Workers Party Representative Dean Burke responds to a recent article on Grammar Schools and poses the question is it Choice or Inequality? And calls for a Rethinking of Grammar Schools in NI.
Mr Burke said the recent article in the Belfast Telegraph about Campbell College’s new principal and his defence of the grammar school system “choice is key”, raises an important question about the existence and future of Northern Ireland’s grammar school system. For decades defenders of academic selection have framed grammar schools as a matter of parental choice, a supposed luxury of diversity that encourages aspiration and rewards hard work hard. These arguments are nothing new, and they obscure a much harsher truth.
The Workers Party has long called for equality within the education system. In reality, the notion of choice within grammar schools is largely illusory. Grammar schools entrants are far more likely to come from privileged backgrounds and with the resources to afford private tuition and early preparation. A system that sorts children at ten or eleven years of age does not extend opportunity. It restricts it, especially for those from working-class communities, children with special educational needs, and those already disadvantaged by circumstance. This is not meaningful choice it is structural inequality.
That inequality is deepened by the fact that decisions shaping children’s futures are outsourced to private companies. These organisations design and administer the tests that determine entry to grammar schools. Commercial bodies should not be allowed to decide who gains access to public education or to profit from that control. Education is a public service, not a marketplace. It should be democratically planned, publicly funded and delivered for social need, not private profit.
Academic selection and high-stakes examinations at such an early age are educationally and developmentally premature. Grammar schools do not raise overall standards. They reflect exsisting inequalities by sorting children according to the advantages they already have, concentrating opportunity rather than expanding it.
For many children who do not gain a place, the experience of being told they have “failed” before starting secondary school can be profoundly damaging. It can erode confidence, affect motivation, and shape self belief for years to come. No child should feel their future has been decided at the age of ten. Parents know this too. The stress and stigma affects families not just children.
If we truly value aspiration, equality and community, then every child must have access to high-quality education without the barriers of selection, postcode or privilege. True choice means investment in all schools, in every community, with equal resources, and secular inclusive teaching.
Segregating children by perceived ability entrenches division in a society that needs cohesion, not further separation. The grammar school system belongs to another era. The Workers Party believes that education must serve the many not the few. A truly democratic and socialist education system is one where every child can learn, and thrive together.