THE THREE main Protestant churches in Northern Ireland have proposed the retention for another year of an 11-plus-type exam in the absence of any consensus on how primary school children should transfer to second-level schools.
The churches were implicitly critical of the Sinn Féin Minister for Education Caitríona Ruane complaining that the current “unregulated education transfer system” was a “failure in good governance”.
The Church of Ireland, Presbyterian and Methodist churches through their Transferor Representatives’ Council called on the Minister and the North’s political parties to agree “regulated interim transfer arrangements” – tantamount to the continuation of the 11-plus exam for at least a year.
Such an exam would be difficult to arrange, however, considering that “P6” pupils – children in sixth class – are well into their school year, a year when most tuition for the 11-plus used to take place.
Moreover, such is the level of disagreement between Ms Ruane and the DUP and Ulster Unionist Party over academic selection that some form of ministerial accommodation with the parties appears unlikely. The situation is further complicated by the effective standoff existing between the Minister and more than 30 grammar schools who are threatening to stage their own transfer tests in place of the 11-plus to determine which students they will accept.
The 11-plus is now abolished and Ms Ruane has proposed a system where children at 11 would transfer to post-primary schools without any transfer tests and at 14 make “informed choices on their educational pathway”.
Her proposals, which are to be implemented over three years, only have the effect of guidelines because she cannot get legislative agreement for them from the Northern Executive, primarily because of opposition by DUP and UUP ministers.
The Protestant churches argued that, because of the lack of consensus, “interim arrangements would give some certainty and confidence to children, parents, teachers and governors as well as creating space” which they propose could be used by a “Working Group on Transfer tasked with seeking to build a genuine longer term consensus”.
At present 33 mainly Protestant grammar schools are threatening to hold their own transfer tests. This would create a difficult situation for children and parents with pupils wishing to have a number of options having to take a number of tests. Some 30 Catholic grammar schools are due to decide next month whether they will follow the same route as the predominantly Protestant schools.
Ms Ruane cannot prevent schools staging these exams. Her department, however, has warned that schools that ignore her guidelines face the risk of legal challenges from parents whose children have been refused admission to these schools. Her spokesman said Ms Ruane’s “policy is for a non-selective and inclusive process of transfer to post-primary education rather than a system that identifies many young children as failures”.
Mervyn Storey, DUP chairman of the Assembly’s education committee, said the statements from the Protestant churches illustrated how “isolated” was Ms Ruane on the issue of academic selection, which the DUP favours.
The UUP education spokesman Basil McCrea welcomed the call for an interim exam. He said Ms Ruane’s “determination to pursue a narrow ideological agenda has desperately polarised opinion in Northern Ireland”.
Also welcoming the proposal, Alliance education spokesman Trevor Lunn said: “The parents of children in years five and six do not know what is going to happen to them and how they are going to cope with the unregulated chaos that will come as a consequence of the Education Minister’s decision.”
