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Speaking at the opening of an integrated school in county Londonderry, Givan said "99%" of their discussion was about educational underachievement in working-class communities.

The manifesto pledge to ring-fence funding for it is a response to the UK government's decision to redirect £150m from 10 integrated school projects into the £3.3bn pot promised by Westminster to help get Stormont working again after the DUP's two-year boycott.

And then, in a disgruntled caveat, he described a recital at the integrated school in Atlanta that his kids attended at the time, where they were made to sing Dixieland, which the school’s curriculum called “the music that made America great.”

That might be a reflection of how easy it was for opponents of integration to remove their children from integrated school districts in the North, said Owen Thompson, an economics professor at Massachusetts-based Williams College who co-authored the report.

Lagan College, which opened in 1981, is Northern Ireland's oldest integrated school.