Viewpoint: Now everyone has been alienated

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Editor: Martin Lindsay

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Confusion reigns among parents and teachers, still awaiting a definitive statement on the future of secondary education and wondering how to interpret the new timetable proposed for ending academic selection.

There has been a U-turn on the abolition of all testing, after this year's 11-plus, but Caitriona Ruane's plan looks like offering the chance of a stay of execution for just three more years.

The result, after months of uncertainty, is that the Minister has succeeded in alienating both the grammar school lobby, which threatens to hold an independent entrance exam, and the pro-comprehensive campaign, which fears a surrender to grammar school interests.

The primary schools do not know what to prepare their pupils for, and post-primary schools are in limbo, as area-based plans are still being debated.

The Minister could win breathing space by her three-year postponement, but she had little alternative. Although she has made some progress with her plans for greater co-operation between schools — to eliminate some 50,000-plus surplus places — in many areas the negotiations have a long way to go.

She will be long gone, by 2013, when she wants all admissions to be on the basis of non-academic criteria.

The opposition from the unionist parties and voluntary grammar schools meant she was forced to back down because she knew there was no chance of winning consent in the Executive.

They now have to spell out what they would do to rationalise the school estate, and improve the life chances of children now leaving school without qualifications, but they know the status quo is not an option.

The "transfer exam" which is proposed as a short-term alternative will provide headaches for both the local exam body, the CCEA, and the primary schools.

It has to be a new form of test, since the new curriculum is unsuited to any variation of the 11-plus, and parents will be unhappy that their children are being used as guinea pigs in an experimental process.

Even the idea that grammar schools will be set a quota over the three-year phasing-out period — allowing 50%, 30% and finally 20% of their intake to be chosen by academic selection — will satisfy no one. Schools which are determined to maintain their academic record are unlikely to be bought off by such a temporary measure.

Some may choose to bargain over the percentage, but others will insist on setting their own criteria, and entrance exam.

And any attempt to discriminate against them for departmental funds must be resisted.

A long battle is in prospect, as Sinn Fein try to replace the grammar school system with comprehensives, open to all, and some parents conclude that living near one's school of choice may be their best option.

The Minister rejects the appointment of an Executive sub-group to find some consensus, but the signs are she may eventually have to give way.