Too Many Schools Being Failed By Successive DUP Ministers! – Mason

Sinn Fein MLA Cathy Mason has slammed successive DUP Education Ministers who have consistently failed schools in Northern Ireland.

Mason said:

“The findings of the Public Accounts Committee’s recent report on the management of the schools’ estate are nothing short of alarming. It confirms what parents, teachers, and pupils have known for years, too many of our schools are being failed by successive DUP Ministers.

“The Public Accounts Committee found that the Department of Education and the Education Authority have operated for over a decade without a comprehensive plan for maintaining or improving the school estate. Instead of forward planning, we have had reactive crisis management. The result is an £800 million maintenance backlog and a further £29 million of remedial works that have been allowed to pile up. This is not only poor management; it is unsafe and unsustainable.

“For nearly 10 years the DUP have been at the helm of our education system and that system has drifted from one short-term fix to the next while the school estate has crumbled around our children. There has been no long-term strategy, no proper investment in preventative maintenance, and no accountability for the money that has been spent. This is a DUP failure.

“Of course, these failures have been compounded by years of British government austerity and their chronic underfunding of public services here. This is the constitutional and political arrangement that the DUP supports and defends.

“Undoubtedly, Westminster’s cuts have squeezed every department and left frontline services struggling to cope. But even within those constraints, local ministers had choices. Billions of pounds have been allocated to education but successive DUP education ministers failed to plan, failed to prioritise and failed to get a grip of the crisis facing our school’s estate.

“This is not an isolated issue. The Audit Office has repeatedly found that despite hundreds of millions being spent on special educational needs, the Department and the Education Authority could not demonstrate value for money. It paints the same picture: money spent but not managed, and children and staff paying the price.

“We now need an urgent, system-wide reset. The Department and the Education Authority must immediately deliver the comprehensive estate strategy promised for early 2026. They must tackle the maintenance backlog, invest in special educational needs provision, and treat our school buildings as an essential building block to educational success.

“Every child here should be educated in safe and warm classrooms. That is the bare minimum our pupils, their families and staff should expect. It is time for Minister Givan to stop the excuses and to get on with providing our education system with the facilities needed to deliver the best possible opportunities for our children and young people.”

CRÍOCH/ENDS