Diehards Under Pressure: The DUP and Education…

Helen Armstrong lives in the North West and is a psychotherapist, executive coach and trainer.

Well, here I go again on the campaign path to help end our system of academic selection as the next round of tests is looming: it’s a part of our current education system that the DUP refuse to look at: I was so pleased to be part of Reclaim the Enlightenment’s Education Reform Group when we appeared as witnesses before Stormont’s Education Committee in November 2025 where it was agreed that the need to review academic selection was put back on the agenda. It was also agreed that we as a group, would capture all available evidence and research highlighting the harm that academic selection causes to children and society as a whole: The Negative Effects of Academic Selection at 11 has recently been published by Reclaim and forwarded to the Committee to inform them in their Forward Work Plan. We hope to launch this in January 2027 at Stormont, that’s, of course, if it’s still open for business mind you, but that’s another matter!

For the DUP, academic selection is the elephant in the room; Transform Ed (DOE, 2025) has recently been launched with not much mention of this major fault line in our system; the research to show its damage at all levels, from harming children’s self-esteem to creating more division in our society between the haves and have nots, could be stacked up to the beautifully decorated ceiling of Stormont’s Great Hall but it always seems to be ignored.

The DUP choose anecdotal evidence such as the recent A level results: I nearly had to be worked with when seeing them on TV at that time, doing their usual grandstanding on how great an education system we have. Contrary to their little parallel delusional Universe is the hard-core evidence to suggest otherwise: here’s an example: December 2025 saw a publication by Queen’s highlighting that NI is one of the most educationally deprived part of the UK (Donaldson et al, 2025). Translated, this means we as a country, have the highest number of young people leaving education with little or no qualifications. Something is wrong somewhere isn’t it: the DUP are great at papering over the cracks but seem to miss the main one: academic selection. They should be ashamed of themselves for refusing to join up the dots and consider seriously the compelling evidence on how much this high stakes, unregulated test contributes to our current overall poor performance. Givan even admits himself that this test is not aligned to the whole curriculum. Another more recent example of research, again published by Queens and which I am happy to say I took part in as a parent, highlights the test’s negative effects: little evidence to suggest that academic selection improves educational outcomes or social mobility (Hughes et al., 2026). On the contrary, it concentrates advantage: families who have greater financial, cultural and social resources are better able to navigate the system and access extensive tutoring. The report also touches on children enduring stress and anxiety and that selection serves to narrow the primary curriculum. In short, our current system serves those more privileged and fairness for all is a joke.

I can vouch personally for the impact of academic selection on myself and my family. As a child I spent the last few years of primary school worrying about the transfer test and as an adult and parent I have had to navigate 5 children through the current system:  the main DUP fight-back on this is that I, as a parent, have a choice. All I can say is parental choice is a myth; at the end of the day, a parent’s right to express a preference for a school is NOT the same as having a genuine choice; this argument is less than robust. My youngest child did not get into the local grammar school along with his twin brother and this had a devastating impact on his self-belief and confidence; as he described it himself, the system reflects ‘a game of winners and losers’ where he was one of the losers. Paul Givan, from what I know, failed his transfer test; he did comment that his parents did not make him feel a failure. I am very glad of this…what good parents. However, the question I would like to have asked him during this Assembly debate on 3^rd February 2026 (NI Assembly 2026a) when he announced this in his argument that parents, not the children, over-react and use the language of failure, is, did HE feel a failure regardless of his parents’ reaction? I wonder what truly the answer would be. In my opinion, you can’t kid a kid: children are perfectly capable of forming their own thoughts and opinions about themselves distinct from those of their parents’.

All of this leads me to one conclusion and one conclusion only: since the evidence against academic selection is piling high as I said, yet seems to be continually ignored, I am convinced that the DUP’s intransigence on this matter is one based on ideology and not fact. Are they trying to keep the less well-off in our society at bay? Is it a case of ‘The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate’ as Cecil Francis Alexander wrote in one of her hymns? I have always been interested in Cecil Francis Alexander mainly because the school I went to, was her ancestral home: I’ll forgive her this time given she was writing to the backdrop of 19th Century Victorian values that promoted a rigid and unchangeable class system where God’s divine plan was for you to know your ‘place’. As much as these words are left out of All Things Bright and Beautiful, they still feel alive and well in this wee part of the world. I work as a coach and therapist with many people who deem themselves from the working classes and the key themes that come up time and time again, are lack of confidence and not doing well at school. There are of course, exceptions to this rule, my father-in law being one of them, coming from the back streets of Ballysillan and going on to achieve a degree and have a fulfilling career. But, by and large, the echoes of Alexander’s words still reverberate today, and academic selection has played its part.

I think I can be easily forgiven for having this train of thought given how much evidence there is against the transfer test. After all, the DUP made sure they walked away from the St Andrews’ Agreement (Northern Ireland office 2026) with exclusive rights to maintaining it: ‘We are pleased to have secured the retention of academic selection’ were the exact words of Ian Paisley Junior (Paisley, 2006). Perhaps, though, there is a little glimmer of hope: Paul Givan’s recent comments are worth noting when he stated during Ministers’ Questions on 27^th April of this year that ‘If I were to start with a blank canvas, I do not think we would have Academic Selection in Northern Ireland. I think we would be able to find a better way’ (NI Assembly 2026b). Well, I am happy to go and find Paul Givan that blank canvas which he must think is beyond our grasp. His Transform Ed reforms refer to promoting equity, tackling disadvantage and learning from high performing international educational systems. Can I point out to him that none of the latter use academic selection at such a young age, and it again just seems like the usual lip service and nothing more to effecting positive change where that elephant in the room sits gagged and unseen.

References and Links:

https://www.reclaimtheenlightenment.net/

file:///C:/Users/paula/Downloads/AcademicSelection11reportOnline%20(1)%20(1).pdf

Department of Education (2025) TransformED NI Strategy for Educational Excellence. Belfast: Department of Education, Northern Ireland. Available at: https://www.education-ni.gov.uk/articles/about-transformed-ni (Accessed: 6 October 2026).

Donaldson, R., Jordan, D., McDonald, S. and Turner, J. (2025) Northern Ireland Productivity Dashboard 2025. Belfast: Northern Ireland Productivity Forum, Queen’s Business School, Queen’s University Belfast.

Hughes, J., Loader, R., Hadden, J. and Fargas, M. (2026) Exploring Academic Selection and Grammar Schools in Northern Ireland. Belfast: Queen’s University Belfast/Nuffield Foundation.

Northern Ireland Assembly (2026) Official Report: Tuesday 3 February 2026 – Academic Selection. Belfast: Northern Ireland Assembly. Available at: Northern Ireland Assembly Official Report (Accessed: 6 October 2026).

Northern Ireland Office (2006) The St Andrews Agreement, October 2006. London: Northern Ireland Office. Available at: GOV.UK – The St Andrews Agreement (Accessed: 6 October 2026).

Paisley, I. (2006) Statement by Ian Paisley following the talks in St Andrews, Scotland, 13 October 2006. Democratic Unionist Party. Available at: CAIN – Statement by Ian Paisley (Accessed: 6 October 2026).

Northern Ireland Assembly (2026) Official Report: Monday 27 April 2026 – Question Time: Education – Academic Selection. Belfast: Northern Ireland Assembly. Available at: Northern Ireland Assembly Official Report (Accessed: 6 October 2026).