Teachers 'should be covered by fair employment laws'

The exemption of teachers from fair employment legislation is an "anachronism" which justifies "enduring discrimination."

That is according to new research from the UNESCO Education centre at Ulster University (UU).

It suggests that only 2% of teachers in Catholic primary schools were from a Protestant background.

In primary schools with mainly Protestant pupils, only 7% of teachers were from a Catholic background.

The vast majority of pupils in Northern Ireland go either to controlled schools - attended mainly, but not exclusively, by pupils from a Protestant background - or Catholic maintained schools.

Seven percent of pupils are educated in about 60 integrated schools.

The Employment Mobility of Teachers Report by Dr Matthew Milliken from Ulster University looked at how teachers were divided according to their community identity.

The recruitment of teachers is exempt from fair employment laws in Northern Ireland.

In 1976, the Fair Employment (Northern Ireland) Act exempted teachers and clergy from legislation as "the essential nature of the job requires it be done by a person holding, or not holding, a particular religious belief".

This exemption was maintained in the Fair Employment and Treatment (Northern Ireland) Order 1998.

The Equality Commission looked into whether the exemption should be abandoned in 2004, but found that there was still support for it at the time.

There were concerns that ending it would lead to Catholic schools losing their religious ethos and becoming non-denominational.

There were also worries that Protestant teachers would be disadvantaged if Catholic schools were able to continue to claim that religion remained a necessary occupational qualification.

However, the Ulster University research from Dr Milliken of the School of Education UNESCO Centre said the exemption means that teachers are divided in schools "according to their community identity".

It said that in primary schools, 2% of teachers employed in "Catholic ethos schools" were Protestant, while in "de facto Protestant schools" 7% of teachers were Catholics.

Those were similar to the figures revealed by the Equality Commission in 2004.

In post-primary schools the numbers were higher.

In Catholic post-primaries 8% of teachers were Protestant and in mainly Protestant schools 17% of teachers were Catholic.

The proportions were highest in grammar schools - at 17% and 23% respectively.

The figures are based on details of the education and career paths and religious backgrounds of more than 1,000 teachers in Northern Ireland.

"No other profession has the same potential for daily engagement with young minds - but no other profession separates its exponents so rigorously and effectively along community lines," Dr Milliken said.

"The aspiration of ensuring equality is not well served by off-setting one restrictive policy against another - by justifying enduring discrimination on the basis of mutual disadvantage."

Dr Milliken also said that the fair employment exemption for teachers was "something of an anachronism" in a "post-conflict increasingly multi-cultural society."

However, he said that separate teacher training institutions and policy concerning the teaching of religious education in schools were also responsible for maintaining the separation of teachers along religious lines.