ABSTRACT
Religious denomination and segregated schooling are the outward signs of an underlying dispute concerning, from a Nationalist viewpoint, the legitimacy of the state itself and for Protestants a way of securing the Union through the state schools’ ethos of cultural and educational Britishness. Schooling in Northern over the period since partition has developed into a two track system according to religious denomination: effectively this has meant pupils attending predominantly Protestant or Catholic schools. To explain the dual system of schooling in the province in purely religious terms would be both misleading and incomplete because of the schools’ pivotal role in the protection of the two communities’ traditions and cultures. Catholic cultural heritage has been shaped by its relationship to power, control, and to questions of social and economic equity as well as to the status of Northern Ireland as a legitimate and just society.
