After 34 years of dedicated service to education, including over 18 years in Integrated Education our CEO Roisin Marshall is retiring. Roisin has led NICIE and Integrated Education through significant developments over the last eight years. She has guided with a steadfast commitment to supporting the growth of Integrated Education, enabling more children and young people to learn together, every day – helping to create a more shared society.
As a staff team we want to thank you for your unwavering dedication, your constant can-do attitude and the support you have given us. We are going to miss you, but we want to wish you the happiest of retirements and a very well-deserved rest.
Roisin started her career as a teacher spending 12 years working in both St. Mary’s on the Hill Primary School, Carnmoney where she promoted classroom initiatives to bring pupils together with students at the nearby Controlled Primary School attended by children from a mainly Protestant background, and St. Colm’s High School, Twinbrook.
She joined the Development Team in the Council for Integrated Education (NICIE) in 2002, following her struggle to get her son into an Integrated school four years after the signing of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement. There she began working with parents’ groups to help them establish new Integrated schools and Transform existing schools to Integrated status. The Agreement had declared Integrated Education to be an essential aspect of reconciliation and its 25th anniversary was marked in April 2023.
Roisin volunteered as a governor at Oakwood Integrated Primary School and Malone Integrated College for 8 years in total, schools that both of her children attended at primary level and her son at post primary level.
In 2007-2012, after her first five years at NICIE, she was seconded to the North-Eastern Education and Library Board to support greater integration through primary school partnerships. She established a network of 28 rural primary schools from different sectors to work together, improve outcomes for children and young people and bridge divides amongst the staff, governors and parents in schools.Roisin returned to teaching from 2012 in Fleming Fulton Special School using her Masters in Special Education and experience from both volunteering and paid employment during summer breaks in Ruby House, Newcastle, Co Down, which offered respite care for people living with disabilities and their families. She had also been a volunteer for 20 years with her local Junior Gateway Club, a charity which had supported her younger sister who was born with Downs Syndrome and Autism.
Roisin re-joined NICIE in 2016 as its CEO. The number of students attending Integrated schools in Northern Ireland has increased to almost 28,000 and the number of Integrated schools has increased to 73. She supported the Integrated Education Bill and subsequently the Act (NI) 2022, which reformed NI’s education legislation and established a duty to not only ‘encourage and facilitate’ but also to support Integrated Education.
A distinguished journey that many young people, families, school staff and wider society will continue to benefit from in years to come.