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Lies, Damn Lies and Sinn Fein Statements
Brilliant quote from Sinn Fein's education spokesman today. Bare in mind that his party colleague Martin McGuinness was largely responsible for the demolition of Ulster's grammar schools with his last act as Education Minister. Bare also in mind that same party colleague's bigotry in giving scarce education budget cash to underattended and unnecessary Irish-medium schools in west Belfast thus both endangering rural schools that the cash was diverted from and also ignoring the integrated sector (one thing that might help normalise life here more than anything). While baring all that in mind, recoil in shock (or roll on the floor laughing) at Sinn Fein blaming the British government (there's a first!) for the standards of schools here (see the bottom few paragraphs).
"Falling rolls offers the Department of Education great opportunities to improve the school provision that we offer but instead the British Government have used it to erode the educational entitlement of our children and young people and redirect investment to schools in England and Wales."
Michael Ferguson, Sinn Fein education spokesman
Follow up:
Considering Northern Ireland already receives an estimated £5-8billion subvention from the chancellor each year, how much money does he really think is being diverted away from Northern Ireland's schools to the main land? There's no direct quote but I bet Mr Ferguson also stated that the problems could only be solved with an "all-Ireland education strategy" - after all, all-Ireland strategies are known cure-alls for healthcare, regional development, agriculture and god-knows what else.
I'm not sure what to make of the class of 30 in Poleglass where 19 of those 30 children have "special-needs".
For certain though, if we want better standards in schools there's a few places we should be looking closer to home before blaming the faceless British government. If we're lucky, the reform of public administration might even get there. Nah, who am I kidding? There's no hope, but here's a good place to start anyway.
- Conversion of all Irish-medium and church-run (but government financed) schools into regular state schools.
- Encourage schools to permit diversty among pupils, regardless of official integrated status or lack thereof.
- Abandon the silly notion (as fond as the Sinners are of romantic sounding panaceas) that abolishing grammar schools will suddenly and unexplicably raise the standards of under-performing secondary schools - save academic selection.