When the DUP returned from St Andrew’s, triumphant over the retention of academic selection and the preservation of grammar schools, it failed to appreciate that Sinn Fein, with the help of a group of sympathetic ‘progressive’ educationalists, had already established educational changes and structures, that would ultimately rob the DUP of the fruits of its ‘victory’.

Opponents of selection include Professor Tony Gallagher of Queen’s Education Department, Gavin Boyd former head of the NI Council for Curriculum Examinations and Assessment (NICEA), and a circle of fellow travellers. They had for many years been planning changes which one of their number described as the ‘Trojan horse’ — which would change the education system in Northern Ireland.

It was easy to sell this programme of deception to the Labour government, with its own antipathy to selective education and a need to conciliate Sinn Fein. The result was the NI Education Order 2006 which implemented the proposed curriculum changes, provided for the abolition of the 11-plus, and placed enormous power over the schools’ curriculum in the hands of Gavin Boyd’s Council.

Post St Andrew’s, the stage was set, not for progress, but for stalemate. Selection remained lawful but the prospect of agreement on a new method of making it was remote. At this point, for other political reasons, the necessity to cobble up some sort of deal to save the Assembly had become acute and education was simply a pawn in the game.

One of the other ‘pieces’ was the setting up of a new super body that would replace the existing Education and Library Boards. The new Education and Skills Authority (ESA) was to be given quite extraordinary and extensive powers over every aspect of education. The designated head of this monolith was to be none other than Mr Gavin Boyd, who had been one of the chief architects of the revised curriculum.

This curriculum was so inconsistent with a selective system it looked programmed to destroy it; and about which the consultation with parents had been insignificant. Until the recent deal to avert the collapse of the Assembly, and with it the privileges of its members, the DUP had been an ardent opponent of the new body. It was a position it shared with grammar school heads of every denomination.

The centralisation of such extensive control over education in one body, headed by an individual associated with anti-selection opinion, was not viewed favourably by the schools, local councillors or the churches.

The DUP’s recent decision to support the ESA project is impossible to understand except in the context of some wider deal. Gavin Boyd has been instrumental in obtaining legislative approval for a revised |curriculum, designed to subvert the basis of any form of selection and which will prove disastrous for literacy and numeracy. Yet he is to be approved in an office giving him the most extensive power over education by the DUP, a party claiming to be the defender of selective academic education.

What has the DUP received in return for this astonishing concession? Apart from getting Sinn Fein back into the Executive, the terms of the educational ‘fig leaf’ may be as follows.

Minister Ruane, after a ritual protest, may agree to selection for 11-year-olds continuing for several years. Selection will be on the basis of a test provided by Gavin Boyd’s former Council. How this test will be formulated is impossible to imagine, bearing in mind that the revised curriculum was designed to prevent selective testing. The reliability and validity of such a test will be highly questionable. The interim period will offer a breathing space to devise and agree a more permanent solution.

The DUP will claim another victory over Sinn Fein and the Party’s reputation as the |champion of academic selection will be confirmed. Sadly, such a |perception will be at odds with reality. The nature of the permanent solution is already emerging. Instead of the grammars being simply terminated, they are now to be destroyed by a slower process, by the gradual introduction of a comprehensive system that has proven disastrous in England. In recent weeks, a choreographed promotion of transfer for 14-year-olds is discernible.

A number of naive and badly informed churchmen have expressed their support. The DUP’s Chairman of the Assembly Education Committee has also been quoted in The Times Educational Supplement as having no objection in principle if, in certain areas like Craigavon, it reflects local opinion. Indeed, it is believed that the DUP has provided Sinn Fein with a position paper on transfer at the age of 14, much to the annoyance of the Grammar Schools who appreciate where it will lead. Professor Gallagher, no friend of selection at any age, who concluded in 1998 that transfer by selection at age 14 did not provide the basis for an alternative to selection at age 11, now seems willing to embrace it.

The reason why it would now prove attractive is that it would effectively ensure, if a little more slowly, the ultimate destruction of the grammar schools by mutating them into comprehensives. The scheme, as currently envisaged, is as follows. All children at age 11 will move to their nearest ‘neighbourhood school’, which may be either a grammar or a secondary modern. Intake to every school will be all ability; the hallmark of the comprehensive. If it is a grammar school, it will have to engage remedial staff to cope with that part of its intake that requires such teaching. Some specialist teachers in modern languages or science may have to be dispensed with. This effect will increase over the three years of intake to age 14. The grammar schools will simply mutate into comprehensives over time.

Few parents, whatever their child’s ability, will want to move him from a neighbourhood school at age 14, if that school happens to be a grammar. Those at secondary moderns will therefore find places at the grammar schools difficult to secure.

The system of transfer simply will not work on a province-wide basis. All schools will become comprehensives. A few will be good, most will be mediocre or poor. Selection by postcode will become the norm and standards of numeracy and literacy will fall as the revised primary school curriculum produces more and more 11-year-olds who cannot read properly. Once the DUP embarks on transfer at age 14 or any variant, whether elective or selective, its claimed defence of the grammar school system will be doomed.

Indeed, with its approval of the ESA, and the latter’s ability to enforce the revised curriculum and failed primary school teaching methods, it may have already, perhaps even unwittingly, sold the pass. A wake-up call from parents within the electorate is urgently needed. The present situation is an unholy mess but even worse could follow.