One has to wonder if anyone could be happy with progress 20 years on from the Good Friday Agreement. If the absence of gunmen and bombers from our streets is the only tangible benefit we have to celebrate, we forget that sectarian politics has failed yet another generation.

I speak content in the knowledge that I actively encouraged my ‘Peace Baby’ daughter to move to Scotland instead of staying at home for university. Her life will surely be different from mine. Born a few months after the Agreement she has matured into a clever, confident young lady ready to move forward in life whilst our political elite have never stopped looking over their shoulder at a troubled past.

What started as a fudge necessary to bring an end to violence has degenerated into a struggle every bit as bitter as the bloodshed. Where once death roamed our streets at night it now stalks young and old in educational conflict and NHS waiting lists. The economic warfare of fire and bomb continues in a different guise, Unionists to frightened to leap forward while Republicans are content to watch the failed Northern state stumble along.

It is in the education system that we have seen the most profound wasted opportunity. It is a little known fact that peace babies born in 1998 were the first children not to sit the 11+ transfer test. The bastion of Unionist privilege that lifted people like me from a bonfire builder on Ravenscroft Avenue to an Engineering degree was an early target for Sinn Féin. The stress of sitting two exams in their own schools at an early age was too much for our youngsters and had to stop.

The solution resulted in pupils facing up to five exams in strange class rooms split between AQE and GL, Protestant and Catholic, 11+ tests. Our young people continue to be brought up to be be different. Successive politicians in charge had little interest in pursuing the only real long-term solution: integrated education. It is a disgrace that  integrated education continues to be driven by parents, not the government.

Politicians themselves have too often acted worse than children.

The ‘one for us’uns, some for youse’uns’ carve up would never have perpetuated had London and Dublin exerted proper paternal control. Instead the local parties simply made their demands and were largely appeased. Fudge was crystalised into institutional carve ups and despite all the press secretaries, spin, SPADs and vanity projects our troublesome students have now decided to drop out and sulk in their rooms.

It’s time for the adults in London and Dublin to get back in the game and sort the mess out with a proactive approach to education, health and political development. It is obvious that the kids at Stormont need help to make their way in the world.