Twenty-five years of damning reports on academic selection…

In September 2026, Queen’s University Belfast published the latest in a long line of reports Exploring Academic Selection and Grammar Schools in Northern Ireland. The authors of this Nuffield Foundation-funded study reviewed the UK research, interviewed parents, principals and stakeholders, conducted pupil focus groups, and held a deliberative event. Their review of the evidence suggests little or no overall attainment gain from selection at 10 or 11, because gains for some grammar pupils tend to be offset by losses elsewhere. It also suggests that selection concentrates poorer pupils, pupils with special educational needs and newcomer pupils in secondary schools, and that it narrows teaching in P6 and P7. The report recommends ending high-stakes selection at 10 or 11 and moving to an all-ability system, alongside investment and funding that better reflects pupil need.

We have been here many times before. In 2000, the Department of Education published research by Tony Gallagher and Alan Smith on the effects of the selective system. It found that the tests narrowed the upper primary curriculum, put pressure on children, and that private tutoring favoured better-off families. In 2001, the Burns review body, commissioned by the first devolved education minister, recommended ending selection. In its place, it proposed formative assessment in primary schools and collaborative groups of post-primary schools. The Costello working group reported in 2004, during the suspension of devolution. It also recommended ending selection and proposed that transfer rest on parental and pupil choice, informed by a pupil profile.

Government-run tests ended in 2008, but grammar schools set up their own. From 2009 until 2022, most Protestant grammars used the AQE test and most Catholic grammars used the PPTC test, and in 2023 the two were replaced by a single SEAG test. The Independent Review of Education reported in 2023 and proposed retaining a reduced form of selection. Under its proposal, the proportion of pupils transferring on academic criteria would initially be capped at 25 to 30 per cent, and selection would use pupil profiles in place of a single test. Studies of the 2021 transfer year, when the tests were cancelled, found that the social make-up of grammar school intakes changed little. On 3 February 2026, the Assembly passed an amended motion calling for a time-bound plan to end academic selection.

These reports do not reach identical conclusions. Burns and Costello recommended ending academic selection; the 2023 Independent Review proposed reducing it and changing how pupils are assessed; the latest Queen’s report recommends an all-ability system. Across the research, however, recurring concerns are clear: unequal access, social segregation, pressure on children and distortion of the primary curriculum. The evidence reviewed by Queen’s offers little support for claims that selection improves attainment or social mobility across the population.

There have been changes. Government-run tests ended, separate testing arrangements were eventually replaced by a common assessment, and the Assembly has called for selection to end. Yet the division of children through academic selection persists. Political disagreement and institutional resistance have repeatedly prevented recommendations from becoming a sustained reform programme. The question now is whether the latest report will produce action or simply join its predecessors gathering dust on the shelf.