An old friend in Derry said to me last weekend: "I just wish I was 20 years younger and starting all over again." Grainne McCafferty is headmistress of a girls' secondary school whose pupils come mainly from one of the more socially deprived areas in Northern Ireland.
She has taught at St Cecilia's through the worst years of the Troubles, when it was common for many children to have fathers in jail, mothers on anti-depressants and British soldiers with guns at the school gates.
More recently, as headmistress, she has seen St Cecilia's recognised as one of the top five secondary schools in the North.
The reason for her enthusiasm - and slight regret - was the recent publication of Education for the 21st Century - the Report of the Post Primary Review Body, now known in Northern Ireland as the Burns Report after its chairman Gerry Burns.
Much of the public debate on the report has focused on the recommendation to abolish the 11-plus. This is the test which children sit at age 11 to determine whether they will go to a grammar or secondary school.
At the moment about a third of Northern Ireland's children qualify for a high-achieving grammar school. The other two-thirds do not. The arguments against the test are well known. It brands children as winners or losers at age 11. It puts enormous pressure on children and teachers.
The test is highly socially divisive. While Northern Ireland's grammar schools are respected as among the best in these islands, this is achieved at the cost of a very long "tail" of children who leave school under-equipped with even the most basic skills.
This is particularly evident in Protestant working class areas. The percentage of children who pass the 11-plus in the Shankill Road is under 5 per cent, compared with an average of over 30 per cent across the North. We should not be surprised when Protestant youths from north Belfast feel themselves to be on the losing side.
The Post-Primary Review Body was set up by Martin McGuinness in September last year. His opposition to the 11-plus was well known and the committee's remit was to consider alternatives which might better meet "the needs and aspirations of children and their parents".
In fact, Gerry Burns and his colleagues have gone much further. Grainne McCafferty describes their report as "visionary" in its proposals for dealing with the special needs of Northern Ireland and its children. In particular, it looks at new ways in which teachers and schools can work together to promote tolerance and social equality as well as academic excellence.
These proposals are built around a wholly new structure of networks of schools, which will be known as "collegiates". There will be 20 of these collegiates across the North, and all the schools in a certain area will be obliged to belong to one, at least if they want to continue to receive government grant aid. An individual school may decide to opt out but the state money will stop.
In effect, this will mean that schools of different ethos and varying social backgrounds will be locked into a structure which will require school principals and teachers to work together on a wide range of issues involved in education: the curriculum, sharing resources, contacts with the community, provision and support for pupils with special needs, training of teachers and so on.
Each collegiate will have between six and 15 schools. Ideally these will include two denominational, two grammar, one integrated and one Irish- medium schools. In one collegiate in Belfast, for example, the principals of two of Northern Ireland's most renowned grammar schools will be expected to work with colleagues from much less privileged institutions in the Shankill and the Falls Road.
Already there have been mutterings that this won't work. The most common reaction is that the grammar schools will resist it. The review body has been attacked for not going further, abolishing the grammar schools and replacing them with a fully comprehensive system.
But most people seriously concerned with reducing social and sectarian divisions in the North believe that this report is both bold and challenging. It will demand a lot of energy and good will on the part of teachers to make it work, but nobody doubts the civic commitment of the North's teachers.
There is a wonderful irony in the fact that this report was commissioned by Martin McGuinness. One of the great questions of the past 30 years is "what if Martin McGuinness had passed the 11- plus?" Consider the evidence. If the boy Martin had succeeded in the test he would have gone to St Columb's College in Derry, the school which produced John Hume, Seamus Heaney, Phil Coulter, Seamus Deane and other remarkable people. Martin McGuinness might have become a lawyer or a poet. Instead, he left school at 15, got turned down for a job as a mechanic because he was a Catholic and joined the IRA.
Now as Sinn FΘin Minister for Education Mr McGuinness could be instrumental in doing more than any of his predecessors, North or South, to make good the aspiration in the Proclamation of Independence "to cherish equally all the children of the nation". Provided, that is, that he follows through on the vision contained in the Burns Report. That will take courage, determination and political skill of a very high order, qualities which he has already demonstrated over 30 years.
mholland@irish-times.ie