Just in case there was ever any doubt that politicians are out of touch with their voters, the Belfast Telegraph reports on a survey (of "over 1,000" parents and grandparents) that finds parents want more religious mixing in schools.

• 43% would prefer their children or grandchildren to attend an integrated school.
• 67% support the establishment of jointly managed schools
• 79% supported schools sharing facilities with nearby schools, even if they were in a different school sector.
• 84% believe that integrated education is important for peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

Apparently representatives of the Protestant and Catholic churches have been looking into the practicalities of setting up mixed-faith schools. The Protestant churches are singled out for being highly supportive of any moves towards inter-faith education.

So (as if I need to ask), why are none of the big 4 parties taking integrated education (of whatever form) more seriously? Could it possibly be that it's not in the interests of tribal, sectarian parties to reduce sectarianism?

Was anyone else sickened to see Caitriona Ruane smiling like a Cheshire cat when the exam results were released yesterday, revealing that Northern Irish pupils were once again top of the class when it comes to getting A grades at A-level? (I'm not sure if she was congratulating the students or herself!) This is only the woman is doing her damnedest to single-handedly end that trend after all!

35.4% of grades awarded to Ulster's students were As, compared to the UK-wide figure of 25.9%. In terms of A-E passes, Northern Ireland's figure was 98.2% compared to the national rate of 97.2%.

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When I saw this poll on the NewsLetter web site I thought for a second that maybe the results could provide solid figures to dispel the myth that Unionists/Prods are all bible-thumping flat young-earther types.

Now obviously the results would be skewed by the fact that fundamentalist christians don't use the internet because it's an unholy work of satan produced from so-called "science" to corrupt children with fairy-tales about evolution... or something.

Should creationism be taught in science classes?
33% No
67% Yes

Jesus wept!

Miller wants Gaelic-medium schools to drop A-levels.

Writing in the Andersonstown News (page 10, hope that link works with their dodgy site), Marty Miller has suggested Gaelic-language schools drop A-levels to strike a blow for a united Ireland.

"The schools in [Northern Ireland] should follow the same curriculum as their counterparts in the Irish medium sector in the [Republic]. That means pupils sitting the Leaving exams [instead of A-levels]."
Mairtin O Muilleoir, Andersonstown News, 7th July 2008

He goes on to argue that there "should be one curriculum for the whole country [sic]" and that it would be "a boon for Irish unity".

When this sort of shite comes from the Sinn Fein party rag, is it any wonder you have to question Caitriona Ruane's bias against the English-medium sector?

While skills shortages in areas like IT (which has its own bizarre story) make good news, Northern Ireland is experiencing another skills shortage at the minute. Apparently Newtownabbey and Belfast are suffering from a chronic shortage of tradesmen: plumbers, electricians and so on. Out of regions across the UK, Belfast had the sixth-lowest concentration of tradesmen per population (1/825) and Newtownabbey had the eight-lowest (1/804).

Meanwhile more and more young people are being encouraged to go to university to study oversubscribed shite like media studies, psychology and art.

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Sinn Fein have spent the last few days stirring up the idea that they will refuse to nominate McGuinness to serve with Peter Robinson. They may refuse to do so, citing their difficulties with the Irish Language Act and, rather disingenuously, Ruane's problems with academic selection.

If the latter point was really an issue for them, they wouldn't moan about it, they'd take the opportunity to shuffle her out of the Executive. Maybe the Irish Language Act is the problem

But if they do push this to an election in September, they would reset the electoral clock. They may push the SDLP out of the executive if they're lucky, but they would certainly keep well ahead of them but they would defiantly push the next election from March 2011 to September 2012. Is there any particular reason they would want to do that? Who knows.

Another one for the "What the hell is she thinking?" scrapbook. Everyone's favourite tennis star Caitriona Ruane has finally put forward her proposals for ending academic selection... by not quite ending it? Well not quite, not yet. Maybe.

It seems as if she's done exactly what Basil McCrea predicted she would, i.e. "cobble together a last-minute proposal", when she realised she wasn't going to get her way by shouting louder than her opponents, stamping her feet and quickly burying her head in the sand.

A new type of transfer test will be put together to run over three years from 2008-2001. The test will cover a broader range of topics than the current one and grammar schools may only be allowed to select between 20% and 50% of their pupils.

Nothing has changed. She still hasn't got the power to ban academic selection, and there is no way in hell this half-assed, mish-mash "policy" (using the term in the loosest possible sense) will prevent those grammar schools committed to maintaining their high standards from implementing their own test, rendering the whole exercise a pointless and expensive waste. But who cares about the cost of egalitarian dogma when it's not your cash?

It comes as no surprise to this blogger that our illustrious education minister, one Caitriona Ruane, has once again come under fire this week. Grammar schools have struck another blow against her policy of abolishing academic selection and this morning I hear that primary school headmasters have joined in the criticism and accused the under-fire education minister of reneging on a promise to level out the funding gap between primary and secondary schools.

I was pleased to see that my former school was among the 32 post-primary schools (out of the 229 in the country) that have so far committed to continuing with academic selection via an entrance exam. Lumen Christi has already indicated it will set its own entrance exam and yesterday the Association for Quality Education announced that 31 state grammar schools would be organising a common entrance exam once the Department of Education ends the 11+ test. Incidentally, despite Caitriona Ruane's depiction of the schools as "a minority of a minority", all 4 of the grammar schools I considered attending at age 10 are among the "rebel" schools planning on using the test, which could be bought in from England.

Ruane had a chance to replace the 11+ with a fairer system of testing, perhaps by having more tests spread throughout the year to reduce the pressure from the current big two exams, but without the supervision of the Department of Education there can be no guarantees that the new admissions test will be any fairer or less stressful than the current one (though I must be honest and state that as a 10 year old I could never see what all the fuss was about). In fact, given that the pupils will have to travel to a local assessment centre to take the tests, and parents may have to pay up to £65 to have their children sit it, for all her dogmatic ranting, all supposed socialist Ms Ruane has succeeded in doing is privatising the transfer procedure and increasing the pressure on chldren leaving primary school. Good work.

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This story was on 5 Live yesterday evening. According to the media, Poole Borough Council used "laws to track criminals and terrorists" (the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act) to determine whether they were lying about living in a school catchment area.

So what powers were these? Phone tapping? CCTV cameras pointed at the house 24/7? SWAT teams on standby?

No. They sent a man to check if the family left the house they claimed they lived at each morning and returned there in the afternoon. The BBC did their best to sensationalise this as "spying" - despite listeners texting in telling them to stop trying to 'sex up' their stories. Others went one better, using attention grabbing headlines claiming that 'spies stalked' the family. If this is spying, the government have been 'spying' on suspected benefit cheats for years now. Why is this any different?

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I got really pissed off with Queen's University in my last year or two, specifically with the School of Computer Science (as was), despite the university being short-listed for Sunday Times University of the Year in my graduation year, and it really made me regret not setting my sights higher on my UCAS forms. If Northern Ireland's supposed top university is that bad it makes one wonder what the competition is like. Now we know.

The UU's Magee campus is so shite the university feels the need to bribe students with £3,000 grants to take their Computer Science courses at the campus. The question is: is it the university itself that prospective students are turning their noses up at, or is it simply the idea of living in Londonderry just that repellent?