Pity the Ulster Unionist Party set up an Executive with an IRA terrorist who has instigated a process that will assuredly destroy our once great Grammar schools.

Yes it is. It's also a pity the Unionist parties were too busy waving flags and trying to out-Prod each other during the election to make this a real issue.

By the way, welcome to the new site and congrats on being the first person to comment.

DV,
Would you agree that selection is in need of reform?

Hi Beano, and David.

The legacy of trimble still haunts us from day to day.

Grammar schools, are essential in my opinion to the extension of our fantastic education system.
As someone from a working class family, I went to a grammar school, and the difference from the high schools is vast.
This is proof, were it needed, that the ministers worked independently, and without control to the assembly, contrary to what the UUP were telling us about assembly control etc.

Thanks trimble, good riddance.

If you are in favour of keeping some form of academic selection then YOU MUST RESPOND to the Consultation process. It is the only way to let the Dept Education know that we don't want these proposals.

Once the process starts, it's hard to stop......!!!!

Excatly. This is why I've already responded, copying a significant chunk of what I have written above.

I hope that those so quick to criticise the Assembly and it's executive's role in allowing the above to be implemented have put are willing to do something about it and take part in the consultation linked at the bottom of the post.

There will be lots of time for party-political point-scoring after the consultation closes on 30th June.

I think I'm the only dissenting voice here in that,I'm not sure the system we've got is helping all children reach their full potential educationally.
I come from a working-class background and was lucky enough to pass the eleven-plus and go to a grammar school. Whilst I'm grateful for the education I received and the sacrifices that my parents made, one of main memories from my schooldays is the fact that people of my background were very much in the minority.
Selection at the age of 11 is far too early to gauge a child's educational potential. If we were to continue with non-selective education until the age of say 14 or 15, then both teachers and students at this point would be able to gauge better whether the academic route is in the best interest of the child or not.
NI's Grammar Schools are performing well for the 20%(mainly middle-class) children who attend them- but what about the other 80%, any constructive suggestions about how to improve the overall educational standard of the province?

I haven't got too many ideas on the finer detail, but I believe that the principle of bringing the top-performing schools down to the level of failing schools is fundamentally wrong. What should be happening is a long look at secondary schools to see what can be done to raise standards there, without destroying the good work done by our grammar schools.

Is it not a fact that middle-class pupils in England's education system also outperform their working class counterparts? I'd be interested to take the top 20% from English schools and see how the socio-economic makeup of the average pupil compares with that here, especially since 7% of pupils (20% of 6th formers) in the UK attend private schools. Surely that would be a good chunk of the 20% gone already. (By the way, do grammar schools not take closer to 30%? The sum total of A-grades is 25% and there were quite a few Bs in my school).

From anecdotal evidence and based on what I know of some secondary schools, the culture that education isn't important is a major factor, in low standards in secondary schools.

This is particularly true of males, and protestant males even moreso, as witnessed by their underrepresentation in 3rd level education here.

11 may be too young. I'm not aware of the details of research into alternative ages for selection, but am open to persuasion, but that's not what is at issue with these reforms.

Respond to the Consultation by the via:
www.concernedparentsforeducation.org

I have no problem with the retention of grammer schools and suspect that the move to do away with them is based on a political ideology that some consider an end in itself regardless of the needs of the kids.

However I have little faith in our schools systems ability to cater for those who are outside the norm. This includes those with general learning difficulties and those with specific learning difficulties. Of the latter, I think that our schools are realy failing those kids with the highest IQs. This is not just a failure of the school system. it is also down to a dangerous lack of awareness of the medical profession. Highly intelligent girls with Attention Defficit Disorder without hyperactivity all too often struggle without help because they are not disruptive enough to be considered a problem to be investigated and they manage to do just well enough in lessons fly under the radar picking up on special needs. Their disruptive (often male) fellow pupils and the significant underacheivers get all the assisitance going. Whilst they may be the real underacheivers, relative to their potential as opposed to just average academic school standards.

We need greater awareness within schools and the medical profession and a system that is flexible to the needs of all the children not just those who are causeing an obvious problem.

I wouldn't argue that grammar schools and the teachers in them are, from my own experience, ill-equipped to cater for special needs children. To be fair it's not just grammar schools either, I know a child who was dismissed as "lazy" (much to the distress of his mother) by his P4 teacher in a Newtownabbey Primary school when it later turned out he had dyspraxia.

Working on the assumption that children such as these will end up in secondary schools, wouldn't one way of raising the standards in secondary schools be to work harder to identify these children in secondary schools and develop them? I've always argued that the focus of educational reform attempting to level the playing field should be to raise the standards in the weaker schools rather than bring the stronger schools down to a lower level and this might be a good place to start!

If you are talking about special needs in terms of highly intelligent children with specific learning difficulties, then they should be at grammer schools as they will be more their intellectual equals than secondary schoold children (assuming that grammer schools will on average have the highest intellectual reasoning abilities.) Being "different" in terms of these conditions is bad enough, but to be isolated from your intellectual peers as well, is another disadvantage.

We need to work arder to identify them to stop them ending up in the wrong school in the first place.

forgot to add - good site, I will pop in again.

Northern Ireland Should Keep Academic Selection
I have been saying this since Martin McGuinness introduced his plans to destroy Northern Ireland's schools. Today a comment in the Times echos my view (thanks to the Young Unionists for highlighting this)

Northern Ireland still selects by 11-plus an...

Like Paul, I'm going to be a dissenting voice. I teach in a grammar school in England - and the school I work in is a great place to teach, I'm not grinding any axes here - but I'm resolutely unconvinced that it helps working class kids in general. It undoubtedly offers a fantastic education to all those kids who attend, but I totally recognise Paul's words: "one of my main memories from my schooldays is the fact that people of my background were very much in the minority".
There are very few working class kids in the school, and they are easily identified as such by staff and other kids. If they're academically inclined (interesting fact - not all kids that pass the 11+ are academically inclined) they can pass through seamlessly and go to the university of their choice. If not, if they want to be plumbers, or mechanics, or some other lucrative but clearly unambitious tradesman type thing, they will simply be irrelevant to an institution that values academic achievement beyond all else.
But above all, my problem with the grammar school system is what it does to schools around them. Clearly, if you syphon off the 'best' (ie most academic) kids to one institution you leave the others with the 'worst' kids - either the thickest or most difficult, use your own terminology. And then, by any judgement, the schools that are left, the secondary schools, are failing. Of course they bloody are, the grammar schools have removed their best potential pupils.
The best schools in England are the rural comprehensives, where it's not logistically practical to have a grammar school.Have a look at the stats for Ivybridge Community College, for example. Truly comprehensive, a mix of the very best and the very worst because it has to be, it delivers an excellent education to all ability ranges.


Beano, I haven't looked at your site for a while, so I missed the post about County Down. I've just come back from a week in a wee cottage at Slieve Croob with my family, had a great time. Really liked Newcastle and Portaferry and, oddly, Newry. Heading over to that post for a very late comment.