It would be cruelty to hold transfer tests this year when children have just come through Covid-19

I am writing to back this call.

The Bible teaches that we are to cherish our children as gifts from the Lord God and to love and bring them up in Godly ways, till they reach adulthood and are able to marry and pass on what they learned from their parents to their children.

Indeed God states that he has a plan for each and every child conceived in the womb (Jeremiah 1:5 ; 29:11 )

To place young children under the transfer tests between the ages of 10 and 11 when they’ve just come through Covid-19 is barbaric cruelty.

Most of our MLAs and MPs alongside our councillors would claim to hold either to the Christian faith or believe in Biblical morals, yet we are allowing our children to be treated like trophies to be displayed in a trophy cabinet and lifted down and compared with other trophies.

If the trophies don’t shine enough they feel discarded and worthless and not worthy of any more attention.

Is this the way we want our precious children to feel that at 11 years they are failures because they failed to shine?

Is this what we as a society really think about our children, that their only worth is what they can achieve for us, instead of loving them as individuals?

That they have no worth except as a pawn, that is expendable in a chessboard game of life, played out by parents and schools in the name of winning championship points.

Where is our children’s human rights?

It doesn’t stop there, as now

if a young life doesn’t fit into our plans they can be disposed of with a simple appointment, and that inconvenience is aborted/murdered.

Our MLAs, MPs, councillors say they can do nothing.

I ask the question if that is so, then why should they remain in office?

My appeal at this time is let’s protect our children and cherish them as the gifts they are from God, not commodities/trophies, but individuals to be protected nourished and loved till they reach adulthood and can do the same.

Rev Paul S Burns, BTh (Hons.) Dip Theo, Sandy Row, Belfast