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Education debate: Parents everywhere are asking: what do we do?
Friday, 27 March 2009
School Transfer Poll
Which of the following options would you support?
Which of the following options would you support?
Which of the following options would you support?
| A selective test for two years to give time for political consensus to be reached |
 42% |
| Bilateral schools (up to 35% of pupils at each school selected on academic ability). |
 5% |
| No academic selection at 11 but can be an option for schools at age 14 |
23% |
| Phasing out of academic selection over three years to create a comprehensive system |
12% |
| An unregulated education system - schools can opt to set their own entrance tests |
18% |
Parents, teachers and pupils are bracing themselves for potential confusion as an unregulated transfer system and independent entrance tests replace the 11-plus. Putting a temporary exam in place to buy time to find agreement has been supported by all the main parties bar Sinn Fein. What are the options facing parents now? Education correspondent Kathryn Torney reports
Why opt for academic selection?
Bilateral schools
Northern Ireland currently has four bilateral schools — integrated schools Slemish College (Ballymena) and Lagan College (Belfast) and also Holy Cross College in Strabane and St Patrick’s College (Maghera).
They are the only non-grammar schools permitted to use |academic selection to determine some of their intake — up to a maximum of 35%.
Just last week, Caitríona Ruane approved the amalgamation of St MacNissi’s College, Garron Tower; St Aloysius’ High, Cushendall and St Comgall’s College, Larne. The new school will also operate as a bilateral school on a split site from this September.
Lagan and Slemish have both announced that they will continue to use academic selection next year — acting against the guidance issued by Caitriona Ruane.
Slemish said it will select 35% of its first year intake based on verbal reasoning tests in order to preserve its academic and all-ability ethos.
Slemish has around 750 pupils and is thought to be one of the most over-subscribed schools in Northern Ireland. Last year, 270 young people applied for 120 Year 8 places.
Mark Weir, school leader at Slemish, said: “Our partial selection came about to ensure that there was a truly comprehensive intake at the college — from the most able to those who require significant learning support.
“Whilst selection continues, the board of governors have decided to partner with local grammar schools to provide entrance tests and it is intended to continue to select 35% of our students by |academic means next year.
“We would never seek to become fully selective as we are convinced of the benefits of having children of all abilities educated in the same school.”
Mr Weir said that the college would be “delighted” to see the end of all selection by academic means in all schools.
“We band students according to ability because we recognise the need to employ a wide range of teaching strategies and that students have different learning styles. This has been very effective.
“There is certainly an ethos of academic competition in our school, and children are keen to progress through the bands.
“We work hard to ensure that any feelings of “failure” are minimised by focusing on success and ensuring that all bands receive the best quality of learning and teaching we can provide.
He added: “Decisions need to be made at the highest levels and the welfare of P6 students is paramount.”
All-ability schools a ‘fairer deal’
Comprehensive System
Carmel McCartan, principal of St Louise’s College in Belfast, |argues that a system of all-ability quality schools here would |enable all young people's talents to be nurtured and developed.
She said: “St Louise’s has been the flagship for all-ability, quality education for over 50 years.
“Our vision has always been, and continues to be, the belief that every young person has talents and gifts which will be developed to their full potential in a quality school passionate about a fairer deal for all young people.”
Mrs McCartan said that west Belfast is very fortunate to have high quality, all-ability, 11 to 18 schools large enough to offer the full Entitlement Framework.
Under this framework all schools from September 2013 must provide all pupils with access to a minimum number of courses at Key Stage 4 level (the current target is 24) and post-16 (current target 27).
“In these schools all children learn together successfully without compromising academic standards,” she continued.
“Thousands of young women from this college bear witness to this in the legal profession, medical professions, media world, teaching, inspectorate, creative professions, public and private sector.
“We do not need to segregate children at the age of 11. Selection is an anachronism in the 21st century.
“It is a throwback to the late 1940s when the educational environment and indeed the world were very different.
“Our hope is that the decision makers in government, the church and the world of education will have the courage, strategic |expertise and conviction to |ensure that future generations of young people and their families never again suffer the pain, stress and indignity of a cruel, selective system,” she added.
St Louise’s caters for almost 1,600 pupils and is one of the largest all girl schools in western Europe.
It is also a Specialist School in Performing Arts.
The principal said: “I think all-ability schools offer a much fairer deal for young people and they enable every young person to feel valued.
“Children mix with others from different backgrounds, they wear the same uniform and do not feel they are being segregated into different schools at age 11.
“An excellent school is one that caters for every young person from the academically gifted to the child with special needs.”
Mrs McCartan described the current confusion over the future of school transfer as “dreadful”.
“An unregulated transfer system has the potential to damage more children if they have to sit a series of tests,” she said.
“I agree with the minister’s |vision in terms of the abolition of selection.
“I hope that the processes needed to make it a reality will happen and that all political obstacles can be overcome.”
Would a transfer at age 14 be beneficial?
Selection at 14
Last summer, a group of educationalists representing a diverse range of views on transfer came forward with joint proposals in a bid to reach consensus on the issue.
The small working group of six represented grammar, secondary, integrated, controlled and maintained schools and agreed that choices made by pupils at age 14 should be made more significant than those made at 11.
Under their proposal, children would transfer between schools at 11 without academic selection. If schools are over-subscribed, non-academic criteria would be used.
Academic selection could be used at age 14 and and at this point pupils may move from one school campus to another within Local Area Learning Communities.
The group’s paper stated that agreeing to abandon academic selection at age 11 in return for retaining the right to have academic selection at age 14 and again at age 16 would create the potential for a wider educational consensus and “offer Sinn Fein a good deal of what it appears to want while not denying the DUP something which it appears to value.”
However, the proposal was |rejected by the Governing Bodies Association, which represents the province's 52 voluntary grammar schools.
The 11-plus was dropped almost 40 years ago in the Craigavon/Lurgan area and replaced by the Dickson Plan which places primary school children into junior high schools at age 11 and then selects them for senior highs at 14.
Uel McCrea, principal of Ballyclare Secondary School and president of the Association of Headteachers in Secondary Schools, was one of the educationalists involved in the talks.
He said: “The proposal was not ideal from the secondary schools’ point of view and my own point of view but this was a consensus paper.
“Central to the proposal was that children’s needs should be the main focus — not institutions and their survival.
“We agreed that all children should have the widest possible educational opportunities and provision and that this could be provided through school collaboration and local learning communities rather than a ‘one size fits all’ system.
“We are currently left with an unregulated mess.”
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Comments
85 Comments
Mossy: "failed the vast majority"? Official statistics show that more children pass public examinations in NI than in England and Wales. It seems to me that our system is failing less children than the English and Welsh systems. Unless you address that point, your argument is a load of nonsense.
"The world changing rapidly"? Oh, so I take it you must mean that the "new" world wants children with a poorer education then...
Also, J Stanley, how true - I fail to see how such a vital option was left off the poll. It seems a rather huge oversight.
Posted by David | 09.04.09, 19:14 GMT
To Mossey, obviously you are entitled to your opinion. I for one would not support social apartheid, but come from a lower class area. My child attends a grammar school and I have every hope the others will too. I find it a total insult when people say a child is less likely to pass the 11+ if you come from a lower class area. It is down to attitudes regardless of class!
Posted by Concerned Parent | 09.04.09, 09:02 GMT
The 11 + belongs in the past along with slates, turf fires in the corner of classrooms, and the cane. Let us move on from the interminable non-debate surrounding this issue. We need to focus on preparing our kids for 2020 not 1820 or even 1980. The world is changing rapidly - the formula of academic selection at 10 (the 11 is a misnomer) has failed the vast majority of our children. The pro-grammar lobby in their various guises can dress it up as much as they want - but the bottom line is they believe in social apartheid.
Posted by Mossy | 07.04.09, 20:52 GMT
J Stanley - Totally agree. Belfast Telegraph where is our poll????
Posted by Concerned parent | 07.04.09, 19:26 GMT
How can you have a poll with the Obvious answer missing ?
Keep the 11 plus !!!
Pointless !!
Posted by west | 07.04.09, 17:22 GMT
i feel the testing at present is the only fairest way forward ,what otheir opption do we have to work with
Posted by paul.meehan | 07.04.09, 15:49 GMT
Oh for God's sake! Please organise a proper poll with the option of keeping the 11+. 66% of people will support it, as shown in the Household Survey. Take the results to Stormont and TELL them to implement it.
Otherwise you are just stoking fires of resentment.
Posted by J Stanley | 07.04.09, 13:50 GMT
Why do the majority vote for retaining the 11+? Prof. Danny Dorling Uni. Sheffield has the answer!
"Legislation was changed so that in areas where they still kept the grammar schools and secondary modern system, the parents of pupils in primary schools could (if they wanted) organise amongst themselves a vote to see whether they wanted to keep that system going. Quite often a majority of parents voted to keep the Grammar school, secondary modern system, where 20% of children would go to grammar schools and 80% would go to secondary moderns on average. When this was looked at it was found that the reason they were voting this way isn’t because they agreed with this 20 or 80%, it’s because they thought their child was in the 20%. that is a majority thought their child was in the top fifth. They were in effect deluding themselves." BBC 'More or less' Jan 2nd. This poll is biased and its results useless.
Posted by Exasperated | 07.04.09, 12:28 GMT
The poll had no option for simply keeping academic selection at 11! That is an option I'm sure myself and many many others would have selected!
Posted by David | 07.04.09, 12:01 GMT
I attended school in South West Scotland which has been streaming pupils at the age of 14 for over 60 years. By being educated in a co-educational all-inclusive group I still have friends in many sections and levels in the local community. The quality of teaching in my primary, secondary and senior secondary schools was second to none and enabled me to go forward and obtain a degree from Queens. Catriona Ruane's plan must not be derailed by vested interests in the grammar schools and those who will pay for their children to have an unfair advantage over their fellows. Equality of educational opportunity is a basic right under Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights established in 1948.
Do the protestors wish human rights for the socially advantaged only?
Posted by PETER CORRIE | 07.04.09, 10:53 GMT
Why not just sack the minister and replace with a minister from this country
Posted by P6 Parent | 07.04.09, 09:17 GMT
Ms Raune's moto should be equal but different. She is willing to do away with selection, which there is no doubt did have a bad effect on some children, but isn't prepared to tackle the biggest problem in our education system, the fact that protestent and catholic children are sent to seperate schools. What a wasted opportunity to truely reform an outdated system. What a waste of money as well to pay for two small schools, one catholic and one state, when one larger, integrated school could look after all the children in one area.
It's interesting that Ms Raune introduced new guidelines to treat all children equally, but didn't bother carrying out an Equality Impact Assessment even though one is required by law. Her Department are now busy making one up and there'll be no prizes fro guessing waht it is going to say.
Posted by Big G | 07.04.09, 08:49 GMT
The persistent misrepresentation of the public will on the principle and practice of academic selection via testing was exemplified in this article and poll. What did the Belfast Telegraph hope to achieve in failing to offer an option for the 11-plus? Where is the mention of CAT ?(Computer Adaptive Testing). Is the two year "interim" proposal simply to accommodate a post election change in minister? Are the Catholic schools for or against academic selection? Their position shifts St Augustine-like in their professions - they want to be anti-academic selection but not today. The SDLP and Alliance are now pro-academic selection. That should make for interesting conversation when they are out canvassing.
Basil McCrea may be right but Peter Robinson will just call it sleaze.
Posted by parental alliance for choice in education | 07.04.09, 08:00 GMT
Any one know of an online petition at all? - That would be to have Ms Ruane removed.
Posted by Disgusted parent | 07.04.09, 00:01 GMT
In the absence of a replacement for the 11+ the system may be unregulated but that isn't to say it won't have merit. Academic selection will continue as before but now the grammar schools will be able to arrange their own entrance test. In doing so there will be an incentive to choose what they believe to be the best method of selection for their school. The fact that there will be more than one type of entrance test will give pupils "another chance" to secure a place in the grammar sector. I have every confidence in the tests proposed by AQE (Association for Quality Education) on behalf of 31 of our leading grammar schools. Unlike the 11+ these will be based only on Mathematics and Literacy and pupils will have the opportunity to sit three tests with the marks in the best two counting. Parents should be reassured that the AQE tests will be as good if not better than the 11+ as a fair measure of their child's ability.
Posted by Teacher | 06.04.09, 17:16 GMT
Ref. Teacher | 05.04.09, 13:04
'The Minister is right and the system that she is proposing offers the best chance for the majority of children.'
I totally disagree. I taught in a Secondary school for nearly thirty years.
Posted by T J McClean | 06.04.09, 16:27 GMT
The Minister is right and the system that she is proposing offers the best chance for the majority of children. S
Posted by Teacher | 05.04.09, 13:04 GMT
COME ON P6 PARENTS ! the majority concensus of the ni people is that ms ruane has created a totally unacceptable chaotic situation. its about time we all stood up,shouted and stamped our feet and be heard! if we do not do this for our children who will ? so much for DEMOCRACY ?
Posted by P6 PARENT | 03.04.09, 12:12 GMT
The Minister continues to refer P6 parents to her Guidance notes for clarification on the 2010 transfer process. this apparently is a consultation document with responses invited by 27th of April 2009.
So come on other P6 parents let Ms Ruane know the strength of feeling among parents out there. lets bombard the Depts Open Enrolment & Transfer Branch with our comments.
She has said at a recent Education Committee meeting that the majority of parents are happy with change and that she has only received letters of concern none of criticism! I think that that situation should change don't you?
Posted by P6 parent | 01.04.09, 20:49 GMT
I think a system that forces teachers to make judgement or decisions on individual pupils is more dangerous than keeping the 11+.
In some schools this could lead to abuse of authority by unscrupulous teachers while in other cases teachers may feel threatened by forceful parents.
At least with the 11+ or some other exam a pupil's ability and application decides their future and not someone else's often unproven opinion.
Posted by April | 01.04.09, 13:35 GMT
85 Comments