Academic selection goes on, leaving Ruane out on her own
A GREAT part of my week is taken up by meetings with a diverse range of groups and individuals.
On Monday morning I met with representatives of the grammar schools to hear a report on how the first of the transfer tests held the previous Saturday had gone. While the meeting was going on, the Education Minister was making a statement on the structure she is putting in place to rationalise schools. Since I was due to speak after her I kept an eye on the TV set in the corner on which the Assembly proceedings were being relayed.
While I was listening to a report of how nearly 14,000 children had opted to do the entrance tests for grammar schools, how the reaction of both children and parents had been positive, how schools had risen to the task to make children feel at ease and how the paper itself had been given a good reception, the minister was fielding questions about her refusal to accept the desire which many have to retain academic selection. As usual she stuck to her dogmatic, ideological obsession against the right of schools and parents to choose academic selection as one of the means to determine transfer from primary to post primary schools, again highlighting how unreasonable, dictatorial and out of touch with reality she is.
The irony is that the minister can rant, rave and rage from her bunker in Rathgael, Connolly House or wherever she locks herself away from the real world, but she is powerless to impose her diktats on the educational world.
Occasionally, in her frustration, she will send out threatening missives to schools and parents about the dire legal consequences if they do not obey her wishes, but the holding of the first tests last week show that she is irrelevant and ignored.
The reason, of course, is that the DUP at St Andrews demanded that academic selection be retained in law as part of the price for establishing a devolved administration. We then acted quickly to set up the administration to ensure that this concession was enacted and as a result the Education Minister can huff and puff but cannot blow this particular house down.
The minister has adopted another tactic declaring that the arrangements – because they are outside the regulation of her department – will be chaotic.
She has found an ally in the form of the TUV leader, Jim Allister, who was part of the team which negotiated this arrangement but now adopts the stance that anything the DUP achieved – even if these achievements occurred while he was in the party – is tainted, tarnished and threatening. He has joined in the Education Minister's song about this education issue not being resolved and children facing chaos.
The facts do not back up this assessment. Yes, we have had change but only insofar as the tests are no longer set by CCEA and administered by the department. This is not necessarily a retrograde step because even CCEA papers and their marking were not exempt from criticism.
Most grammar schools in other parts of the UK set their own entrance tests, some have a distinctive paper, others use a common paper and transfer goes on without any major catastrophe. The Education Minister's real fear is that the arrangements now being used will become embedded and accepted because they will prove workable so further undermining her.
It could be argued that there is merit in having a paper which tests only numeracy and literacy because children from some schools and backgrounds were disadvantaged by the inclusion of science. Choosing the marks out of the best two papers from three overcomes the problem of a child having a bad day. The papers themselves are designed to test what the children learn as part of the normal curriculum and, as time goes on, there will be an increasing bank of past papers to add to the samples already provided. Since the exam is not done as part of the work of the primary school there is greater freedom for parents and children to decide whether or not they wish to enter and, of course, each school has the choice as to whether it wishes to use this type of selection.
For the future, those schools which do wish to use tests should quickly agree on a common test to reduce multiple testing. Whilst the fee of 35 is not paid by those on free school meals and a large number of children benefited from this, it would be desirable to make the test free if alternative sources of finance could be identified. There is also the need to continue with giving non-grammar schools the scope to carve their own niche in the education market so that they can compete on equal terms for pupils and ensure that there is a range of good opportunities for those who do not wish to go down the academic route.
Of course, there will still be calls for some political consensus around transfer arrangements and the post primary provision. That would be desirable but unlikely whilst we have the present single-minded dictator in charge of education. So the next best solution is to get on with the job, leaving Caitriona Ruane in splendid isolation like an educational Miss Havisham whose great expectations about destroying our education system have not been fulfilled leaving her isolated, embittered and alone in the attic at Rathgael.
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Tuesday 14 February 2012
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