“I don’t know if I would call it a witch-hunt..”
Interesting snippet from yesterday’s Irish News, although I’m not sure the Sinn Féin Bulletin can be accurately called a newspaper.. ANYhoo.. Apparently the Education Minister, Sinn Féin’s Caitriona Ruane, is hearing voices.. [scroll down]
“Look at who controls the media and in whose interest the media works,” Ms Ruane said. “There is, and I am putting this in inverted commas, the old boys’ network and I think that is what you are seeing.“The voices that we are hearing are the voices of the establishment. What we need to hear are the voices of the people who are pro-change and I am meeting them every day. “I don’t know if I would call it a witch-hunt. What I do know is that there are many people trying to block and frustrate change but I have never let loud voices stop the work I do.”
That would include these ‘old boys’, presumably..
I think it was a damn good idea to take in John O’Dowd to support Caitriona.
What I think would also be a most pressing matter would be to replace Francie Brolly on issues relating to the Irish language.
He is not up to the job and is not sufficiently defending the ministers flank. The only person I see in any way qualified for this task would be Gerry Adams.
Do the majority of people support academic selection – probably. Does the minister have any choice in her actions? no. She is mandated by a SF ard fheis.
The issue diffiently shows up the weakness of the system. The next time round will will have a DUP minister who will seek to destroy for example IME, I think as Gerry Adams has inticated, the institions would not surivive this.
Difficult times ahead.
PS, totally opposed to some children getting a better education than others. I got a top class grammar education, the boys in the secondary school next door got a five year sentence on a medium security holding centre. Thats wrong in my view but maybe I just dont have what it takes to be middle class.
Mick,
it all boils down to the fact they do not want little johnny playing with the kids from the council estate in the playground. as they are not up to their own child’s standards.
I can’t see how this is so. Selection allows people from poor backgrounds to go to middle class schools.
Removing selection means that middle class kids go to the middle class schools in their area, thanks to the post code lottery; poor kids go to the working class schools in their area. Removing selection means that this intermixing between the social classes is less likely to occur.
When I was at St Malachy’s there were people whose parents were doctors and lawyers and so on, and there were kids from Ardoyne whose parents were on the dole, there were people from faraway places like Randalstown whose parents were farmers; and all the other stuff in between.
I do not see where you are coming from, Mick. We agree that we need more intermixing between social classes; we need to break those barriers down. I see the plans to remove selection as a consolidation of those barriers.
ggn,
Like yourself my suspicion of selection comes from experience. I failed my 11-plus and attended one of those ‘medium security holding centres’ your referred to. This was back in the 80s. To be fair it wasn’t awful but it was dull and uninspiring and most of us, if we thought of the future at all had very low expectations of what it held for us. And partly we had low expectations because failing the 11-plus had made clear that we should expect our achievements to be modest. For instance I never heard university mentioned as an option the whole time I was there.
The awful truth about selection is that some kids will get to go to good schools, that attract the teaching talent, with stimulating classes and where they are encourage to aspire to great things. The others won’t; and it won’t be beyond there comprehension that they have in some way failed. But heh, if we encouraged every kid to think that the sky was the limit there would be nobody to do all those shit low-skilled, low-paid jobs in the service economy! All the talk about finding schools that serve the particular talents of particular children is twaddle and a polite way of avoiding any distasteful discussion about class. After all no-one wants to be seen waging class war, better to do that clandestinely and using the benign language of ‘choice’, ‘reform’ and ‘modernisation’.
Selection boils down to a simple process of deciding at 11 whether a child can expect one of the good jobs or to be clearing up after the ‘gifted’ children.
“Selection allows people from poor backgrounds to go to middle class schools.”
Pass on my thanks to the middle class who allow working class kids into THEIR schools.
Sorry, Comrade, that’s a little unfair. But don’t you think that this ‘slip’ speaks volumes about this debate. The middle class feel real ownership over grammar schools. They are their schools, which are benevolent enough to patronise working class kids.
A bit hysterical there, Mick Hall – this is not the first time you’ve jumped on me without looking. I’m the product of a school system (the Dickson Plan) which Ms Ruane appears to be modelling her own reforms on almost completely. Her problem with admitting so openly appears to be ideological (there is still a form of selection at 14 in the Dickson plan, rather than the “election at 14″ she would prefer, but can’t or won’t explain.)
My problem with Ruane is her ideological approach, period. I hope somebody can post up her SF News piece in full for you, it was absolutely laughable. For her to sell her new system on the basis of the 200 kids currently going to Hydebank is as ridiculous as Sir Kenneth Bloomfield selling the grammer school system on the basis of the 200 kids currently going to Oxbridge.
Rabelais, I’m out of the loop on this selection debate (given that I had a ‘choice’ of attending Dublin’s only Jewish school or Ireland’s only Jewish school). I think the points that you made about aspirations are revealing and merit consideration as policy, even though I wonder if it is the right of a school to engage in that type of social engineering (it certainly isn’t its purpose). I agree that they probably do that de facto by the culture, but that culture is probably brought into the school from the kids’ environment rather than vice versa. I don’t think that schools should be used for irrelevant purposes such as promoting social integration between either religious groups or social classes. We need to keep political agendas (and those who proffer them) and PC schemes out of the school system. The key is to see kids as individuals and not as members of social groups. In that respect, you can’t keep a good man down. The beauty of the free enterprise is that it doesn’t ask to see your diplomas and degrees before you enter it, so many intelligent people who failed at school have applied their intelligence within business and become successful through it. Let’s not confuse being an academic failure with being uneducated or being unintelligent. The socialists, of course, don’t like to point that out when engaging in their self-serving “Whatever shall become of them” spiel.
“For her to sell her new system on the basis of the 200 kids currently going to Hydebank is as ridiculous as Sir Kenneth Bloomfield selling the grammer school system on the basis of the 200 kids currently going to Oxbridge.”
Grammer Emerson?
In spite of that, bang on the money.
“Let’s not confuse being an academic failure with being uneducated or being unintelligent. The socialists, of course, don’t like to point that out when engaging in their self-serving “Whatever shall become of them” spiel.”
Fortunately socialists don’t actually equate academic failure with being unintelligent. Many of the finest old class warriors didn’t have a qualification to their name.
Also it is simply dishonest to suggest that education can somehow stand above or beyond politics. Schooling and education by definition socially engineer. The debate is over what sort of society you hope that they will contribute to producing. The problem with free market arguments is that they accuse everyone else of being ideologically driven while denying their own ideological predispositions.
In any case, higher education recently tried to build ‘entrepreneurship’ into modules and courses. Hardly a word was raised in dissent at what was clearly an ideologically driven agenda. (Image if ‘self-serving’ feminists, for instance, suggested that every HE course should have an anti-patriarchial agenda built in to courses.) We’d never have heard the end of it. Luckily the absurdity of trying to encourage every student to be an entrepreneur dawn on HE management. I mean, if everybody thinks that they will be an entrepereneur who will flip the burgers and serve the coffees?
At the moment we seem to be offered two pretty unsatisfactory options – selection, that will let some working class kids into apparently ‘middle class grammar schools’ or a post-code lottery that will discriminate against working class children even more. In either scenario it seems that the middle class will do okay. If there is no other alternative, we’ll need to hope that the free enterprise will allow the cream to rise to the top. Worth keeping in mind though that scum floats just as well as cream!
Sorry, Comrade, that’s a little unfair. But don’t you think that this ‘slip’ speaks volumes about this debate. The middle class feel real ownership over grammar schools. They are their schools, which are benevolent enough to patronise working class kids.
rebelais, I am not aware of a slip, although I might have worded things wrongly. My point was that, at the moment, your postcode doesn’t predetermine the school that you go to. I wasn’t trying to say that working class people would be “permitted” into middle class schools.
Your other point is a more important one; how do we deal with kids who perceive themselves as having failed at 11 and destined to a lower grade of educational attainment ? I dunno, but would it really be better to have kids whose education is curtailed because their parents could not afford to move into the catchment area of a good school ?
I am not sure that it works, in educational terms, to have kids at all levels of attainment in the same class, so the problem you are talking about surely must always exist. Of course, I could well be talking out of my arse.
You may think that, but it’s simply not. It’s a system that some of my colleagues went through and that I’m really quite envious of.
Comrade,
I don’t like selection and I entirely take your point about the danger of removing it and the whole thing disolving into a postcode lottery. Mrs Rabelais has been remonstrating me on this point all afternoon.
The problem as I see it is that we’ve lost sight of what education might have been – the idea of promoting the ‘good society’ something of cultural and genuine intellectual value. Instead we have a system which reduces kids to mere prospective workers where the education system is simply to serve the economy and ascribe pupils to ‘appropriate’ careers. In this environment selection flurishes whether it is of the academic variety that you prefer or the self-selection of the postcode lottery. I wouldn’y suggest for a minute that education shouldn’t be about preparation for employment but is that all it should be? At the moment any sense of a wholistice to the education of people has been consigned to history. Or its proponents are accused of being cranks or of proposing some sort of social engineering, as if producing complient little workers wasn’t an act of social engineering itself.
Grammer – christ, I’m mortified.
Perhaps if I’d ever sat the 11-plus…
Really guys you are all being extremely unfair to Ms Ruin (english translation)
What you all seem to forget is she is one of the brightest Sinn Fein have to offer, now I know a few of you other than those doing a sexual favour in a kneeling position, have just swallowed hard in disbelief.
I know you’re thinking that I’m just winding you up, well guess what?
I wish I was winding you up as well, but I’m not!
Sinn Fein is intellectually bankrupt the combined I.Q of all the Sinn Fein MLA’s would still be several I.Q points behind the combined total of a flute 2 potted herrings and a false face.
Who else have they got
Christina (i’m training to be a politician) Anderson (i’d rather have Gerry Anderson)
Clan Maskey (2 tongues and a vocabulary short of being articulate)
John (i’ll give you my opinion once our press office gives it to me) O’Dowd
Daithi ( bad phone calls) McKay (if this guy ties his own shoe laces in the morning i’ll put out the fires of hell myself by pissing on them)
Bairbre (Margret Ritchie without the balls) de Brun
Gerry (i could be a B Special) Kelly
Gerry ( no clue ) Adams
hmmmm maybe we should stick with Ruin after all?
Emerson
We both spend our time tilting at windmills, its what we do, your sail just happened to be blowing in the wind, no offense.
Is it not strange when people argue in favor of selection, they claim they are not taking an ideological approach, they are simply supporting the status quo. Yet when Ms Raune argues against selection you accuse her of being ideological with all that entails. Of course in reality both sides in the debate are taking an ideological position, one side wish to extend the right to a decent education to all youngsters, whilst the other wishes to continue with the current failed system. Which tags children as failures at 11 and then sends them to schools that for some help make that a reality.
True her argument could have been made in a better way, but she had a point and she had every right to make it, it was hardly a hanging matter. I would prefer for her to come out fighting with all ‘political’ guns blazing, but then what would you have accused her of, class warfare?
Comrade stalin
You are far to intelligent a person to believe selection allows a fair crack of the whip to working class kids, yes it allows some through the crack in the door, but they are a minority and incidentally not the type of pupils the secondary schools can afford to loose.
Your post code argument is only partially valid and could easily be overcome by rearranging catchment areas and sticking to them vigorously. For example areas could be carved up to ensure that 50/50 working class and middle class pupils, or there about. If necessary children could be bused to school to make this a reality, after all middle class parent have no problem with bussing their kids to grammar schools.
I’m not arguing in favour of selection, Mick. I’m very grateful to have gone through the Dickson system and it works very well.
My point is that Ruane has failed to deliver a workable compromise despite starting with an almost universal consensus in her favour. Any competent politician could have managed it but we have got an incompetent ideologue instead. She has managed to insult and antagonise people who barely disagreed with her, or who could have been easily brought round with a few face-saving tweaks to (what are presumed to be) her proposals. It is a complete and completely unnecessary fiasco.
Newtown is right that this has been a golden opportunity wasted. I’d also agree that this is the result of incompetence. But not just of the minister, but also of those pulling her strings, in what is often taken to be one of the most effective and focused political machines in these islands. They sat on their arses on this for years, when they should have been coming up with a plan for the future.
Newton effectively blames this on Ruane being a socialist ideologue. I’d be more inclined to see the incoherence to be due not just to incompetence, but to the Provos’ never-ending pursuit of the middle class Catholic vote, which is what they need to continue their expansion, and kill off the SDLP.
And as for Ruane, I see we are no longer talking about maximum change – which was very far from maximum change – but simply pro-change. Whatever the fuck that means.
Being as smart as a whip (Ms.Ruane?) does not necessarily make you a good politician or administrator.
Ms. Ruane is clearly out of her depth on those two scores.
With the awful system we have adopted for our Assembly, we badly need consensus builders.
“Fortunately socialists don’t actually equate academic failure with being unintelligent.”
Rabelais, it was more a case of arguing that against the socialist view that the alternative to an education is a prison (Ms Ruane and Hydebank) when the actual alternative is being forced to be self-sufficient (hence – “The beauty of the free enterprise [system] is that it doesn’t ask to see your diplomas and degrees before you enter it”) and that adversity makes the man (hence – “you can’t keep a good man down”).
“Also it is simply dishonest to suggest that education can somehow stand above or beyond politics.”
On the contrary, education must not be used to indoctrinate kids with a political agenda. I very much doubt anyone supports the view that it should or, indeed, does.
“Schooling and education by definition socially engineer.”
No, they educate by definition; and that shouldn’t be obfuscated with social engineering (which means manipulating people into following an agenda or behaving in a predetermined way). One is about knowledge and teaching people how to draw conclusions from evidence, and the other is about indoctrinating them with your the conclusions of an elite sans any evidence. It’s the difference between teaching them to think and telling them what to think.
“The problem with free market arguments is that they accuse everyone else of being ideologically driven while denying their own ideological predispositions.”
Perhaps there is some validity in that, but the free market, unlike socialism, doesn’t come with a set of doctrines that seek to control all aspects of peoples’ lives. Indeed, the left in Western culture is a mere luxury that cannot exist without the free market. The Right creates the wealth and the Left dreams of ways to distribute it.
“In either scenario it seems that the middle class will do okay.”
And the problem is…? They do better because they come from an environment that values success – which is why their parents are middle-class.
“Luckily the absurdity of trying to encourage every student to be an entrepreneur dawn on HE management.”
Pardon? Every kid is forced to do a degree in business studies? Not the case, obviously. Entrepreneurs create the businesses that create the wealth – and create the jobs for everybody else. The more entrepreneurs that a society has, the richer than society becomes. Devalue them or you doom yourselves to penury. Naturally, not everyone has the ability to be successful in business or we’d all be millionaires, but I’ll leave you with the example of a man who left school at 14 and has created jobs for 6,000 people via his entrepreneurial flair, Fermanagh man, Sean Quinn. Nope, no Hypepark future there and no Nannystate to mollycoddle him – just the school of hard knocks and raw ambition.
Exactly JoeCanuck. Both SF and the DUP appear intent on furthering antagonism by appealing simply to their supposed core support. Sammy Wilson has hardly come in as a consensus builder while so much heat has built up around Ruane that SF are hardly going to give her the push.
Dave,
Where would Sean Quinn be without people to run his business though ? I’ll bet the job ads for Quinn Group companies require qualifications.
By the way, I’m aware of the irony of a product of a religious education complaining about being indoctrinated with beliefs, but those beliefs are a part of the family and ethnic culture and the right of a parent to bring their child up according to his or her faith. That’s a very different matter from a school being forced to indoctrinate kids with a political agenda via PC system or other form of fashionable social engineering.
Stalin, I’m not sure what point you are making. Anyone with intelligence can enter business without a qualification. Oviously, if they failed school because they were thick then they’ll fail in business for the same reason. My point is simply that business is an option for those who failed for other reasons. I quite sure that I did not state that business is an option for everyone.
If they are thick and fail school they can always become a politician, or a community worker – good business up north.
In the States only rich people can enter serious politics. Here thickos enter it to become rich. Wake up people!
“It will involve a differentiation of various schools into more academic pursuits like science or languages or history and less academic (but no less important) like music, or art or drama.”
You’re right in that a more diverse eduction system would be benificial, but wrong to say that non-acadenic education is equally as important. These subjucts are important but people are most likely to succeed in a knowledge based economy if they have an academic background. Good education policy should reflect this.
Stephen B
The reason that the education system fails those that do not succeed at the 11+ is thatv secondary schools are designed for the same purpose as grammars, that is to say to funnel children into further academic training.
In my city the largest most succesful secondary school allows vocational and academic training, for those of the academic mind they provide university entrance and university equivalence courses. For the vocationally minded they provide the training required to graduate level one apprentases while insisting on a minimum academic standard.
Why can’t your system work that way, suit both types of educational needs
StephenB, I fail to see the benefit to kids of an education system that is primarily designed to benefit vested interests in society rather than the kids. There is a dubious assumption that the level of technical knowledge that is taught to kids who are to be steered toward technical careers in the workplace will be any damn use in that workplace and that that knowledge isn’t something that should more properly be learned in that workplace under an apprenticeship rather than in school, depriving the child of a more general education. Why waste time teaching the kid technical drawing, for example, when it will take it seven years to qualify as an architect and it’ll still know sweet FA about the latest AutoCAD system? I would leave the career-based education to post-secondary level, where young adults of 18 or so have a clearer idea of what they want to do with the rest of their lives. Is it really fair to steer a child toward a job as a mechanic or whatever based on a few flawed assessments irrespective of what that child may eventually want to do? A system that focuses on teaching the child as much general knowledge as it can learn, along with teaching it basic thinking skills so that it can acquire knowledge by its own means, teaching it basic ethics, about society, how to spot devious propaganda and manipulation of public opinion, etc, would be much better. To that end, a system of progression based on continual assessment of learning ability would be needed (exams taken every three months with the points being accumulated). It’s true that knowledge-based economies require … ahem… knowledge, but not the Mickey Mouse that teenagers learn. Leave that to the universities.
Dave,
You say: “it was more a case of arguing that against the socialist view that the alternative to an education is a prison (Ms Ruane and Hydebank) when the actual alternative is being forced to be self-sufficient (hence – “The beauty of the free enterprise [system] is that it doesn’t ask to see your diplomas and degrees before you enter it”) and that adversity makes the man (hence – “you can’t keep a good man down”).”
As a socialist I don’t see the alternative to education as prison. The point I made was a simple one: socialists don’t equate the absence qualifications with stupidity. On this it would appear that you and I agree.
Also your point that “education must not be used to indoctrinate kids with a political agenda. I very much doubt anyone supports the view that it should or, indeed, does”.
In an ideal world it shouldn’t and nobody would but education today is there to serve the economy. I wish it was, as you put it, “about knowledge and teaching people how to draw conclusions from evidence”. But seriously, Dave, what do you think a child’s experience of education is these days as they are frequently assessed from an early age, selected at 11 in a manner which can be both humiliating, traumatic and play a considerable role in determining their career.
I draw upon me experience in higher education. As a socialist I entirely agree with you that education should be “about knowledge and teaching people how to draw conclusions from evidence”. But what I find are young people who come out of our school system trained in passing exams and assessment exercises but unable to think critically or independently.
My own discipline, once analytical, is being systematically dismantled. Its critical and intellectual criteria evacuated in favour of ‘skills’: its sole aim to provide ‘industry ready graduates’ for the so-called creative industries. I teach on what increasingly feels like a training programme rather than a university degree. In a sense it’s a model of free market economic efficiency. Industry no longer has to spend any money training its employees, it gets HE to do it for them and the students even pay fees for the privilege.
Students are themselves suspicious of intellectual arguments and resistant to analytical thinking because the don’t see how it will benefit them in the search for a job after graduation. Some of my colleagues complain about the students. I try not to because clearly their experience of education is one that has instilled this instrumental approach in them. Education is solely about getting a job. Now that’s social engineering.
The stuff about built-in entrepreneurship is true. I can barely believe it myself.
PS
You seem to suggest that being middle class is dependent upon valuing success. In other words working class people don’t value success?
Why must Ms Raune accept consensus on this issue? when it is clear, the only consensus the grammar school lobby/DUP etc is willing to accept is the postponement of the ending of selection. To do this would mean she has capitulated, not accepted consensus. Were she to do this or leave her post, some would claim it was yet another example of when the DUP and the middle classes bark, SF hops back into the safety of their masters kennel.
This policy is one of the reasons people voted for SF, if they can not get through one of their main planks, what are they doing in this administration. All this talk about a sensible compromise is in reality no such thing, for if SF compromise on this they will be sending the majority of working class children to sink schools etc.
Garibaldy is partially correct about SF attitude to the ending of selection, the importance of this bill to SF can be judged by the fact that the ending of Selection was one of the first things Martin McG did when he became education minister.
The DUP and the pro selection lobby have sensed SF blood on this issue due to the fact that the Catholic church supports selection, it is this lobby that the alter bar biters within SF are reluctant to go against.
All those who are calling for a compromise on this need to say just what should replace the ending of selection, the partial ending of selection, selection for rich kids and the catholic church. There is no consensus possible as the ending of selection is an either or question, you are either for or against, there is no middle way as that would mean accepting a degree of selection as someone has already pointed out.
Consensus is only possible if you are all moving in a similar direction and clearly that is not happening here. It is a rerun, the rest of Europe has been here before, all these argument happened elsewhere when selection was ended. they are all false and based on the continuation of selection and thus privilege.
Those within SF who are supporting the campaign to remove Ms Raune must know that if she goes the bill falls with her. For SF this issue is far more important than policing, although for many it will not seem so. If they allow this one to fall, SF will have proved their left critics correct in that they have evolved into green tories.
SF must stand firm, support the children of their core support base and their unionist counterparts.
‘You’re right in that a more diverse eduction system would be benificial, but wrong to say that non-acadenic education is equally as important. These subjucts are important but people are most likely to succeed in a knowledge based economy if they have an academic background. Good education policy should reflect this.’
When we consider the most successful cities/ city regions in terms of the ‘knowledge economy’ its probably not that controversial to suggest that New York, and in particular London are the most advanced in this respect. When we look at the economic make-up of these cities we can see that economic activities supporting the high-end financial services and accommodating those who work in these sectors (that provide much of the wealth generation) account for between 50-60%. That is, without these functions being provided for in cities (or regions) sufficient talent wont be attracted to (or convinced to stay) in the economy of that place. Each is dependent on the other.
BTW the support services being described include things like theater, art galleries and restaurants as well as the standard functions like cleaners, technicians, etc.
The diversification of schools into ‘specialist’ schools (perhaps for post 14 year olds) would allow for academic excellence within the education system at science specialist schools or finance specialist schools without the blunt instrument of the 11+ which simply decides as academic or non-academic at such a young age.
It also allows for the choices to be made without the burden of the failure/ success labels and these obviously have an psychological impact.
Further to that, an education system that fosters cohesion and inclusivity between the various socio-economic groups in the wider public arena would certainly go some way to encouraging economic development. One only have to look at the devision in Cape Town or Johannesburg to see the impact that devision between the haves and have-nots has had on economic development.
I make no apology in repeating the following excerpts from another thread.
The 11-plus works. It is a valid and reliable measure for testing attainment in English/Irish, Mathematics and Science/Technology. The 11-plus meets international standards for “high stakes” testing similar to GCSE or A-Levels. So for all the critics of the status quo please indicate how the proposals for change improve upon the staus quo. Those quick to denigrate it must do better than the “failure” argument. It must strike one as strange that the GBA are against the 11-plus unless you adhere to the view that the GBA represent the Catholic Church schools and therefore have been stringing along other voluntary grammars on academic selection while putting in place the building blocks for a comprehensive catholic education system.
If you’re not in you can’t win on the 11-plus. About 32% of pupils are not entered. One Shankill primary school entered no pupils for the 11-plus two years running.
In that area parents have been failed by teachers, the churches, politicans and the education authorities and their own poverty of aspiration.
The most disadvantaged and ill-educated parents need the help and support of the state to provide a lift out of the poverty trap. Poverty of aspiration is the endemic feature which is spread like a virus. (See reference to Jaime Escalante in prior post)
The mostv damaging thing for disadvantaged pupils was the “early years enriched curriculum” (EYEC) which was introduced into controlled primary schools in 2000. The School of Psychology at QUB, the BELB and CCEA were the architects. The promise made in the funding plea was that the new curriculum would improve on the traditional teaching- the results proved otherwise. How can delay in the introduction of teaching of reading and maths be ever considered an improvement?
Not a word of apology from the experimenters. Wilfred Mulryne, former headmaster of Methodist College Belfast helped approve the CCEA funding, Rev Houston McKelvey was a member of the BELB and has remained silent on the negative results of the experiment. Perhaps the posters to this blog would like a list of the great and good who lend their status to education projects but disappear when things go wrong. Most, incidentally, have been promoted instead.
questions on this education reform agenda designed to achieve rationalisation rather than educational improvement should be addressed to the organisations mentioned above. It was they who initiated this unethical experiment. If it was a medical study it would have ended shortly after starting and the investigators likely struck off or jailed.
A question for the truly concerned: Who will pay for the damages done to the Shankill children experimented upon?
Now that revised curricular changes have been enshrined in leglislation the real meltdown begins. With a themes based curriculum designed not to permit measurement it will be interesting to see if Neil Anderson and CCEA can come up with a test for Caitriona Ruane as he has claimed CCEA will do. According to the Belfast Telegraph,CCEA’s new test will obviate the need for the AQE version. It will therefore measure the new curriculum – measurement was something the revised curriculum was designed not to be capable of. Given that the Pupil Profile is unworkable and CCEA have created a conundrum – the 11-plus substitute test suggested by Bloomfield seems to be the only act in town. But who owns the test?
Perhaps the workable compromise is simply to stick with the 11-plus and consign the reform agenda to the bin?
“The 11-plus meets international standards for “high stakes” testing”
Posted by Essentialist
Are you sure about that? not according to the BBC Today program.
Why not fix those schools? Seriously. What solution would the new system bring that we couldn’t apply to our current system?
Why not fix those schools? Seriously. What solution would the new system bring that we couldn’t apply to our current system?
Posted by 0b101010
No you raise a good question, the problem is when you have selection it sets in stone a two tear education system. Thus those with power automatically channel more resources into the top tear as this will produce the type of results that gets them a pat on the back. [see government set targets etc]
It is more than this, the most able teachers, understandably, wish to teach in the top tear, for a host of reasons not least career satisfaction.
A two tear system also instills in those who are in the bottom tear a feeling of failure, that higher education is not for them, it lowers their career options etc etc.
A two tear system also encourages an elitism amongst those who pass the 11 plus, it may be subconscious but it is there all the same.
Finally it is a matter of resources, if there is money for education and say a headmaster, a majority of whose pupils go on to higher education and the head who has a majority of his/her pupils going on to the dole, who do you feel the minister/whoever would allocate the limited resources to?
Last but not least a two tear education system helps further divide the haves from the have nots, and thus this must inevitable cause a lack of social cohesion within society and hinder mobility between the classes. Something that is essential if a society is to be successful.
I am positive about the Northern Ireland transfer test meeting recognised international standards of validity and reliability. The BBC did not post a sample of today’s 11-plus on their site but instead used examples from many years ago. It is clear from Ed Balls recent attempt to reignite the ideological attack on grammar schools that this is part of a political agenda. The tories do not support selection either. Their preferred option is city academies. Early results demonstrate that they are failures in the same way that comprehensive education failed in England 40 years ago. It is a pity that both main parties are so out of touch with the electorate. Perhaps they should get out of Westminster more as should our local crowd with the tea room in Stormont.
If you need confirmation of the validity and reliabiity matter just call the School of Education at Queen’s University and ask for Professor John Gardner or Pamela Cowan. They will put you straight on the facts surrounding the 11-plus. Just don’t mention Assessment for Learning to John!
Essentialist
You day the comprehensives failed in England 40 years ago, this is untrue, what evidence do you have of this, whilst there is still a long way to go and for a host of reasons, you will need to produce some evidence, simply saying something does not make it a fact.
How come so many youngsters in England have managed to go onto higher education from comprehensives when few managed to do so from the old secondary mods.
again you say the English politicians our out of touch with the electorate on education, again you are wrong, if there is one thing people want above all other is to send their kids to the local school. The challenge for politicians and educationalists is to bring all local schools up to an adequate standard equal to the best in the land.
Mike Hall,
I am aghast that you are unaware of the failure of comprehensivisation in England. Any review of the literature and evidence base will inform you. Look at the attainment records of the grammar schools, secondary moderns and comprehensives. Note the loss of social mobility in England since comps were introduced. Pay attention to the complaints about sink schools and postcode selection for admission to comps in leafy neighbourhoods.
Getting into higher education is not evidence of improved teaching and learning; simply the reduction of standards as a consequence of government social engineering.You should read today’s revelation by the BBC on exams. It surprised no pupil or parent or employer. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7482225.stm
Tony Blair sent his son across London to the Oratory School to avoid the local school. Diane Abbot MP sent hers to private school.
You cannot bring all schools up to the same level because of intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Teaching numeracy and literacy to a minimum standard in primary school is a different proposition.
“there is still a long way to go and for a host of reasons,
If you are talking about the comprehensive progressivist nirvana I would suggest you keep your comprehensive ideals and leave the rest of us to choose the “inferior” system.
The evidence for popular support is found in the proportion of pupils entered for the 11-plus each year despite Martin McGuinness’ claiming to have ended academic selection. Be careful what you wish for….
You’re right in that a more diverse eduction system would be benificial, but wrong to say that non-acadenic education is equally as important. These subjucts are important but people are most likely to succeed in a knowledge based economy if they have an academic background. Good education policy should reflect this.’
In one word this is bollocks
you can have the greatest knowledge based economy in the world but if you can’t flush the crapper it all collapses. Knowledge based economies rely on computers, how do computers run with out electrics.
A knowledge based economy is great and all but if you don’t have the basic underlying fundamentals then you have nothing.
And what exactly is the point to preparing the entire school age population for further education when only a minority of them will ever even try it.
I am Canadian and we have selection at 14 but it is self selection where the student decides what path he chooses to walk. in high school we have both vocational and academic streams, the academic stream is self explainatory and is available in the same school as the vocational. Vocational training allows the high school student to graduate as a level one apprentice and these grads are eagerly snapped up by industries facing perenial shortage of workers.
The funny thing is that its the vocational programs that are the hardest to get into and your application must be approved by the teacher as their is no automatic acceptance like their is for the academic streams.
Schools should serve the population not the population should serve the school
And the underlying strength of the economy are the plumbers, carpenters, the mechanics and electricians. you know the dumb little people
Steve,
So you have comprehensive schools in Canada!!
While here they are busy trying to dismantle the academic education provision in Northern Ireland schools i.e. grammar and good secondary moderns. our wonderful visionaries have done nothing to address the vocational training needs except for selling worthless GCSE’s and GNVQ’s that an employer wouldn’t use in their loo.
Ask the Irish News or Belfast Telegraph how many applicants with a GCSE in Journalism they’ve employed.
For that matter call the DENI and ask for a list of vocational and academic subjects. You may have to describe them as “general” and “applied” since when asked in the UK Parliament to answer the question some years ago the best they could come up with was to change the terms.Still no answer. It’s actually quite a common technique when the educationalists are faced with such technical problems. “Stupid is as stupid does” Mr Gump warned.
I believe they are what you would call comprehensives. the schools are for all abilities and the academics attend the same schools as the vocationals. Our primary schools are strictly academic and last through till what you would call P8. After that the parents and children decide what course of action to take. There is no selection test and is based mostly on interest and previous academic performance.
one of the differences is that there are only 3 highschools in my city of 45,000 and in the four years perhaps a total student population of around 2,000.
School is compulsory till 18 though you can quit with out graduating after 16. the drop out rate is relatively small
Essentialist
I am not interested in Tony Blair, Ms Abbott or any other sell out, you claimed comprehensives failed 40 years ago in England, yet when I ask for examples you cannot give me anything beyond tittle tattle and gossip.
Your campaign is based on nothing but lies, smears, inuendos, half truths and self interest.
You claimed comprehensive failed 40 years ago, christ Blair was still at school then, why bring him into the agenda anyway as the Oratory is not a grammar school, nor is the school Abbot son went to. what is that all about.
Now I can prove that grammar schools failed the majority of children as the evidence was used in the debates we had when comprehensives were first introduced, why do you not google it and learn something, although whilst you huff and puff about what happened 40 years ago, I doubt you were even born..
Why do you not admit it, you do not give a fig about the best interest of the majority of School children, all you care about is the privileged minority who gain a place at a grammar school and to hell with the rest.
Just for once tell the truth why you support these reactionary schools.
Mick,
Delighted to see you are so-ill informed. Could it be the product of a comprehensive education?
Since you rail against sell-outs perhaps a personal meeting with Cardinal Brady to explain the Catholic Church’s about face might help assuage that fevered brow?
Ignore Blair if you wish: at least he wasn’t foolish enough to get involved in an attack on grammars.
You seem to be mixing up those who think they exercise control and privilege with the reality that the 11-plus result determines the admission to grammars in Northern Ireland. At present pupils and parents choose schools not the other way around That’s the law and that’s the way it should stay. Now schools will choose pupils based on subjective admission criteria. My concern is for retention of the equality of opportunity. After all Mick if you don’t want to go to a grammar school noone forces you to. That’s why parent’s who sent their children to seconday schools with A grades are guilty of wasting taxpayers money. The transfer test is only for those seeking a place at a grammar school.
Rather than Google I had expected that you cite Wickapedia as the font of all knowledge. At least that’s what teachers are telling kids these days.
Blair and Abbott sent their kids to schools that they felt met their needs. That will disappear here if the clowns in education have their way.
Let me conclude with a simple maths lesson I read some time ago in the Irish News.
42% of pupils attend grammars in Northern Ireland. 32% of pupils are not entered for the 11-plus (this presumes that parents agreed). That leaves 26% (or about 1:4) who do not get in to a grammar school. The educationalists, unions, nationalist and alliance politicans and Catholic Church can only suggest improving on this figure by using one system. Everyone must attend a comprehensive. Chaos looms.
BTW With the provision of Catholic comprehensives to keep the masses out.
Essentialist
As I wrote in my last post you have no real understanding of the damage selection does nor do you care. All you are interested in is the minority who attend grammar schools. [even by your own figures]
Unless you are prepared to debate this fact then our debate is pointless. I do not expect you to agree with me, but by simply ignoring the damage selection does to individuals and society, you are accepting it as the collateral damage some one else has to pay on your behalf so that you can maintain your privileges.
I see that as cowardice whilst you may see it as looking after you and your own. Which is basically the reason why the north became the nightmare place it was between 1969-2004.
Try wearing another’s shoes, if only for a while.
By the way I never had the good fortune to attend a comprehensive, I went to the type of sink school you so readily condemn other peoples children to. Even almost fifty years later I would happily shoot the headmaster of that ‘school’ and the majority of the masters without a backward glance.
I can completely understand why today youngsters who come out of such schools rage against society and create havoc in their wake, but you are not interested in their plight, nor even those of their victims, all you want is to maintain your privileges. What a sad fuck you are.
Mick,
Here’sn example of a practical solution rather than your tired socialist/Marxist rhetoric. Perhaps if you had teachers like Jaime you wouldn’t blame selection.
Instead of the tired rhetoric used by the professionals hiding behind their unions and political representatives, the northern ireland teaching profession must stand and deliver on their responsibilities. The excuses trotted out in a tired, repetitive and unconvincing fashion only perpetuate their failure, particularly in primary school, to lift disadvantaged children out of their trap.
For evidence rather than anecdote see the work of Jaime Escalante in Garfield High School in East Los Angeles. The Hollywood movie, Stand and Deliver, highlights the prime location for the poverty of aspiration in classrooms.
Escalante says: “The movie Stand and Deliver brought home several important points: First, no one expected severely disadvantage barrio students to achieve academic excellence. The movie also revealed that some educators hold the false and racist idea that Hispanic students are not as smart as some others, and that they shy away from courses that require hard work. It also showed how an even more insidious prejudice leads to a prevailing opinion that requiring academic excellence from poverty-level students presents a grave risk to their “fragile” self-esteem. Such a demand, according to the nay-sayers, would be one stressor too many for young lives already bowed under crushing poverty, inequities and hopelessness. How could they be expected to cope?
I am happy to say that our program has proved that logic to be faulty. When students of any race, ethnicity or economic status are expected to work hard, they will usually rise to the occasion, devote themselves to the task and do the work. If we expect kids to be losers they will be losers; if we expect them to be winners they will be winners. They rise, or fall, to the level of the expectations of those around them, especially their parents and their teachers.”
Parents want to find teachers like Escalente in their schools but this will be impossible when the Graduate School of Education at Queen’s University, responsible for the teaching of teachers, is populated by those who have never taught in a school classroom and are described mainly as conflict resolutionists. Perhaps many of these supperannuated socialists are responsible for the conflicts in the education system today?
Watch Escalente on being a teacher here..
http://www.thefutureschannel.com/dockets/jaime_escalante/jaime_on_being_a_teacher/index.php
Mick,
Here’sn example of a practical solution rather than your tired socialist/Marxist rhetoric.
Posted by Essentialist
Essentialist
Before I am prepared to debate further with you, give me an example of where on this thread I have used what you call tired socialist/Marxist rhetoric or apologies. Otherwise we have nothing to say to one and another.
The reason being this debate is not about socialism, marxism or conservatism, but the future of our children’s education, if you believe I would put my own political wish list before that you have absolutely no idea of what makes me tick.
As I said put up, apologies or that its for me.
Mick, You advocate comprehensive education a socialist/marxist construct. Your ideology interferes with examination of the core issues. Choosing an appropriate type of education for their children remains a right of parents. One size does not fit all. You want to negotiate only on your terms. I refuse to be intimidated. No doubt you read the post on Escalente. Start with your views on that. Point me to one Jaime Escalente on the Shankill.
Mick,
To quote your twisted logic try this:
“in reality both sides in the debate are taking an ideological position, one side wish to extend the right to a decent education to all youngsters, whilst the other wishes to continue with the current failed system. Which tags children as failures at 11 and then sends them to schools that for some help make that a reality”
In fact one side wish to impose equality of outcome/results on everyone (the comprehensivists) the other wish to preserve equality of opportunity (those in favour of choice for a grammar school education) No one is forced to apply for, attend or succeed at a grammar school but they should have the right, on the basis of ability/attainment measured objectively, to compete for a place.
You can’t have it both ways Mick. Its either equality of opportunity or equality of results. You may switch your side but can’t play on both at the same time. That’s what so many of the educationalists try to do. Hence the chaos.
When you don’t have any real evidence, always adopt a condesending tone…
Rebelais,
Do you wish to contribute some evidence or just snipe? Please spare us the constructivist nonsense – my self esteem couldn’t handle it.
I’ve followed your comments on this thread and like Mick Hall I was curious to see if you could present some credible evidence to support your assertions. You’re not obliged to, of course (I seldom do). This is an open discussion thread. Not an exercise in essay writing or for the purposes of some sort of intellectual validation.
I’m interested interested in the comments of others contributors to this debate because I haven’t quite made my mind up on the selection issue. I have some concerns of my own with regards to what it might all mean for working class kids and their parents.
I find that your contributions are written eloquently but in manner that is also condescending and supercilious. You accuse others of being ideologues but deny your own ideological predispositions. What could I possibly contribute that you would have any interest in? I’ll just snipe if it’s all the same to you.
Rebelais,
The evidence you seek, the case for comprehensive schooling over differentiated, grammar and secondary schools must come from the proposers of such a system. None is available in Northern Ireland apart from anecdotal evidence from a few schools claiming to be comprehensive. They are singularly unwilling to provide it since it is not in their favour which is why they resort to failed emotional arguments for the change away from choice.
If you wish to see comparative measures of performance, i.e. attainment results, from England to assist in your decision making I am happy to oblige. My preference, particularly for working class children, is to see equality of opportunity persist. I do not value equality of results. Do you?
Those who started this campaign against selection have a lot to answer for. For my own part I make decisions based on scientific evidence acknowledging that education is not a science.