I found two absorbing articles in this morning’s Irish Times. The first was about the views of Bertie Ahern regarding a reunited Ireland, the other a comparison of the education systems north and south.
Bertie first.
The title of the article is ‘Former Taoiseach warns against holding Irish unity referendum’, which is massively misleading, since Bertie does nothing of the sort. What he opposes, he says, is a border poll in the ‘near future’ and I agree with him. A new Ireland, as I’m getting tired repeating, requires careful and detailed planning and preparation. Bertie also claims that the GFA requires ‘a long period of stability in Northern Ireland where the political institutions have operated without interruption’. A laudable state of affairs but not one I remember seeing in the GFA. He says that first we must plan how to integrate the Garda with the PSNI, amalgamate local authorities, combine the NHS and the HSE. The necessary preparatory work hasn’t been done for these, Bertie says, and he’s right. Health, education, policing, taxation – all need to be planned. He says that the Royal Irish Academy is holding meetings addressing these matters, and that Queen’s University and DCU are looking at how a new Ireland might be financed.
Ever humble/vain, Bertie claims he “even helped get Sinn Féin off that hook because they’ve stopped looking for a poll next week”. Right, class. Hands up anyone who has EVER heard a Sinn Féin politician call for a poll next week?…Right. Maybe go back on the tablets, Bertie.
The other article is titled “North v South: how the island’s two education systems compare”.
A lightning trip down memory lane. When I attended UCD in the 1960s, there was a firm but unspoken conviction among us nordies that our education system was far superior to that provided south of the border. Not so now, it would appear.
A study by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) compares the systems from primary to third level.
Firstly it noted that there was “plenty of ignorance of each others’ systems.” I can testify to that. When working on the Post-graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE), there were some virtual meetings with students studying the PGCE in the north and those studying the equivalent Higher Diploma in Education (H Dip) in the south. The two systems were very different, and neither side had a clue that the differences existed. Even worse, they didn’t much care.
The ESRI study found that primary school math scores were higher in NEI, while science scores were higher in the south. Special needs are more successfully addressed in the south than the north.
At secondary level, early school leaving is “two to three times higher in Northern Ireland” and still widening. Some 14% of 16-24 year olds left school with few or no qualifications in NEI; just 6% did so in the south. And a disadvantaged background was more likely to land you in this unhappy state in NEI than in the south.
It goes on and on. The take-away message is that there is a gap between education in the two jurisdictions and an ignorance of that gap. We shouldn’t be too damning of that ignorance – teachers are phenomenally busy people, often trying to get preparation for Monday’s classes completed, let alone find time to compare or even benefit from looking at each other’s system.
I am cheered by both Bertie’s article and the ESRI report. Both have begun to identify the areas that need to be looked at, considerable progress already appears to be underway, and politicians and officialdom appear to be doing what is crucial over the next five years: looking at what is working north and south, looking at what is deficient north and south, and putting in place realistic plans for something better if and when we achieve national unity.
Three cheers – OK, two and a half, then – for Bertie and the ESRI. If knuckle-draggers here were to stop complaining about Prof. Colin Harvey of Queen’s, and work as honestly and assiduously for the common good north and south as he is doing, progress would be even greater.
Jude always great to read your articles, Colm Harvey’s input, as to why a united Ireland is the way forward only makes sense , If only on the loyalists side, they could argue there merits of staying in the union,then we can really get down to talking.