Let’s celebrate the grammar school heads who are determined to continue to provide for the 40% of NI’s children in selective education

This has had an impact on a range of issues, including education.

One of the most contentious issues educational issues in Northern Ireland is the so-called ‘transfer test’, which is administered by two private organisations, AQE and PPTC.

In almost all of the public discussions on this issue, contentious as it is, I have been the single outspoken proponent of the test proceeding, and more specifically, the single public figure willing to offer a defence of academic selection in general.

The media has been dominated by the opponents of academic selection, circling in this Covid-hit year, seeking to undermine the use of the transfer test using the highly charged language of the educational progressives, and claiming private ownership of the ‘child-centred’ stance on this issue.

In all of my public engagements to date — both on television and on the radio — I have sought to make the argument that those who are portraying themselves as the moral compass of the Province in relation to this issue are, in fact, offering no workable alternatives for those schools who wish to remain committed to using academic selection, even in this year.

Indeed, despite there being 11 schools which removed the use of the transfer test this year, in favour of using alternative admissions criteria, 50 of Northern Ireland’s grammar schools have remained steadfast in their commitment to continuing to use the test as the primary admissions criterion.

• Ben Lowry: Covid will be used to undermine grammar schools

The 11 schools who ditched the test, we are told, have shown phenomenal leadership and have put their children’s needs first.

The other 50 grammars are, in contrast, by implication described using words like ‘cruel’, ‘barbaric’, and are accused of failing to put their children’s needs first, by people in public office.

Indeed, the NI Children’s Commissioner, Koulla Yiasouma, has regularly used her office in her public engagements on this issue to describe the administration of the test this year as ‘cruel’, whilst the Interim Mental Health Champion, Professor Siobhan O’Neill, has similarly in a radio debate with me on BBC Talkback, described the transfer test as ‘barbaric’.

Furthermore, Professor O’Neill on that same radio debate, together with articles on Belfast Live and The Derry Journal, contends that the administration of the test this year has the potential (cautiously hypothetical) to cause “lasting and lifelong” damage to children’s mental health, citing anecdotal stories of children crying and considering suicide because they had to sit the test.

In a similar manner, Archbishop Eamon Martin in The Irish Times on May 19, went beyond the scope of his office to cite the unsubstantiated claim that “educational disadvantage will be exacerbated” should testing continue.

He urged schools to admit pupils on the basis of “non-academic” criteria, but gave no further indication of how this would work in practice for the schools which remain committed to the concept and philosophy of admitting pupils to their schools on the basis of academic merit.

These discussions should trouble us greatly as a society, because they represent a worrying culture which exists within debates of this nature; namely, to occupy the moral high ground, seeking to win the argument in the hearts of others.

Depressingly, opponents to these views are criticised for failing to put the needs of children first.

The 50 grammar schools committed to using academic selection this year are, therefore, seen as perpetrators of cruelty, barbarism, and an anti-children ethos.

Their commitment to selection in this year is, de facto, taken to be the action of an elite collection of schools seeking only to protect their own interests over and above the interests of children.

My call to the readership of this newspaper is, to the contrary, let us celebrate the steadfast commitment of those grammar school heads who have said that they are determined to continue the educational provision for approximately 40% of NI’s children in selective education.

Let us avoid the temptation to be swept along by the ill-considered rhetorical drivel which those seeking to be the moral barometers of this debate would have us believe.

Being ‘child-centred’ is not a normative, definitive position, which is the possession of one side of this discussion.

Is it so terribly inconceivable that being child-centred might be to allow those children who wish to sit the test — even in this chaotic year — a chance to do so, and to pursue the grammar school education they want, based on merit?

Is it so unfathomable that we would seek to protect the excellent work which takes place in NI’s grammar schools, and their right to admit children on the basis of educational merit, which can only be established through the administration of a test?

We must distance ourselves people in publicly appointed offices and privileged societal positions who try to tell us what is best for every child.

The hysterical language of these contributors should not surprise us. What perhaps should, however, is the even more troubling failure of our education minister, Peter Weir, to offer the protection of his office to a process which he claims to support.

I tried to engage with the department via the minister’s SpAd (special advisor), and was reminded that it was the department’s role to facilitate the transfer test, but not to support it.

Minister Weir failed around 40% of NI’s children with his unwillingness to offer a robust defence of academic selection.

His three Sinn Fein predecessors never missed an opportunity to undermine academic selection.

Now is a time for those who occupy public office to show courage and integrity and to follow the evidence; to avoid empty rhetoric and the pursuit of public approval.

Northern Ireland’s children deserve much better from the adult community.

• Dr William H Kitchen is an author and academic

• Ben Lowry: Covid will be used to undermine grammar schools

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