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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 and the results have been startling. The percentage of pupils gaining five GSCEs at good grades is ten points higher than in England. At A Level, too, schoolchildren in Northern Ireland outperform their English counterparts: 30 per cent of subjects taken were awarded an A grade last year, compared with 22 per cent in England.
It is indisputable that bright children, particularly from lower-income families, benefit from a grammar-school education.
The comment then touches, only lightly, on the advantage boys have when educated in a competitive environment than when treated with the liberal kid-gloves of the softly, softly, everyone's a winner approach so evident in today's schools. Failure is not something to remove from schools, as recently suggested by namby-pamby teachers who are more worried about how their pupils' failure reflects on them than they are concerned about the children.
Comprehensive education has failed Great Britain. This is a simple, indesputable fact. Why? The aim of abolishing grammar schools for comprehensives was to increase social mobility. A recent LSE report has proven that since this action was taken, comprehensive schools have reduced social mobility. Comprehensive education has failed. Ruth Kelly, the UK's Labour education minister, has as much as admitted this.
"The only parental ballot so far undertaken on grammar schools, in Ripon, produced a two-thirds majority in favour of retaining the system. A similar household survey in Northern Ireland found 64 per cent support for maintaining academic selection there - which makes the Government's action all the more disgraceful.
In two public consultations over the future of grammar schools, parents of 11-plus "failures" seem as keen on the system as those whose children are more able..."
Of course when Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness, then education minister, didn't get the results he wanted, he promptly swept the results under the carpet and continued with his plan regardless of opposition. Lets be clear the household survey carried questions deliberately loaded to get McGuinness the answer he wanted, and he was still defeated. But, like a true fascist, he went on regardless of the people's wishes.
McGuinness's party are determined to rid Northern Ireland of academic excellence and replace it with across the board mediocrity. Remember these people want Northern Ireland to fail. I won't even start on their determination to replace this country's excellent grammar schools with Irish-language schools, where rabid republican parents can pass on their prejudices in a deliberately segregated eductional environment to their unsuspecting children.
This assault on Northern Ireland's education must not be allowed to continue. Please write to your MP, or email them through WriteToThem.com. It only takes 10 minutes to do your bit to save our grammar schools.
