IEF’s legal action secures improved Strategy
“The Department of Education then revised the Strategy and made the targets meaningful and tangible.”
Litigation threat compels Department to focus on integrated education implementation.
Issue:
Lagan College was the first planned integrated school in the north of Ireland to welcome children, staff and governors from all religious and cultural traditions within a single school community, opening its doors in 1981.
Now, 76 integrated schools operate across Northern Ireland but demand for places still outweighs supply.
When a cross-section of parents in Northern Ireland were surveyed in 2025, 3 out of 5 of them said that the reason their child didn’t attend an integrated school was a simple, yet frustrating, one: there just wasn’t one nearby.
Prior to 2022, parental demand was an interesting metric but not one that policymakers were obliged to proactively address as part of their decision making. The passage of the Integrated Education Act (NI) 2022 changed that. Under that legislation, The Department of Education now has a responsibility to identify, assess, monitor and aim to meet the demand for Integrated Education.
When the Department published its first Integrated Education Strategy draft since the 2022 Act was passed, Integrated Education advocates were concerned to find that specific targets were missing.
The Integrated Education Fund had a straightforward, but fundamental, question: without benchmarks, how can the Department possibly identify, assess or monitor demand?
Ideas:
It’s important to note that going to court was not the IEF’s preferred route.
As their own press statement in September 2025 clarified, the advocacy organisation was keen to engage with the Department: “The IEF did not want to take this legal action against the Department. We want to work constructively with them and will continue to do so.”
As a member of several existing working groups that liaised with the Department’s officials, IEF had already expressed their unease in April 2023 about the draft strategy’s lack of targets directly to the Department.
When the published draft still lacked any measurable benchmarks, IEF approached PILS in May 2023 to explore their legal options:
- PILS connected IEF with Steven McQuitty, a Pro Bono Register barrister, to obtain a legal opinion on whether this lack of targets was something that could be legally challenged
- When the pro bono opinion answered that question in the affirmative, PILS also secured Brian Moss, a Pro Bono Register solicitor, to instruct the barrister as the legal action developed
- IEF’s application to judicially review the Department’s draft strategy’s contents was lodged in November 2023, with financial support from PILS’ Litigation Fund covering the necessary court fees.
The judicial review timelines and the Department’s own deadlines then intersected.
As the Department was required present a report on the strategy to the NI Assembly in April 2024, the judicial review judge paused the ‘leave’ hearing (to decide if IEF had permission to continue with the case) until after that was done. On 31 May 2024, the High Court granted granted leave, holding that there was an important issue at play: namely that there are statutory duties which have not been complied with.
In its legal submissions, the Department advised the Court that it would be publishing a draft update to the strategy in September/October 2024. The Court then set a Review Hearing in October so that this draft could be considered. When the revised Strategy was released by the Department for Education in June 2025, it contained several notable amendments.
This positive development was cemented further by the High Court’s declaration on 02 September 2025 that the 2023 draft strategy had indeed breached the Integrated Education Act 2022.
Impact:
“Whilst regretful that a legal challenge was necessary in the first place, the IEF believes the legal process secured significant improvements to the original strategy…”
– IEF
The changes to the strategy were substantial: instead of an overall budget of £50,000 to fund implementation, the Department of Education now pledged £50,000 per annum. It also stated that the results of ‘Transformation to Integrated status’ parental ballots in schools should be part of measuring parental demand. Potential additional recurrent funding of £65,000 per annum for the Council for Integrated Education (NICIE) to help assist implementation was also included.
IEF’s use of judicial review proceedings is a neat demonstration of the potential that legal tools hold for experienced advocacy organisations.
While it was not the route that IEF would have wished to take, legal proceedings (combined with their ongoing engagement with policy makers) resulted in concrete changes to the first Integrated Education Strategy and Action Plan published under the 2022 Act.
This blend of traditional advocacy and legal weight is an approach that can be used by other organisations to compel decisionmakers to adhere to their duties.
Testimony from IEF:
“It is unlikely any of these changes would have happened without the intervention of the IEF supported by Public Interest Litigation Support (PILS) through which assistance the IEF were able to secure the representation and expertise of Brian Moss from Worthingtons Solicitors and Steven McQuitty KC.”
Reflections from Brian Moss:
“I was delighted to have acted – with PILS support – in a judicial review application instructed by the Integrated Education Fund, brought to challenge the Department of Education’s Strategy for Integrated Education.
Prior to being involved in the case, I had acted in several previous education-related judicial review applications over the course of the past 15 years, including several school closure cases and several cases involving statements and statemented provision for children with additional needs.
This was therefore an area of considerable professional interest for me.
Through being involved in the case, I was able to gain a thorough understanding of the IEF’s history, background, and of their policy and campaign work; in particular their work on the Integrated Education Act (Northern Ireland) 2022 – a significant piece of recent legislation which the IEF and others had collaborated to advocate for the passage of.
It was a privilege to be involved in a case which held the Department to account for compliance with its statutory duties under this legislation, and the outworking of the challenge has resulted in a more meaningful Integrated Education Strategy being introduced by the Department.”
Worthingtons Solicitors : Department of Education in breach of Act