The department's overall vision is "to ensure that every learner fulfils her or his potential at each stage of development".

Its key stated priorities are: raising Standards for all; closing the performance gap, increasing access and equality; developing the education workforce; improving the "learning environment"; and transforming education management.

An education ministry was also included in the Northern Ireland Executive briefly formed in 1974.

[21] No timescale for the abolition was outlined and the department remained in operation, as of late March 2012.

It was not until 25 May 2016 that the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP)'s Peter Weir became the first non-Sinn Féin politician to head the Northern Ireland Department of Education.