This morning’s News Letter has an editorial headed ‘No place for cronyism in Northern Ireland’s education system’, with a big photo of Education Minister John O’Dowd beneath it. Which is a bit like asking someone ‘Have you stopped beating your wife yet?”
The editorial says it doesn’t mind St Patrick’s in Armagh becoming an all-ability school and receiving pupils from St Brigid’s, which is due to close. What’s worrying the News Letter, apparently, is the process of change.
“There are suggestions that pressure from the Catholic Church, which is opposed to academic selection, and the appointment of three people with strong anti-selection views to the board of governors of St Patrick’s, helped smooth the path for the change of status. There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing, but political opponents of Mr O’Dowd feel that boards of governors of schools are being packed with people who share his views on education”.
If there’s no suggestion of wrong-doing, then the News Letter’s complaints about Mr O’Dowd are a touch woolly. And of course political opponents of Mr O’Dowd are going to ‘feel’ all sorts of things about what he’s doing.
In reality, it’s not a matter of concern about the process of change. It’s concern about change. For reasons best known to themselves, unionist politicians are opposed to any change in the Eleven Plus system of selection. The Catholic bishops, to their credit, are in favour of all-ability secondary education. So too are Sinn Féin. Not because it makes the job of the teacher any easier (Ever tried working with thirty youngsters who go from bright-as-a-button to aggressive-and-uninterested?) but because all-ability schools help check the social-class divisions that separation by academic ability brings. In other words, half the reason a lot of parents want grammar schools for their children is so they’ll mix with the ‘right sort’ of classmates.
The north’s traditional grammar school/secondary school system is terrific, if your concern is high A Level grades and your child is in a grammar school and you don’t give a damn about social integration. It’s less terrific for the many children who leave school with minimal qualifications and have been taught to see themselves as academic failures. Some people urge that changing the selection age to 14 would solve the problem. No it wouldn’t . Children can make sudden and dramatic improvement in their academic performance at any age: what’ s needed are the conditions which encourage this kind of change. That happens a lot more easily if you’re in a school that caters for all abilities and works to get the best in every sense out of every youngster.
A basic sense of social justice demands that we give every child an equal chance in life. The Eleven Plus and selection by academic ability run directly counter to that. We’ve been fiddling with this matter since Martin McGuinness took office as Education minister. It’s time the nay-sayers were firmly moved aside.
Funnily enough, Lyra McKee in an interview over on So’T mentioned how she felt as if she was some sort of failure on account of the selection system
This is the first time I’ve ever heard some one speak this way.
Admittedly I might be on my own wee planet but it doesn’t mirror my experience of school at all.
It was simple:
Go to High School.
If you don’t study you’ll probably fail your summer exams and be moved down a class or two.
Study and you may keep your place in your class and even potentially do well in your GCSEs.
Do well enough then you can go to the ‘hallowed’ grammar school and sit your A-levels and potentially trump those who passed the eleven plus all those years before.
And at least half of my class did as well as a fair whack of the classes ‘below’ mine.
Never once felt inferior to anyone due to the system.
It was a case of sink, swim or fly. In any case it was up to the individual.
And as for the social integration, well, this is interesting.
Over on Slugger O’Toole I’ve been assured by some contributors that dividing schools along religious grounds does not aggravate division on society and by a similar token integrating them would do little to overcome such divisions.
Yet apparently socially integrated schools WILL overcome division.
So the son of a Catholic bank manager can integrate with the son of a Catholic janitor.
How’s that going to help NI’s society?
Plus, if you over egg the all-ability pudding, your going to see the rise of private schools.
WE ALL KNOW they’ll take off if Grammar schools are given the heave ho.
So potentially we’ll be worse off than when we started.
I’ll admit that I am ignorant of all the facts and findings and this is based very much on my limited experience
“you’re” going to see the rise of private schools….
Oops….
Jude :
As an aside: there had been a plan to have a joint- campus at the old St. Luke’s hospital site in Armagh. The old site including the Longstone Hospital having been gradually run down as services were farmed off to Craigavon and the Dungannon areas. This will obviously have a financial and social impact on the local economy. but was largely unreported and unopposed in any vociferous way in the local media.
The proposed new campus was to have shared teaching resources between the newly amalgamated St. Patrick’s/St Brigid’s hybrid and the the local Royal School and High School. To an outsider’s eyes it looked that this seemed like the start of a brand new cross-community ideal , which would hopefully mix-up our children in a new educational melting-pot and give them some insight into each other’s world view.a lot has or hasn’t happened in our politics and on the streets since the project was originally mooted…..
Days ago it was announced that St. Patrick’s was pulling out of this scheme and concentrating future activity soley on on it’s present site.
I have no idea about the political/social/ or religious machinations in the background. They may be financial for example but no-one has yet explained the volte-face as yet.
I don`t understand why Unionist politicians do not give a hoot about working class Protestants. You would think they were all a bunch of grasping toadies who spent their days aspiring to sit with their `betters`. Oops.
If the tax payers only pay for non religious schools( yes Virginia tis possible), concern over school exams will get real, as in helicopter parent real.
Jude : are you sure that you are not referring to a report in the BelTel rather than the Newsletter? The BelTel article describes as ‘cronyism’ the Ministers appointment of three members to the Board of Governors of St Patricks Grammar.
Both the trustees ( ie the Bishops) and the Department of Education are required to appoint Governors. Although the Bishops are committed to removing selection, they continue to appoint pro-selectionists to Board Of Governors. By appointing anti-selectionists O’Dowd is attempting to ensure that change happens.
And Jude, please remember that secondary children are not aggressive and uninterested! Not true!
Thanks for contribution, Cd. No, I’m pretty certain it was a News Letter report I read. Both papers may have covered the story. And I don’t think you’ll find that I’ve said secondary children are aggressive and uninterested. Some are, in my experience, and some aren’t. But having visiting dozens of secondary and grammar school classrooms during my working life, I found it much more likely that teachers faced a and u in secondary schools than grammar. That’s a generalisation but generally it’s true.