“you have to deal with the real world..”

Not, apparently, if you’re the Northern Ireland Education Minister, Sinn Féin’s Caitriona Ruane. Given the rare opportunity of the Education Minister actually in the studio, Jim Fitzpatrick asks, a number of times, whether the “awful prospect” of de-regulation by default, that the Minister has been threatening to press ahead with, will be a worse scenario than retaining academic selection.. [Nevermind the detail, onward! – Ed] Interestingly, along with co-opting the Churches intervention onto her side of the argument, she does seem to concede that post-primary transfer is part of the “wide range of issues” being discussed between Sinn Féin and the DUP – “we won’t negotiate through the media”. That “package deal” approach has already had its critics.


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