THE UNDERMINING OF GRAMMAR SCHOOLS
The twelve-piece Jigsaw to hasten the introduction of
Comprehensive Education.
1. The Department of Education’s appointment of Governors
2. ESA
(1 ) The ability of Voluntary Schools to employ their own staff may be
removed. The desire to control this aspect of the Voluntary Schools’
freedom is not because there have been problems or due to a lack of
accountability: it is simply for ideological reasons.
(2 ) The Department of Education is seeking to use the ESA legislation to
control the Voluntary Grammar Schools. On October 11th 2012, the
Minister said that no school will be able to plan on its own in terms of its
future.
(3) ESA will approve the Schemes of Management.
(4) The Voluntary Grammar Schools, which educate about one third of
secondary level pupils, will have no representation on the Board of ESA, if
the bill remains unchanged. Is this democracy at work?
(5) This may cost much more than the present system of ELBs.
The Education Minister, in response to a question from Danny Kinahan
on 29th March 2013, said that a high estimate for the cost of ESA in
2014/5 was £1.8 billion for resource and £0.2 billion for capital. This
should be compared with the estimate that the cost of the 8 bodies ( 5
ELBs, CCMS, the staff commission and the Youth Council) for 2012/13
will be £1.476 billion for resource plus £58 million for capital.
3. Area Planning.
Some reconstruction is needed, but
(1) The mergers which are planned, seem to have the object of reducing
the “grammar” influence.
(2) The “Sustainable Schools” GCSE target and the publication of League
Tables have led to the conclusion that the easiest way to ensure higher
grades is to offer more non-academic subjects.
(3) Grammar Schools are not exclusively local schools. Pupils often travel
long distances because they and their parents value what particular schools
offer. Social mobility will be curtailed if pupils have to attend school in the
area where they live. The last thing that Northern Ireland needs is a system
of local comprehensives where young people are confined to particular
areas.
(4) Current plans will strongly affect the opportunities for grammar
provision for young people in a number of geographical areas.
(5) The Catholic Bishops, contrary to the view of their people, are very keen
initially to reduce the number of places available through selection, with
the view to the eventual eradication of selection for Catholic children. If this
happens, there will be even greater pressure for places in Grammar Schools
for Protestant children.
(6) Any advice which is sought from advisers about area planning should be
seen as taken from those with independent and balanced points of view.
4. The Entitlement Framework.
(1) One third “Applied” subjects are not wanted by Russell Group
universities, nor by QUB medicine or other top courses.
(2) The collaboration required by this is part of the drive for
comprehensive communities ( similar to the “Burns”-style Collegiates).
(3 ) The Entitlement Framework flies in the face of the evidence given by
Professor Alison Wolf to the Education Committee of the House of
Commons about the subjects which are really needed by young people
today and is contrary to the efforts being made in England and Wales to
eliminate subjects from the curriculum which are mostly useless for the
workplace.
(4) There is still no sign of adequate and quality entitlement provision
being extended to those young people who have practical gifts, which
should be valued on a level with academic gifts.
(5) The real entitlement which is needed on Northern Ireland today for
young people with practical gifts to have access to robust courses and for
young people in disadvantaged areas to be given the support required
for literacy and numeracy. AQE has dealt with these important points in
its document: Quality Education for All.
5. Qualifications
These may be de-coupled from the rest of the United Kingdom and may
be de valued. A separate system with modularity, with course work, with
more applied subjects will, in time, put our pupils at a disadvantage in
UCAS and in applications for jobs. In addition the idea to remove GCSEs
will further alienate Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom
and will disadvantage our pupils.
6. Curriculum Review
Should this be led by CCEA? Are there any vested interests? How reliable
is CCEA’s track record in terms of the successful introduction of new
measures?
7. The Revised Curriculum.
Much has been made of this, as being the reason for the high standards
being achieved by our Primary Schools, recently recognized in
international studies. Rather the explanation may lie in the excellence of
the teaching by, in the main, traditional methods, and by the presence of
selection which requires reaching higher levels than would be needed if
there were no AQE and GL assessments.
8. Formula Funding
This funds schools in line with DENI priorities.
9. Control.
The present drive by the Minister and his Department to control our
schools goes directly against what is happening in the rest of the United
Kingdom.
A. On 11th October 2013, the Minister said that no school, post ESA,
will be able to plan on its own in terms of the future.
B. Writing in the Irish News on 6th October 2012 Professor Patrick
Murphy, a commentator on educational matters, and former
Chief Executive of the Belfast Institute of Further and Higher
Education, stated inter alia as follows:-
“… Educationally, the big losers are the grammar schools
which now enter the system’s mainstream administration for
the first time … Sinn Fein now clearly owns the ball and the
pitch and the fixture list. In the party’s drive for education it
has left little to chance. ESA will implement educational
policy made by John O’Dowd …”
10. Continued claims through the media and other means about failures
in our education system.
Sir Robert Salisbury has identified failing in our education system at
Primary and at Secondary levels. He has used, as part of his observations,
PISA. There is, however, a profound conceptual and mathematical error
at the heart of the PISA scaling model, and Dr Morrison, along with
studies by Svend Kriener of the Department of Biostatistics of the
University of Copenhagen, has demonstrated that PISA’s rankings of
countries are seriously flawed.
11. Publication of studies or research by those who are sympathetic to
the views of the Minister and his department.
12. Attempts to “divide and conquer” and to slice away bits of the
grammar school community through area planning, the “empty desk”
theory, inspections and much else.
Comment
Northern Ireland consistently out-performs the rest of the United Kingdom in
the public examinations, year in year out GCSE. Results from last year (2012) are
given below.
GCSE
A*-C England 69.5 %
Wales 65.4 %
N.I. 75.6 %
FGU England 6.9 %
Wales 8.7 %
NI 5.5 %
U England 1.0 %
Wales 1.3 %
NI 1.0 %
AS
A-C England 60.2 %
Wales 56.4 %
NI 76.1 %
E-U England 23.0 %
Wales 25.9 %
NI 11.6 %
U England 11.7 %
Wales 13.6 %
NI 5.4 %
AL
A*-C
England 76.4 %
Wales 75.0 %
NI 83.5 %
D-E England 21.6 %
Wales 22.6 %
NI
14.6 %
E-U England 8.5 %
Wales 9.2 %
NI 5.9 %
In addition, Northern Ireland has a much higher rate of social mobility
than the rest of the United Kingdom (there is evidence which shows a
correlation between the decline in upward social mobility and the phasing
out of grammar schools). The recent international studies by TIMMS and
PIRLS have shown that Northern Ireland is the best in Europe and 6th best
in the world for Primary mathematics (TIMMS) and in primary literacy is in
the top 5 in the world (PIRLS).
These findings must be attractive in economic terms for our Province
with a view to drawing people and businesses here, and yet there is
silence. Instead of our educational standards being lauded to the world,
there is negativity. Every education system in the world has a tail of
underachievement. Why is there the clamour for wholesale change here,
instead of areas of failings being tackled directly?
Grammar Schools still have the right to select pupils on academic ability;
however the Schools’ position and the argument for selection (matching
academic aptitude with specialized academic provision) are being
gradually weakened by a raft of measures which will introduce the
Comprehensive reality by stealth. The Minister’s intentions are clearly
stated below in a written answer about area-planning which he gave on
Tuesday 4th December when he revealed his long-term intentions. He
does not mention all the pieces of the jigsaw, just four of the big ones.
“The range of reforms I have set in motion, including area planning,
the entitlement framework, the review of the common funding
formula and the establishment of the Education and Skills Authority,
will all make a contribution to moving our education system forward
and make it a truly world class system. It is not the stated purpose of
area planning, or indeed of any of these reforms individually, to bring
academic selection to an end – but in this changing educational
landscape academic selection will become increasingly irrelevant. “