Education Minister Caitriona Ruane was strongly criticised today for
considering by-passing the Assembly to introduce a controversial new school
transfer system in place of the 11-plus.
The Belfast Telegraph yesterday revealed details of a confidential Sinn Fein
briefing paper prepared by Assembly staff to brief MLAs and councillors.
The leaked Sinn Fein briefing paper was passed to this newspaper by Basil
McCrea, education spokesman for the Ulster Unionist Party.
It outlines the possibility of new admissions criteria being issued to
schools by the Education Minister in the form of 'guidance'.
This would not include academic selection as an option and any grammar
school which ignores the guidelines and continues to select pupils based on
their academic ability would have to finance their own entrance tests and
any appeals which result from this.
The SDLP's education spokesman Dominic Bradley commented: "It is
alarming that after all the long consultations with stakeholders that the
Minister is now admitting that she will not be in a position to achieve
cross-party agreement on her proposals, and that she is contemplating
pressurising schools into agreement.
"In a partnership government progress should be made through agreement
and not coercion."
Basil McCrea said: "The confidential Sinn Fein paper obtained by the
UUP unequivocally demonstrates the Education Minister's intention to
entirely by-pass the Executive and the Assembly.
"Sir Reg Empey has indicated that if this is the case, he will not be
taking part in the local area planning groups set up by the Education
Minister.
"Forcing parents to place their children in the nearest local school is
not in the interests of diversity, excellence or choice in our education
system."
DUP education spokesman Sammy Wilson said that the Sinn Fein document
confirms that schools will be able to "snub" the Minister's
guidelines if they choose to do so.
Mr Wilson said: "The guidelines would not be enforceable by law.
"If she did go down this route I would say that we could live with it.
It is what we expected would happen at the end of the day."
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