plan.
In addition, I am grateful for the positive relationship we have with our stakeholders: the IEF, APTIS, the AlumNI, our sponsor department in DE as well as the EA and other sectoral support bodies, as we work together to secure a better future for all our children.
As we move forward into the next financial year we must not let financial limitations hamper our vision of ensuring that every parent who wants to send their child to an Integrated school has the opportunity to do so.
We owe it to our children to rise above the political and financial challenges and continue to work with all our stakeholders to achieve our overall goal of promoting peace in Northern Ireland through educating our children and young people together.