SUBGROUP TO CONSIDER THE SCHOOLS ADMISSION POLICY
Friday 15 December 2006
Members in attendance for all or part of the proceedings:
The Chairperson, Ms Sue Ramsey
The Chairperson, Mr Willie Clarke
Mr Dominic Bradley
Mr Jeffrey Donaldson
Mr Barry McElduff
Mr David McNarry
Ms Caitríona Ruane
Mr Sammy Wilson
Witnesses:
Ms Avril Hall-Callaghan (Ulster Teachers’ Union)
Mr Brendan Harron (Irish National Teachers’ Organisation)
Mr Mark Langhammer (Association of Teachers and Lecturers)
Mr Seamus Searson (National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers)
Sir Kenneth Bloomfield (Association for Quality Education)
Mr Finbarr McCallion (Governing Bodies Association)
Mr Marcas Patterson (Association for Quality Education)
Mr Billy Young (Association for Quality Education)
Mr George Buckley
Mr Jim Clarke (Council for Catholic Maintained Schools)
Mr Uel McCrea (Association of Head Teachers in Secondary Schools)
Mr Gavin Boyd (Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment)
Mr Richard Hanna (Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment)
Mr Robert Shilliday (Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment)
Dr Charlie Sproule (Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment)
Mr Michael Wardlow (Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education)
Ms Dorothy Angus (Department of Education)
Mr John Leonard (Department of Education)
Ms Irene Murphy (Department of Education)
Rev Ian Ellis (Transferor Representatives’ Council)
Rev Dr Lee Glenny (Transferor Representatives’ Council)
Rev Robert Herron (Transferor Representatives’ Council)
The subgroup met at 9.54 am.
(The Chairperson [Ms S Ramsey] in the Chair.)
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): You are welcome. Can you please introduce yourselves?
Mr Brendan Harron (Irish National Teachers’ Organisation): I am Brendan Harron, a senior official with the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO). I am standing in for Frank Bunting, our Northern secretary.
Ms Avril Hall-Callaghan (Ulster Teachers’ Union): I am Avril Hall- Callaghan, general secretary of the Ulster Teachers’ Union (UTU).
Mr Mark Langhammer (Association of Teachers and Lecturers): I am Mark Langhammer of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL).
Mr Seamus Searson (National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers): I am Seamus Searson, the Northern Ireland organiser for the NASUWT.
Mr Langhammer: Thank you for the opportunity to address the subgroup. I have provided members with a pack in case they are short of weekend reading.
The Association of Teachers and Lecturers is a union of 160,000 members from across the UK. It is a relatively small union in Northern Ireland. Although it has members from all sectors, the majority are concentrated in the grammar school sector; consequently, there has been a fairly robust debate on the issues.
I will make three points: the need for balanced intakes as the guiding principle for school admissions; how to reduce the high-stakes nature of transfer decisions that are taken at the age of 10 or 11, and to urge members to consider a delay; and to stress that what happens in school plays a relatively small part in explaining variations in education performance.
The ATL supports school intakes that are balanced in terms of social class and ability. There is reasonable academic consensus, and I have given members a considerable number of references in the file, showing that balanced intakes produce the best overall performance — not necessarily the best for those at the top or the bottom, but the best overall performance. Broadly speaking, the influence of one’s peers and an atmosphere of aspiration help to achieve that, in addition to encouraging the retention of good teachers in schools. In Northern Ireland, however, a balanced intake is not easy. Crudely speaking, there must be either very large schools or some form of social engineering to achieve that.
Large schools tend to envelop well-off areas, disadvantaged areas and those in between, and because Northern Ireland is a rural country with a range of sectors, it has become Balkanised in its education system and tends to have relatively small schools. Notwithstanding the recommendations of the Bain Report, that is an obstacle.
In terms of social engineering, Ulster folk — Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter alike — tend to grate a little and do not sit easily with schemes of social engineering.
The ATL concurs with George Bain that the growth of integrated education at secondary level may bring about larger schools that, in turn, may help to achieve a balanced intake.
One small measure on admissions that the ATL asks members to consider is for a quota, or target, or some means to incentivise schools to take children who receive free schools meals. I think we could thole that as a society.
With regard to deferred, or delayed, transfer, for some time the ATL has been averse to making any detailed admissions criteria at the age of 11 because it is convinced that that misses the point. The age of 10 or 11 is too young to make life-changing decisions. Parents face high-stake decisions for their 10- and 11-year-old children, and we support the Education (Northern Ireland) Order 2006, which recommends that key education decisions be made at the ages of 14 and 16. If decisions on key pathways are to be made at the ages of 14 and 16, logically, those are the ages when transfers, or at least fluidity, between schools should occur.
We support and recommend the concept of middle schools, or junior schools, not because we are obsessed with institutions, but because we believe that they would be a useful institutional way of providing for a delay in transfer. We do not like to close down young people’s options.
Delaying transfer, with or without junior high schools, is a popular option. The BBC ‘Newsline’ poll this year, and successive Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey reports since 2003, have indicated that between 63% and 69% of parents support delaying those major education decisions. I do not want to bat your heads with statistics. However, the ATL believes that that figure includes people who are for and against transfer.
With regard to the effect of education, the ATL cautions against overestimating the degree to which schools can affect performance. There is significant academic consensus that up to 85% of the variation in pupils’ performance is down to factors outside school, such as parental support, culture, income and social class. That is not to say that schools have no influence — they do. However, even the school improvement campaigns estimate that although effective schooling does have an impact, it does not have a huge effect on variations in performance.
I will not address the issue of pupil profiles; I will rely on my colleagues to do so, because we agree on the issue. I thank the subgroup for its time. I understand that some members will speak at an ATL seminar on 12 January 2007, at which we will explore the grounds on which consensus might be reached.
10.00 am
Ms Hall-Callaghan: I want to pick up on what Mr Langhammer said and elaborate on pupil profiles. I welcome the opportunity to address the subgroup. I want to emphasise the Ulster Teachers’ Union’s continued opposition to any form of academic selection. That has been the union’s consistent policy for many years. We are delighted that the subgroup wants to examine what will happen after the termination of the existing transfer procedure.
The UTU views the pupil profile as an excellent tool, when it is used properly. However, if it is not used in the way that it was intended, it could become a dangerous weapon. Indeed, if the pupil profile were to be hijacked and turned into a selection instrument, all the good work that teachers have already done to develop it could be lost.
The pupil profile is simply an extension of the kind of ongoing assessment that teachers already make about pupils in every school. Its standardisation will benefit us all. It should give a broad and balanced picture of a young person’s strengths and interests and of what he or she has achieved to date across a range of curricular and extra-curricular activities.
Teachers are concerned about the workload implications, and my colleague Brendan Harron will pick up on that. However, I am sure that those obstacles can be overcome through the appropriate negotiating machinery. Teachers, particularly those in the primary sector, welcome the prospect of a wider curriculum at the top end of the primary school. They will embrace the pupil profile as they have embraced many worthwhile initiatives over recent years because they consider it as a way to ensure that parents have the fullest possible information to advise them of the best pathway for their children.
I must emphasise that teachers will not allow themselves to be put in the situation where the professional advice that they give will be used in a selection situation. In fact, teachers have indicated to the UTU that if any pressure is put on them to do that, they will refuse to co-operate.
The UTU is convinced that even if the pupil profile were not finalised on time — and I understand that it has run into difficulties — it is still possible for teachers to supply sufficient information to advise parents of their children’s strengths and weaknesses, because that, after all, is one of a teacher’s professional competencies.
In addition, the UTU concurs with the ATL that there is an imperative: there is a radical change in the public’s perception of transfer at the age of 11. It is a high-stakes decision at the age of 11 and it is too early for that decision to be taken. The concept of lifelong learning has impacted on traditional views on the time frame for education. With regard to career pathways and important choices for children, the time is right to shift emphasis from the age of 11 to the age of 14.
I hasten to add that even at the age of 14, it should be an elective rather than a selective system. That change of emphasis would reduce the impact of the pupil profile at the age of 11, if there are any concerns about the fact that there might only be a couple of years of profiling for the first intake going through. That would take a bit of pressure off the situation.
The public sector in Northern Ireland is facing an unprecedented period of change. Schools must, and will, change. Rationalisation is an inevitable fact, whether we like it or not, and the traditional institutions, particularly the grammar schools, must adapt to customer demand. When so many aspects of our lives are client driven, it is incredible that in this one very important area of life we still allow the institution, rather than the customer, to make the choice.
Before I turn to the admissions criteria, I would like to raise the important issue of funding. One challenge will be to ensure that collaboration between providers is not hampered by a system whereby schools are competing for funds based on pupil numbers. That matter must be radically overhauled to suit the needs of our new system.
Many people see the choice of admissions criteria as critical to the success of future post-primary arrangements. The Ulster Teachers’ Union agrees with the four broad categories outlined in the consultation document, and I have supplied the subgroup with the union’s full response to that document.
Not all schools will wish to use all the approved criteria, and the Ulster Teachers’ Union firmly believes that the tie-breaker is the only compulsory criterion that should be included.
Family-focused criteria are important and should feature as a high priority, and the geographical criteria support the idea of a school serving a local community. The Ulster Teachers’ Union want to ensure that, where possible, young people are not denied access to their local school, if that is their preferred choice.
We are perfectly happy with either of the tie-breakers that are listed — the random and the geographical criteria. If we were forced to choose between the two, we would narrowly opt for the geographical criteria on the basis that that would serve the interests of local community schools.
The Ulster Teachers’ Union is strongly apposed to the selection of pupils by means of interview or entrance test. Compulsory criteria should apply to all schools, and there should not be any optional interview or entrance test.
As I said earlier, pupils should be choosing schools, not vice versa.
Finally, I wish to make a heartfelt plea on behalf of teachers. Please act with urgency to submit a consultation document to the teachers’ unions as soon as possible. Teachers will do all in their power to implement policy, but they need time to prepare for it. At present, teachers are in a state of limbo. They need direction, and they must be reassured that there is no going back to the 11-plus or anything like it, and they need to know what lies ahead.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): Thank you. We have another two presentations to hear, so I will hold questions until the end. I am conscious of the time and that members are keen to ask questions, so I ask witnesses to please keep their presentations as precise as possible. There will be a question-and-answer session after the presentations.
Mr McNarry: Members have been asked to declare their interests for the record. Do any of the panel have interests to declare? For example, do any of them work for somebody else or are they members of boards, and so on? It would be useful to have a little background. We know who the witnesses are officially representing, but they may be members of other groups or boards.
Mr Langhammer: I will declare my interests. I am a director of Monkstown Boxing Club, a life member of Crusaders Football Club and —
Mr S Wilson: I would be ashamed of that.
[Laughter.]
Mr Langhammer: I am proud of it this year, Sammy.
I am also a member of the Irish Labour Party, and I serve on its national executive.
Ms Hall-Callaghan: I am not a member of any political party, nor am I on the board of any school.
Mr Searson: I am the same.
Mr Harron: Likewise.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): We will move to the next presentation.
Mr Harron: I represent the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation, which has approximately 6,500 members in Northern Ireland. The INTO has been, remains, and always will be, opposed to academic selection, and we welcome its cessation after 2008.
The INTO supports the whole thrust of the reorganisation of post-primary education. We envisage the situation, post-2008 and on a rolling-out basis, in which the post-primary school a child selects will be increasingly irrelevant. The context in which the INTO wishes to address the subgroup on the two questions is as follows: the new curriculum; and the implementation of the Entitled to Succeed policy, and the entitlement framework through which every 11-year-old child — regardless of the post-primary school they choose — will be offered a broad and similar education up to the age of 14, and that all children, at the age of 14, will be able to choose from a healthy balance of 24 vocational and academic subjects for GCSE, and 27 subjects for A level.
The INTO supports the concept of a pupil profile, and, as Ms Hall-Callaghan said, it is merely an extension of what presently exists. We have made several comments on pupil profiles in our briefing paper and in responses to consultations on the issue. The pupil profile must be manageable: it is not at present. In September, I read an independent evaluation of the pupil profile commissioned by the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA), which stated that it was not fit for purpose and not manageable by teachers.
The pupil profile must be manageable, and it must be fit for purpose. Those are the two conditions on which the INTO will give its full support to the profile. It takes a teacher one hour to complete a profile on one child; therefore, it takes 30 hours for a class of 30 pupils. That raises the issue of when teachers will get the time, or be released, to complete the profiles?
The INTO has made it clear that if pupil profiles are to be used as a selection tool, teachers will not complete them — they will not co-operate — and that has been accepted by the Department of Education and the CCEA. That must be made clear.
At present, the pupil profile is not designed to be used as a selection tool, and it could not be used as such because it is not completed in a secure situation. The INTO will withdraw its co-operation on pupil profiles if they are tinkered with to make them suitable for selection purposes.
In my briefing paper, I have also said that it takes too long to complete pupil profiles. The timing needs to be adjusted. The lack of computer facilities for the testing is a major-league problem. Primary schools do not have adequate hardware, and we are not content with the solution put to us by CCEA that we should do what is done in Scotland — that a busful of computers should be driven around primary schools, which people would board in order to do their tests. That is not the answer.
There should be simple, clear and centrally drawn-up admissions criteria for entry to post-primary schools in Northern Ireland. It does not matter which school a child chooses. There should be a centrally drawn-up list of feeder schools for all post-primary schools, and pupils should be accepted into those schools on the basis of how close they live to them. If there is a need for a tie-break situation between pupils, it should be based on random selection on a Northern Ireland-wide basis. Tie-breaks should be administered centrally to ensure that schools are not setting up their own methods of decision-making.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): Thank you. We move to Seamus Searson from the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers.
Mr Searson: The current events in Northern Ireland provide a real opportunity for change. We need to welcome that change and move forward. The establishment of the Education and Skills Authority in April 2008 will provide us with an opportunity to move the entire education system along and help every child reach his or her full potential. This is what the reorganisation of post-primary education is about.
I will not go into great detail. We agree with many of the points that my colleagues have raised. I will simply raise the issue and focus on the criteria. The reorganisation of post-primary education is neither a simple nor easy task. We must be aware of the downsides of any reorganisation, however. The paper that I circulated focuses on one or two of the problems that the criteria can throw up.
The NASUWT is the largest teachers’ union in Northern Ireland, and our membership is drawn from across all the different education sectors. The paper was finalised after a lengthy discussion period about the process with our members.
10.15 am
As has been mentioned, there must be a code of practice for school admissions that covers all of Northern Ireland. The paper states that consistency and equity in the schools admissions process should be made clear. As I said, the Education and Skills Authority will have an important role in that regard and must ensure that the arrangements do not disadvantage, either directly or indirectly, particular social and minority ethnic groups, children with disabilities or children with special educational needs.
I wish to mention parental choice, a term that is often bandied about. The concept of parental choice does not fit in with what is needed for the future, which is an effective and co-operative relationship between parents and schools. The notion of parental choice is often misleading because people believe that they have a choice when, in reality, they do not. Often, it is the schools that make the choice rather than the parents. The present system creates competition, which, in turn, fosters tensions, and that works against greater co-operation.
I will quickly mention one or two aspects of family-focused criteria. If the system were to concentrate on family-focused criteria, where priorities are given to pupils whose siblings already attend particular schools, there is a possibility that children living close to those schools will be denied places. Although that is an important factor, it must not become the major determining factor. That is one of the issues that we are considering.
We are cautious about the use of geographical criteria, because the catchment area of a school may not reflect the local community. If tie-breakers are used, they need to be quite clear, open and transparent so that people can see what is happening. Furthermore, the use of tie-breakers should be a fairly straightforward process.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): I thank you all for your presentations. I will now hand over to members, who will ask questions.
Mr Donaldson: My question is for Ms Hall-Callaghan. If I were a working-class Protestant child living in Benson Street in Lisburn, which is almost equidistant from Lisnagarvey High School, Laurel Hill Community College, Friends’ School, Wallace High School and Forthill College, which school would be considered my local school? Which school would be the community school that would serve me in a selection tie-breaker?
Ms Hall-Callaghan: I do not know Lisburn well enough to comment on that. However, I presume that the people who live there would relate to a particular school and would know which school they wanted their children to attend.
Mr Donaldson: I am not talking about the school that a pupil would want to attend; I am talking about the tie-breaker situation. You have suggested that, in the event of a school being oversubscribed, a tie-breaker that is based on geographical location should be used.
I gave the example of a child who lives equidistant from the five secondary schools that I mentioned, two of which are grammar schools, three of which are secondary schools. What would happen in the event of a school being oversubscribed? Let us say that the child wants to attend Wallace High School, but it is oversubscribed. Which school will be considered that child’s local community school for the purposes of the tie-breaker? My example could apply to Magherafelt, Londonderry or anywhere.
Ms Hall-Callaghan: If a tie-breaker is used, the process of how various factors will be measured must be set out. Generally speaking, however, a child will not be exactly equidistant from two schools.
Mr Donaldson: Are you sure about that?
Mr S Wilson: It could come down to a distance of 5 feet.
Mr Donaldson: I could take you to a place in Lisburn that is almost exactly equidistant from five secondary schools. In that case, which would be my local school?
Ms Hall-Callaghan: Almost equidistant?
Mr S Wilson: Are you suggesting that the school that a pupil will attend could depend on whether that pupil lives 5 feet away from one school or 5 feet away from another? Is that not a bit daft?
Ms Hall-Callaghan: No, it is not. A decision must be made in some way. What I said was that I would be happy with a tie-breaker situation or with random selection. Schools should be equally good and, therefore, it should not matter which school a pupil attends.
Mr Donaldson: Lisburn, which is in my constituency, is a large urban area with five good schools, and I deal with the admissions appeals procedure every summer. I could name — but I will not — the schools that most parents in Lisburn would choose to send their children to. Three or four of those five schools are substantially oversubscribed.
Wallace High School and Friends’ School are located in a middle-class area. Under your policy, more families would move into that area to be close to those two schools, which, I guarantee, would be oversubscribed every year. The result would be that working-class kids would lose out — and those kids want to go to those schools, believe me; I have sat with parents who have appealed against decisions. Both schools that I mentioned take in kids from working-class backgrounds. In my constituency, the working-class kids would lose out because their parents would not be able to afford to move close to the schools in order to benefit from your proposed tie-breaker.
Also, if I lived in a rural community such as Moira, Ballinderry, Aghalee, Annahilt or Hillsborough, how would I gain from that policy, when the decision comes down to a tie-breaker and the urban kids win every time?
Ms Hall-Callaghan: We are coming at this from the wrong angle. Mr Langhammer and I emphasised that the choice at the age of 11 is not the important choice. We are also trying to promote the idea that all schools are good schools. Why would parents opt for Wallace High School or Friends’ School, for example? All those schools in Lisburn should be attractive to parents.
Mr S Wilson: Do you ever read any inspectors’ reports?
Ms Hall-Callaghan: Yes, all the time.
Mr S Wilson: The inspectors’ reports do not say that every school is a good school. It is totally naive to say that.
Ms Hall-Callaghan: It is not naive to say that. It is what we are working towards. Teachers in Northern Ireland are excellent and very well qualified. We need to establish a system in which they can operate properly. The system is wrong at the moment.
Mr Donaldson: We agree with that, but we disagree on the method of achieving that objective. The system that you advocate would discriminate against far more children than the 11-plus does currently.
I have not had an answer to my reasonable question about how rural kids will be provided for in this geographical tie-breaker situation. Rural children will be discriminated against if the decision comes down to a tie-breaker. There are very few secondary schools in the middle of the countryside, so rural kids will lose out. I do not know what that will mean as regards equality and section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998.
Urban areas contain a multiplicity of schools. Perhaps in many towns there is only one school and the decision is simple, but in other towns there is more than one school. A postcode lottery will discriminate against many pupils and will not create a fair system. In fact, it will create a very unfair system.
Ms Hall-Callaghan: I live in the middle of nowhere, in the area that Mr Donaldson mentioned, and I did not have any difficulty in getting my child into the school of her choice.
Mr Donaldson: That may happen at the moment, under the current system.
Ms Hall-Callaghan: At the moment, yes.
Mr Donaldson: If the system were the postcode lottery that you advocate, would you still be of the same mind?
Ms Hall-Callaghan: I do not think that I would have any difficulty.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): I do not want to stifle debate, but we need to move on.
Mr Donaldson: This is an important point.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): I appreciate that, but a number of members want to ask questions. If we can get the first round of questions over, there will be time for more comments.
Mr Donaldson: I am finished with this issue.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): If other members do not jump in and ask questions on the back of your time, there may be more time.
Mr Donaldson: Absolutely.
Mr McNarry: You should take him literally: he said that was finished.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): Mr Wilson’s time is now cut because he made two comments during Mr Donaldson’s time.
Mr S Wilson: They were short questions, and I did not get an answer to either of them. [Laughter.]
Mr Donaldson: With respect, if geographical proximity were used as a tie-breaker, there is no way that Ms Hall-Callaghan’s child, living in a rural community, would benefit from a system that dictates that the closer a child lives to a school, the better the chance of getting into that school in the event of that school being oversubscribed.
It defies logic and reason to suggest that if I live in a rural community — and I do — that my child will have an equal chance of getting into a school that is oversubscribed when the tie-breaker is based on proximity to the school. If you can show me any area in Northern Ireland where such a tie-breaker benefits the rural child and not the urban child, I will look at it.
Ms Hall-Callaghan: I live close to the Dickson plan area, and there is never any difficulty in getting children into the junior high school in Lurgan.
Mr S Wilson: I have two questions. We can probably get a fairly quick answer to the first one. No one this morning has dealt with the reality of the situation, which is that after 26 March 2007, if the Assembly is up and running — and since members have been lobbied publicly and privately by all of your organisations to get the Assembly up and running, it seems that you are keen for that to happen — the Secretary of State has said that academic selection will still be here unless the Assembly decides otherwise. Given the cross-community nature of the Assembly, that situation is unlikely to change.
Given that we all want devolution, we will have to deal with the reality of academic selection being here. Can you give us some indication as to what form of academic selection you would like to see in those circumstances, or will the UTU simply opt out of the debate?
Mr Harron: My understanding is that the current situation will end in 2009, and the slate will be wiped clean. New arrangements from 2009 will have to be put in place by the Assembly or by the Minister. Therefore, we are not going to opt out of anything.
I have been teaching for 32 years in post-primary education. I believe that unless all the reforms have been put in place as regards the curriculum, the Entitled to Succeed policy and the entitlement framework have been a lie. Ms Hall-Callaghan is correct — from 2009 onwards it should not matter which school is being selected at age eleven, because children, regardless of whether they live in rural or urban areas, or east, west, north or south, are going to be guaranteed a menu of 24 subjects at GCSE and 27 subjects at A level.
Mr S Wilson: I do not know if you are trying to avoid the question or have not understood the question.
Mr Langhammer: I am happy to answer.
Mr S Wilson: I will always get an answer from you.
Mr Langhammer: It might be the wrong one.
Mr S Wilson: I wish to emphasise that academic selection will still be on the menu after 26 March 2007 — it will still be available. We have heard what you would like to see in an ideal world, but that is not likely to be the case unless there is no devolution. I assume you all want to see devolution as quickly as possible, because you have all lobbied us to that effect. Members would find it helpful if they knew what kind of academic selection the UTU could live with.
Mr Harron: None whatsoever. We have no time for academic selection.
Mr S Wilson: Why?
Mr Donaldson: Will you break the law?
Mr Harron: I do not see the connection between not wanting academic selection and breaking the law.
Mr McNarry: You said earlier that if pupil profiling became part of a selection method, your members would not work it.
Mr Harron: Yes.
Mr McNarry: In response to Mr Wilson’s question about academic selection, you said, "None whatsoever." What instructions will you be giving your members that we can take back to the parents to tell them what they will be likely to face from your union members?
Mr Harron: Parents are not likely to be facing anything from our members. I said that the INTO’s policy always has been, and always will be, to oppose any form of academic selection. However, that does not mean that we as professionals will not operate whatever system is in place. There is no question about that. We are professional teachers — regardless of what we have to deal with, we will deliver.
As regards the ideal world that Mr Wilson referred to, I emphasise that the Department of Education has been telling us for the past five or six years that the new curriculum, the new Entitled to Succeed policy and the new entitlement framework are coming in. I have believed the Department for 10 years that this would happen.
Mr S Wilson: Never believe officials from the Department of Education. We learned that a long time ago.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): Other members and witnesses wish to speak.
10.30 am
Mr Langhammer: My answer to the first question will be as brief as possible. I am not clear that the position is as you described. It is clear that that part of the Education (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 has fallen, with the result that academic selection has not been outlawed. I am also clear that the 11-plus will end in 2008. That does not mean that an alternative procedure is in place: it has not been made clear whether academic selection or another procedure must be used. Given that academic selection has not been banned and that the 11-plus will fall, I understand that we are facing a vacuum — we are not automatically considering different forms of academic selection.
Mr S Wilson: Schools will have the ability to make their own decisions.
Mr Langhammer: I agree with Mr Wilson’s point about not believing Department of Education officials. With the aim of advising our members, I wrote to the Department to ask whether a school or a group of schools could implement their own tests in the absence of another procedure. The Department clearly stated that that would not happen. I do not know whether that is lawful, but that is the Department’s view. However, I am happy to pass that letter to the subgroup.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): Perhaps the discussion can continue outside, but I wish to move on. Mr McNarry, you can speak next, but I ask you to be conscious that other members have not spoken yet.
Mr McNarry: OK, boss, I will see what I can do.
Mr S Wilson: Is that the Chairperson’s official designation? [Laughter.]
Mr McNarry: She is bossing us about, so I decided to call her "boss".
If a vote were taken in the Assembly tomorrow, you would see here and on the opposite Benches a mirror image of how the parties would go through the lobbies. We will not be able to address the issue in a satisfactory manner as long as that situation pertains.
Your association is a big hitter; it commands a lot of media attention and produces lovely glossy brochures and propaganda. I wish to turn your attention to the recent findings of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee on literacy and numeracy. In everyone’s estimation, that report was shocking and disturbing. As a group that broadly supports the 2006 Order, can you confidently say that it will preserve Northern Ireland’s standards of academic achievement and address our record of educational underachievement?
Are you willing to say that what you support will improve the situation to such an extent that you will back the reforms totally? You are on record as saying as much.
Mr Harron: Yes.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): I like short answers.
Mr Harron: Those who support academic selection and the grammar schools seem to be in denial. I have been a grammar schoolteacher for the past 16 years. Forty per cent of pupils who leave school at age 16 do not have adequate literacy and numeracy skills. When will the penny drop with people that academic selection is one of the major causes of that? I also taught for 16 —
Mr McNarry: Where did you find that statistic? The report did not say that.
Mr Harron: The report said that —
Mr McNarry: That is a gross nonsense. Selection has nothing to do with that misrepresentation. I am asking you whether the reforms that you support and for which you are lobbying will change the situation. Forgive me; I respect the organisations that you represent, but when I meet individual teachers, I do not hear from them the same things that come out of your offices.
Mr Harron: I taught for 16 years in a secondary school in an underprivileged area and another 16 years in a grammar school. Therefore, I have seen the system from both sides. The report said that 40% of pupils in Northern Ireland leave school at age 16 —
Mr McNarry: Of course it said that. However, it did not blame that on academic selection.
Mr Harron: You asked me for my view, and I am saying that one of the major causes of inadequate literacy and numeracy is that the vast majority of those pupils leave from our non-grammar schools.
Mr McNarry: Does that mean that the reforms are a panacea for curing all that?
Mr Harron: We in INTO wish that politicians would go the whole way and create a fully comprehensive system. However, by removing academic selection and making all schools equal, all pupils are treated the same. When there are no longer two tiers of education, the standards attained by all pupils will rise and the percentage of pupils who leave without proper numeracy and literacy skills will decrease.
Mr McNarry: Where are we on that issue? On one hand, members of the panel say that all schools are good, but the Bain Report states that they are not.
Ms Hall-Callaghan: I said that the UTU wants to move towards a situation in which all schools are viewed as good schools. There are many good schools and some that could be improved. We must work to change the public perception. There is much work to be done on education. The public perceives grammar schools to be the good schools, and that is not necessarily the case.
Mr McNarry: Let us not go into the question of grammar schools. I am asking you whether the reforms will improve the current situation, particularly in relation to underachievement, and whether they will maintain the current levels of excellence that are attained.
Ms Hall-Callaghan: We hope so. At the outset of any process, no one can predict where it will lead.
Mr McNarry: You are saying, though, that the system is broken and you want to fix it.
Ms Hall-Callaghan: Yes; it is broken and we want to fix it.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): If members would ask questions rather than making speeches, they might get more answers.
Mr D Bradley: I welcome the members of the panel and thank them for their contributions.
The INTO contribution included some reservations about the concept of the pupil profile. This afternoon, the subgroup will have a chance to address those problems with the CCEA — and we will endeavour to do so, because it is an important issue.
Mr Langhammer, you said that ATL’s preference is for pupil transfer to take place at age 14 rather than age 11, and several other contributors concurred. On what basis would the transfer procedure operate at age 14?
Mr Langhammer: I must be honest: we have grave difficulties with some aspects of the 2006 Order. On balance, we support it, but I am not pretending that the union’s debate about it has been anything other than robust. Ultimately, we felt that anything other than widespread consensus was not good for Northern Ireland’s education system. However, in a fairly intense debate, there is not that level of consensus. ATL’s view is that children develop at different ages and that those aged 10 or 11 are too young to take definitive decisions about career paths or particular types of school.
We are not hung up on the idea of junior high schools, because some schools could develop junior schools within them. However, we are clear that if there is to be a move towards a more skills-based curriculum in which children take key education decisions at the age of 14 and 16, it is important that they not be locked out of schools. For instance, if my youngster goes to a particular school at the age of 11 and realises by the age of 14 that he or she wants to go in a particular direction that is best supported by a different school up the road, there should not be a situation whereby that school is simply full.
If the key decisions are to be taken at age 14 and 16, as stated in the 2006 Order, we must provide for transfer or fluidity between schools. Crudely, people have said that the system is like the Dickson plan, and perhaps it is slightly similar. The failure of the Dickson plan is that it is not uniformly applied and people can get round it. However, ATL clearly supports the Department on the part of the 2006 Order that states that it is better for pupils to take key decisions at the age of 14, rather than when they are 10 or 11.
Mr D Bradley: Ms Hall-Callaghan said that if the pupil profile were not completely developed, teachers from the UTU would be prepared to give advice to parents on which post-primary school would be best suited to their children. Would INTO members be prepared to do that also?
Mr Harron: No. We do not believe that it is the job of primary school teachers to advise on which post-primary school pupils should go to — and I think Ms Hall-Callaghan said the same.
Ms Hall-Callaghan: I did.
Mr Harron: As primary schoolteachers, we would advise parents on the strengths and weaknesses of their children but we would let the parents make the decision on which post-primary school their children should attend.
We have not yet mentioned the specialist schools pilot programme. The first tranche of 12 schools started the programme last year, and the selection process for the next tranche is under way, although I do not know how many schools will be involved. As I said before, on paper it should not really matter which school a pupil chooses, because in five, six or 10 years’ time, as the programme is rolled out, all schools will have specialisms of some sort — including the five schools in Lisburn to which Mr Donaldson referred. Thus, if a pupil profile says that the child has a particular bent towards the arts, sciences, or vocational studies, the pupil can choose a school with an appropriate specialism. We must look to the future on this issue. We would not advise teachers to give pupils advice on which school to attend.
Ms Hall-Callaghan: I would like to confirm an earlier point, Mr Bradley. I did not say that teachers would advise pupils on which school to choose. I said that they would advise on the strengths and abilities of the children.
Mr McNarry: How do you dodge a question from a parent —
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): David —
Mr McNarry: If a parent is told how strong a child is, can he or she go to Regent House?
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): David, with respect, I am chairing the meeting. I will let Barry ask a question now.
Mr McNarry: Sorry, I was just getting carried away.
Mr McElduff: I welcome the specific and targeted way in which each of the contributors addressed the terms of reference.
It has been said that the pupil profile is an excellent tool, if used properly. How can it be used properly? What type of information do parents tend to want to hear?
Mr McNarry: Can my child go to a grammar school — that is what they want to hear today, Barry.
Mr McElduff: Are teachers concerned that pupil profiling might add to their already bureaucratic burden? Is that a real concern? How might the profile be used properly?
Mr Harron: INTO’s policy is that children's test results should not be included in pupil profiles. Despite teachers’ expertise in telling parents how their children are doing, parents tend to focus purely on test scores and do not look at what is written about their children. In the models and prototypes that are being experimented with in the pilots, a good deal of information is written about pupils under a whole raft of educational strengths and weaknesses —but parents simply focus on the scores. For example, the profile may say that a pupil’s age is nine, but his reading age is 10 or six or whatever. We are concerned about how that information is shared with parents.
Workload is very important. I talked to a school principal in Mr McElduff's area who is involved in the pilot, and she told me that she has a class of 30 pupils and only two computers in the classroom. The profile takes an hour to complete, and if two pupils are working on the interactive tests, the rest of the pupils must be cleared out of the room.
There are logistical problems, as adequate computer hardware is needed to allow pupils to do the interactive tests. Primary-school teachers normally take about 30 minutes to write a report on a pupil. The pupil profiles that are now being experimented with take twice as long. I hope that the CCEA will tell the subgroup this afternoon that it plans to make the process more manageable by slimming it down, which will free up teachers’ time. I also hope that it tells the subgroup that it will provide the hardware resources needed to enable the pupils to carry out the computer interactive tests.
Ms Hall-Callaghan: Mr McElduff asked what form the profile will take. There is much more to a child than academic ability, and the profile must reflect all a child’s competences. Although some children are wonderful at drama, arts, music and other such subjects, the current profoundly academic structures can make them feel as though they are failures, when, in fact, they are brilliant in those subjects in which they excel. The purpose of the profile should be to reflect the full breadth of each child’s ability.
Mr S Wilson: May I ask the witness about that last point?
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): Quickly, please.
Mr S Wilson: You said that although the pupil profile would not be used as a selective tool, it would be the basis on which parents chose the pathway for their children. Consider the example of a child who is either wonderful at art or brilliant at football. That is so subjective. What use is that to anyone?
Ms Hall-Callaghan: It is not subjective. At football matches it is obvious which children can play well and which cannot.
Mr S Wilson: Therefore, you do not believe that the words "brilliant" or "good" are subjective terms. You might think something is brilliant, whereas I might think that it is rubbish. Those terms are subjective.
Ms Hall-Callaghan: I think that you are splitting hairs.
Mr S Wilson: I am not splitting hairs at all.
10.45 am
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): If there are no more questions, we will move on. I want to let Barry finish.
Mr McNarry: Are you allowing him another question?
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): No. Witnesses are waiting and the subgroup is in danger of exceeding its time limit. When we make the switchover, members can talk briefly to witnesses.
Mr McNarry: With all respect, Chair, this is a subgroup of the Committee on the Programme for Government. The whole thing has been set up for the benefit of the public. Will witnesses follow me outside so that I can hold a conversation with them? That is just not practical.
Mr McElduff: The question that I wanted to ask was about the additional transfer arrangements that would apply to children who have a statement of special educational needs.
Mr Harron: There is a section in the consultation paper on compelling individual circumstances. INTO supports the retention of those considerations. Those children should be supernumerary to the school’s quota of pupils. Compelling individual circumstances should be used only rarely. Children with statements of special educational needs should be given special priority and INTO believes that they should be supernumerary to the school’s quota.
Ms Hall-Callaghan: I refer Mr McElduff to our document, which has a full section on that.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): With respect, David, members agreed this agenda at the last meeting. Witnesses were agreed. There is a time limit. I suggest that if members have further questions, they should forward them to the Committee Clerks, who will contact the organisations to request written answers.
Mr McNarry: Mr Searson has not contributed, and I have one small question for him. Surely, if we are all here —
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): If you work with me, I will work with you.
Mr McNarry: If you will work with me, may I put the question?
Mr McElduff: The proposal is that the question be now put.
Mr McNarry: Mr Searson, can you give your views on the importance of setting and streaming in post-primary education?
Mr Searson: Teachers work hard to improve the ability of all children. That has a bearing on my earlier point about the 2006 Order. Present practice does not work for all the children of Northern Ireland, and the 2006 Order is a means to improve practice. Particular points arise with regard to setting and streaming, and teachers will need to work with particular children. That might start at 11 years of age, 13 or 14. It will vary from child to child and from school to school. Schools will need to determine what is in the best interests of each child and how that is operated.
Mr McNarry: Are you working in that direction at the moment?
Mr Searson: Yes.
Mr McNarry: Thank you.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): Thank you for coming. I should say that members might have further questions for you. I trust that your doors will always be open.
The subgroup was suspended at 10.50 am.
On resuming —
10.54 am
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): I ask members to take their seats. The witnesses should introduce themselves, after which they will have a total of 10 minutes to make their presentation. I will then open the floor to members’ questions.
Sir Kenneth Bloomfield (Association for Quality Education): I shall begin by introducing myself. In common with a lot of the witnesses who appear before you, I wear many hats. However, we are all involved in one way or another with the Association for Quality Education (AQE), which is a coalition of interests that are concerned with the future of our education system.
I shall begin by making a few points of principle. First, I am not sure that the selection issue, important though it is, is really at the centre of our education problems. I acknowledge that although there are many education problems in Northern Ireland, we have records of substantial achievement, including good performance at A level and GCSE, a high representation of underprivileged communities in the universities, and so on. On the other hand, we have heard a lot about areas of obvious underperformance: clearly, something must be done about that. AQE does not think that such underperformance is attributable wholly to the method of selection.
Calling ourselves the Association of Quality Education does not mean that we think that grammar schools represent the only excellent part of the education system; that would be an extremely arrogant point of view. We must remember that we would not have the record of performance of entry into higher education without the excellent performance of many of the non-grammar schools.
AQE endorses views that, as we understand it, the population at large has expressed repeatedly. In a democracy, those views should not be ignored. A very consistent result has emerged from at least six separate Government-conducted polls, saying that on the one hand people do not like, do not trust or do not accept the 11-plus as a method of selection, but that, nevertheless, they want to retain some method of academic selection. It is important to listen to the voice of the people.
Secondly, we are conscious of the assurances that a number of the Ministers who have held the education portfolio in recent years have given about these matters. People have been assured that the proposed changes to selection methods do not mean that grammar schools will disappear, and that they do not mean that comprehensive education will be introduced in Northern Ireland. However, we confess to a degree of scepticism about that.
For our part, we accept that we should go along with the fact that the Northern Ireland population has said that the 11-plus system of selection should go. However, it would be possible to replace it with a more reliable system that would be acceptable across the education sector. We should be looking for widespread acceptability in the same way that we are looking for wider consensus. Clearly, we are looking for as much consensus as possible throughout the education system. We do not want to impose unreasonable burdens on the head teachers of primary schools, for instance; we must be sensitive to their views.
I wanted to make those points at the start of our presentation. First, we should listen clearly to what people have said about this matter, and, secondly, we should take at face value the assurances that successive Ministers have given us, while exploring how those can be made a reality.
Mr Marcas Patterson (Association for Quality Education): I am a parent with two young children, one in primary 4 and one in primary 3, who will be directly affected by the changes. I have a couple of comments about the strengths of the current system. Our system produces examination results that are much better than those in Great Britain, and it produces better outcomes with regard to social inclusion than the education systems do in other parts of these islands. We attribute that success to the diversity in Northern Ireland.
Statistics show that social deprivation tends to be linked to poor examination results. We have more social deprivation here, and yet our examination results are better than those in Great Britain. For example, the 2004 figures show that 60% of pupils in Northern Ireland got five GCSE passes ranging from A* to C — the figure for England is 54%, and in Wales it is 51%. Northern Ireland has more pupils getting A grades, including in subjects such as English and maths.
We hear a lot about the myth of the long tail of underachievement in regard to social inclusion. That long tail of underachievement does not exist in the sense that every education system has a tail of underachievement. Northern Ireland’s situation is no worse than that in other parts of these islands. It is better, certainly, in some senses than in England. For example, if we consider the figures for free school meals, 33% of students who receive free school meals in Northern Ireland get five GCSE passes ranging from grades A to C, while the figure for England is 26·1%, which is very much lower. The people at the bottom end of the social scale are actually doing much better in our system.
There has been a lot of concern about people on the Shankill Road, and there have been a lot of crocodile tears on the issue. It is a very important issue, but the facts have often been distorted. The Public Accounts Committee pointed out that the 11-plus is not a problem there. The statistics for 2001 show that 5% of the students got five GCSE passes at grades A to C — that applied to three people. The figures went up by 300% the following year when 12 young people got five GCSE passes with A to C grades. If we are going to blame the 11-plus for the results in the Shankill area, we will have to credit it for the superb results in the New Lodge area, where social deprivation is very similar.
We think that those successes come from teaching pupils in schools with other pupils of similar abilities. The diversity of the schools system allows us to have, on average, smaller schools. It is great to have secondary, grammar, faith, interdenominational, comprehensive and Irish-medium schools. Tá spéis agam féin i scoileanna lánGhaeilge. Eighty-eight per cent of parents secure a place for their child in their first choice of school.
We do not have a private sector, unlike other parts of these islands. Basically, most children get the type of education that parents choose for them. We have a successful system, social inclusion and diversity.
Mr Billy Young (Association for Quality Education): I am the head teacher of Belfast Royal Academy. I have cut some of what I wanted to say, as I am aware of the time.
First, what we want from a new system — and have wanted for five years — is money directed to the source and not wasted: £1.5 million has been wasted on consultations and reports.
Secondly, we want an honest acceptance of our strengths and successes, an honest attempt to tackle the weaknesses, imaginative tackling of underachievement, real support for primary schools in disadvantaged areas, a system that hits all the criteria mentioned in our paper, a system of transfer that will satisfy 88% of the people — as the current system does — and something that matches the will of the public as expressed in the Northern Ireland Continuous Household Survey.
Four useful tie-breaker issues were mentioned in the survey, including community-based criteria and geography. However, if they were included as main criteria, it would result in local comprehensives. People have to be honest and say that that is what would happen. We will also see, as has happened, that parents would move their children to successful schools. The family-focused issue would be useful as a tie-breaker, but if it were applied to a school — as I would apply it — it might affect one third of children applying to the school. What happens to the other two thirds that would be affected by community-based criteria? Again, the answer is local comprehensives.
11.00 am
Random selection is, again, a useful tie-breaker, but it if were applied as a whole, people would not apply to those schools more than a certain distance from their homes.
The profile cannot be used for selection. The system that the Governing Bodies Association would like to elaborate on and improve is computer-adaptive tests (CATs), which would address the criteria that we have listed in our paper. It would minimise coaching and much more. Therefore, we have proposals for a new system that would be much better than the present one.
Mr Finbarr McCallion (Governing Bodies Association): I am the secretary of the Governing Bodies Association. The association represents and works with 73 grammar schools in Northern Ireland, of which 53 are voluntary grammar schools.
I thank you for the opportunity to come here. One is never supposed to begin with an apology, yet I think that we owe the subgroup an apology. Although we have spent about 10 years trying to reach a solution, we do not yet have one. We are coming to ask the subgroup to create one, as Members of the Assembly are more likely to be in the business of finding solutions to difficult problems. We hope that, with the experience that members have had, they may be able to help us to find a solution to this problem.
To date, we have been involved in two side-by-side arguments. One is about comprehensive education. When comprehensive education was introduced in England, Scotland and Wales, every political party supported it. Its introduction presented great problems, but it was established. Members might be surprised to know that every political party supported comprehensive education. During her time as Minister of Education, Margaret Thatcher converted more grammar schools to comprehensive schools than any other Minister of Education, including the sainted Mr Crossman.
Afterwards, the Conservative Party changed its mind. Look at what David Cameron is doing today. He leads a party that wants grammar school education. He admits that there is no political consensus, and, therefore, he has warned his party not to reach too far. He has advised the party to deal with what it can deal with in order to sort out the problem as best it can. No doubt, he wants grammar schools by stealth.
We believe that the new system in Northern Ireland should offer people a choice and a chance to change. Some grammar schools might be willing to operate on a more comprehensive basis; certainly, there are secondary schools that want to become comprehensive schools. Why is it that only four secondary schools in Northern Ireland are allowed to select pupils? What is so special about Lagan College, Slemish College, Holy Cross College in Strabane and St Patrick’s Co-educational Comprehensive College in Maghera? Why should every secondary school and every grammar school not be allowed that choice? Why do we not allow the parents to make the decisions?
There are good grammar schools in Northern Ireland. There are good comprehensive schools and there are good secondary schools. How do we know that? We know because the parents want that system to remain. I trust parents. They need help and guidance, but I trust them. Surely Northern Ireland can get to a situation where, with children of nine years of age, one can have a decent idea of where they will be when they are 13 years of age. That is what must be done to advance towards a solution.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): Thank you for your presentation and for keeping within the time limit. In the first instance, I will allocate each member five minutes in which to ask questions. Depending on the length of your answers, they may be able to ask further questions at the end. In the spirit of fairness, I will start from this side of the table because we started at the other side earlier.
Mr McElduff: I welcome the delegation. I am concerned by Mr Patterson’s reference to the myth that is the long tail of underachievement. I seek general comments from the panel on that. The House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts’ report, ‘Improving Literacy and Numeracy in Schools (Northern Ireland): Second Report of Session 2006–07’ (November 2006) seems to bear out that there is a long tail of underachievement, in that 40% of 16-year-olds leave school with inadequate numeracy and literacy skills. Is that the case or not?
Secondly, how would grammar schools deliver the new varied and vocational life-skills curriculum?
Mr Patterson: May I clarify the long tail of underachievement? It has been suggested that, in the past, Northern Ireland results — at the bottom end — were much worse than those of other parts of these islands, where GCSE and A-level examinations were taken.
The point that I strove to make — perhaps I was not clear enough — was that, at the bottom end, Northern Ireland results are very similar to those of other parts of the United Kingdom. For example, in England, the number of pupils who leave school without any GCSEs is 5%; here it is 4%. The suggestion that grammar schools create a long tail of underachievement, while alternative systems do not, is incorrect.
Sir Kenneth Bloomfield: Mr McElduff’s point about the curriculum is important. It would be an absurdity to suppose that we would ever have one set of schools that are purely academic and another set that are purely vocational. In future, every individual will need to have a mix of those skills, but that mix will vary according to particular aptitudes.
People often talk of children’s sense of failure when they do not get the 11-plus and do not go to grammar school. Part of that stems from the fact that, in many ways, the non-grammar schools compete in the same races as the grammar schools in skills to which they are not necessarily very well adapted.
I see the possibility of parallel systems in which the emphasis in grammar schools will continue to be on academic subjects — for example, the hard sciences, which will be very important for our economic future — but, of course, there will have to be a vocational element as well. Similarly, other schools will place an emphasis on vocational subjects, but their students will also need language skills, and so on. I do not therefore see a terribly stark divide. However, at the moment the difficulty is that post-primary education submits virtually all children to the same hurdles, irrespective of their aptitudes. That does not serve them terribly well.
Mr McCallion: Sir Kenneth makes a good point. It is foolish to pretend that there are not children for whom our system does not work well, but that is true of every single education system in western Europe. Even those systems that have twice the amount of money invested in them as ours still have problems — those systems do not work for many of the children who go through them.
Our curriculum is very grammar-school driven. Huge numbers of comprehensive schools in England offer a diploma in business administration, but virtually no secondary school in Northern Ireland does because CCEA does not offer it.
We must think ahead. The great problem — and I will admit this; I have been a protagonist in this matter for the past 10 years — is that we have argued about grammar, secondary and comprehensive schools, but we have not argued for a curriculum that matches children to their futures and gives them opportunities. I want schools to be free. Schools are driven by their governors, parents and teachers, and they will do what is best for their children. However, it would be madness to return to the situation of the 1950s when secondary schools were forbidden to do the old Senior Certificate. We will not go down that road; we want to do the reverse and offer opportunities.
Mr Young: Given the time of year, it might be appropriate to quote from Isaiah, chapter 11, verse 6, leading up to the prophecy about the birth of Christ:
"and a little child shall lead them."
Over the past five years, we have been saying that the focus should have been on the little child in disadvantaged areas — on the Shankill Road or anywhere else. We have heard promises that money will be invested. Poor literacy and numeracy skills have been mentioned, and certain people have said that grammar schools are responsible for that. However, primary schoolteachers — who are doing a superb job — have for years been crying out for real support at primary-school level. As the subgroup will know, it is possible to identify reading difficulties in primary 1 and primary 2. However, time and time again, things just rattle on in primary schools, and the matter is not handled until much later.
I take the comment about literacy and numeracy, but the key to solving this problem is to start where it really matters. The Reading Recovery programme has achieved wonderful things, but it can continue to do that only if the personnel are there to deliver it.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): Thank you. There will be time later for follow-up questions.
Mr D Bradley: Go raibh maith agat, a Chathaoirligh. Tá céad míle fáilte romhaibh go léir.
You are very welcome, and thank you for your input.
I have great respect for the work of grammar schools. I attended a grammar school for two years and studied for my A levels there. I certainly appreciated the tuition and the high level of academic standards at that school, just as I appreciated the high level of academic standards at the secondary school that I previously attended.
Sir Kenneth began by mentioning that although the majority of the people who responded to the Northern Ireland Continuous Household Survey were against the 11-plus, they were in favour of academic selection. That is a contradiction. In Northern Ireland, although approximately 12 methods of academic selection have been tried, none has been found to have been satisfactory. I wonder whether it is time that we learned a lesson from that. I noticed also that the survey showed that the majority of the parents questioned expressed the view that they should be allowed to choose which post-primary school their children would attend. Perhaps we should give more weight to those statistics.
I am very much in favour of grammar schools continuing to deliver their current academic curriculum. I am not so sure about academic selection. For example, it is often claimed that academic selection benefits working-class communities by providing them with social mobility. However, some of the figures suggest that academic selection is unfair and discriminates against working-class communities.
In 2000, the study published by Peter Daly and Ian Shuttleworth of Queen’s University showed that 84% of children from professional families and 79% of the children of clerical workers attended grammar schools. In contrast to that, only 23·5% of factory workers’ children, and a mere 13·2% of children whose fathers were unemployed went to grammar schools. Those figures suggest that academic selection does not provide social mobility and is not good for working-class and disadvantaged communities. They suggest that the opposite is the case.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): I remind members that they are restricted to five minutes each.
Mr S Wilson: Sir Kenneth has 30 seconds in which to answer.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): He has about two minutes.
Sir Kenneth Bloomfield: I will leave Mr Patterson to address the statistical point.
There is no greater misnomer than the phrase "parental choice". There will not be parental choice, merely parental preference. In many cases, proximity will apply, and parents will not be able to get their child into the school of their choice. Undoubtedly, that will be the case.
Mr Bradley makes a fair point about the need for an alternative to the 11-plus. We would be in an absurd situation, having —
Mr D Bradley: Excuse me, I did not say anything about an alternative to the 11-plus. I said that I am unconvinced that selection is good for working-class children.
Mr McCallion: May I deal with this issue?
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): Please deal with it briefly because there are other members waiting to speak.
Mr McCallion: Where did our middle class come from? On the whole, the people who make up the middle class in Northern Ireland are former grammar-school children.
Mr D Bradley: I agree with you. Back in 1948, and for perhaps 20 to 25 years after 1948, the 11-plus provided social mobility for many working-class people. My former party leader is on record as having said that he benefited from sitting the 11-plus. However, things have moved on, and what was intended to encourage social mobility in 1948 now militates against it.
Mr McCallion: I was the principal of Aquinas Diocesan Grammar School, and when it opened, the vast majority of its children came from lower-middle-class or working-class backgrounds. The difficulty is that there are significant numbers of parents who have gained from the grammar school system, and they want their children to gain from it too.
I want a system that will allow all children to gain. There are secondary schools that are doing fabulous jobs. When I was the principal of St Colm’s High School in Twinbrook — Twinbrook is not an area that is famous for being rich — I helped, with the assistance of John Allen and Imelda Jordan, to improve that school to a point where many of its children could move on to a grammar school. That is something of which I am proud. In fact, when I attended a recent function at Rathmore Grammar School, a young girl was presented to me to shake my hand. She asked whether I remembered her: I did not. She informed me that when she was a third-year pupil at St Colm’s, I became the school principal. She told me that I had given her a chance. Her words made me so proud that I have no hesitation in telling the members of the subgroup that my head was as big as this room.
11.15 am
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): To maintain a sense of fairness, we must move on. There should be time at the end of the session for further discussion. I ask members to respect the five-minute time limit. They may have a chance to ask further questions later.
Mr McNarry: Our new task is to identify whether selection is necessary. Part of our remit is to compile a report bringing forward alternatives to selection, and we would appreciate your help on that. The debate is deadlocked; it is stifled, and we must move on from that. As I said earlier, if the Assembly were to vote tomorrow — and it would not be by choice — one side would go into one lobby, the other side would go into the other lobby, and we would come out as deadlocked as we are now. Therefore, any help on alternative processes would be much appreciated in the short time that we have now, and beyond.
In an earlier evidence session this morning, a senior union official said that academic selection had contributed to underperformance, as identified by the shocking numeracy and literacy figures in the Committee of Public Accounts’ report. I would welcome your comments on that matter.
At an evidence session last week, officials from the Department of Education said that there was a significant role for historical feeder primary schools in a schools admission policy under the proposed new arrangements. What experience have you or your colleagues had of the patterns emerging from feeder schools? Are the admissions criteria for historical feeder primary schools easy to identify?
Sir Kenneth Bloomfield: I am chairman of the board of governors at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution (RBAI) in the centre of Belfast. Historically, we have drawn our pupils from a wide area. At present, there are somewhere in the region of 135 feeder schools represented there. In many cases, some of those schools have sent only one or two pupils, and four or five schools provide a large part of the intake.
The last thing that we want to do in Northern Ireland is to create a series of educational ghettos. It is a bad idea to fixate on a neighbourhood and an immediate community that does not present the opportunity for people from different places to mix. That is why I am so antipathetic to making proximity the prime criterion for school admission. Such a criterion would be educationally and socially wrong.
Mr McCallion: Through our involvement with the grammar school sector, we will do all that we can to help. We understand the difficulty of the task that members have been set; it is awful. If it were easy, we would have done it long ago, but we are stuck.
Apparently, we have a numeracy and literacy policy. Why, therefore, do the Government hand out money to five education and library boards that merrily go off and do whatever they choose? The North Eastern Education and Library Board, the South Eastern Education and Library Board, the Western Education and Library Board and the Belfast Education and Library Board are all different. If there is a problem, and it has been identified, is it not acceptable to assume that there should be a solution? We know that the solution is to tackle numeracy and literacy sensibly. It is wise to establish the present situation and decide what has to be done, constantly monitoring the results.
Why has there not been an inspector’s report on the £40 million spent on the numeracy and literacy strategy? Did the inspectorate never write a report? I doubt that that is the case; rather, I think that it was never published. Marion Matchett is a competent chief inspector and a robust, tough individual. I do not believe that she and her officials sat there and did nothing. If you throw £40 million at something without making effective and efficient plans for what it will be spent on, there will be problems.
It looked like a good idea at the time, and I do not want to criticise the individuals who were responsible. I know that certain schools made fantastically good use of that money. However, I would not want to suggest that it only happened because of the 11-plus or that it does not apply in England or Scotland.
The Republic of Ireland has a quasi-comprehensive system. I use that word very advisedly. Twenty per cent of the young people in the Republic of Ireland do not sit the Leaving Certificate examinations. They leave school before they do the Leaving Certificate. In Northern Ireland, 5% leave with no qualifications. Is that a system that we want to go towards? Listen to the Ministers in the South and read the Skills Research Initiative (SRI) report; they know what the problem is. The whole of western Europe has this problem. We need to raise the matter of the people at the bottom, and we need to focus on that. When we talk about the 11-plus, we are not focusing on those children. Let us get this argument out of the way. We are asking members to help us to solve it.
Mr Young: May I make two brief points? To blame grammar schools or academic selection for the problems with literacy and numeracy is nonsense. Primary 1 and primary 2 teachers can identify problems at that stage. As Sir Kenneth and Finbarr McCallion have said, there is much more that can be done at that level. It is totally wrong to lay it at the academic door.
It is, of course, possible to identify feeder schools. We have on average some 50 feeder schools from a very wide catchment area.
Mr McNarry: In which area is that?
Mr Young: Belfast Royal Academy has about 50 feeder schools from a wide catchment area. It is possible to identify them, but in addition to that one has to identify the children with, perhaps, the intellectual gifts to benefit from the academic curriculum that we are offering. Feeder schools alone would not be sufficient to provide that.
Mr S Wilson: I have just three questions. You may not be able to answer them all today, but perhaps you would write to us. Some of the questioners this morning and the trades union representatives who were here have already posed the argument that we want to retain the academic ethos in the grammar schools. Can you explain how that could be done without academic selection? If academic selection, as we understand it at present, is to be done away with, what do you need from any report available to parents or teachers that would ensure that youngsters who want to go to a grammar school and want to benefit from the academic ethos — which everybody says they want to preserve —make best use of the opportunity?
Secondly, we are not looking at this in a vacuum. There will still be the possibility of academic selection after 26 March 2007. Can you outline what you mean by computer-adaptive testing? I know that we could get a paper on that.
Thirdly, if the political parties cannot agree on a form of reporting or selection that can be applied universally to schools, what would the view of the grammar schools be towards the possibility of testing or assessing youngsters and having their own arrangements for making those decisions? Academic selection would remain, but only for those schools that wanted to use it.
Mr Young: A variety of things could happen. The first that was suggested, of course, was the pupil profile, but if a profile is used for selection, it will end up being bland. It will put primary schoolteachers on the spot. The system that we are currently investigating, and will probably hang our hat on, is computer-adaptive testing. If we adopt any other system of testing, should it be Key Stage 2, National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) tests or standardised tests, it will result in the same sort of pressures that the 11-plus imposed. Computer-adaptive testing is done on a computer. It can be done in primary 5, primary 6 or primary 7, and done as often as the young people like. It meets many of the criteria that we mentioned. In other words, it is not a sudden-death thing. It can be used by primary schools to determine what level a young person is at. It would give a score from –3 to 0 right up to +3 — so it gives different levels. It can be done at different stages and as often as young people like, and there is no time limit. Therefore, pupils can, in a sense, be relaxed about it.
Mr Wilson said that that there is a problem about reaching agreement. Although we need to investigate the computer-adaptive system further before hanging our hats on it, if we assume that schools go down that road, the system could be used in a variety of ways. For example, if a school wished to take a strict approach, it could choose children who achieve a score of 2 or 3. For those who wish to use the system more loosely — that could be done. Finally, schools that do not want academic selection could use the system to determine the individual needs of young people.
It will be very difficult to reach a compromise that is agreeable to everyone, but something similar to the computer-adaptive system — a system that does not put pressure on primary schools — could identify the gifts and strengths of young people and could be used by different schools in different ways.
We still require a presentation on that, although that will happen soon, but after that, we will probably choose that system. It does not put the pressure on primary schools, as the current tests do, but if there is to be selection, there must be some form of testing. The issue is about how it can be done without creating the current pressures.
Mr S Wilson: Some witnesses have suggested that it is possible to maintain the academic ethos of a grammar school without testing.
Mr Young: That would be impossible. The ethos may be retained for a while, but within seven years all grammar schools would become comprehensive schools, and, depending on criteria, they may become local comprehensive schools.
People continually say that we must look to the future and not to the past — they have not looked to England, where comprehensive schools have been a disaster. It would be very difficult to identify a young person’s potential for grammar school from a profile.
Mr McElduff: Is it fair to say that the tests are unproven?
Mr Young: I wish to make one point. The computer-adaptive system has been proven in the United States. For young people, there is a competitive element. If they are successful at one level, they move on to a slightly harder one, and so on. The level they reach becomes a useful tool that is used by teachers to identify strengths and weaknesses in the student.
Sir Kenneth Bloomfield: We are not thinking only of the schools; we are trying to think of the children. There is nothing more miserable than the condition of a child who gains admission to a school where he or she is unable to cope. If there are too many of those children —
Mr D Bradley: That happens now.
Sir Kenneth Bloomfield: Either they are not able to cope, or the school has to reorganise its teaching resources. That affects the capacity to continue offering subjects such as the hard sciences, which underpin the Northern Ireland economy.
One reason for abolishing the 11-plus is that schools are obliged to be more prescriptive than they would otherwise choose to be. Every year, schools like ours have to turn away children that they would ordinarily be happy to accept, and who would be perfectly capable of coping with what those schools can offer.
Mr Donaldson: You said that certain selection criteria might be used as tie-breakers. I am concerned about the possible development of a postcode lottery if geographical location is used as a tie-breaker, especially where a number of schools are in close proximity. Belfast Royal Academy and the Royal Belfast Academical Institute would fall into that category. If academic selection were not available as a transfer criterion, and there were schools that were oversubscribed, how would that be dealt with?
Sir Kenneth Bloomfield: If academic selection were abolished, the Department of Education would produce an acceptable menu of entry criteria. Individual schools would then select approved criteria from that menu. Important questions would then arise about the order in which those criteria were addressed. For schools such as ours, the last thing we would want is to be confined to a tightly circumscribed geographical area. Ultimately, if hardy came to hardy, we would prefer random selection to proximity to the school.
11.30 am
Mr Donaldson: If academic selection were retained but there was no political agreement about the method, how would grammar schools feel about introducing their own selection procedures?
Mr Young: If academic selection were retained and nothing else was agreed, grammar schools would happily use their own procedures.
Focusing on what Mr Bradley said earlier, however, I emphasise that I have a very working-class background. If there is a problem with coaching now, there is no doubt in my mind that if schools introduced their own tests, that problem would increase, possibly tenfold. It is important to identify the young people who can cope with the grammar curriculum. Of course, we would provide our own tests. However, we have to emphasise that if we did that, young people from poorer areas would probably be disadvantaged.
Mr McCallion: I want to add an important point. We have discussed bright and academically successful children. Let us consider for a moment those children who are not academically successful in primary school. At present, if they were placed in grammar schools, the necessary teachers would not be available to manage them. New teachers would be needed. How would that be managed?
First, teachers would have to be taken away from minority subjects. Physics, chemistry and biology would probably survive, although interest in subjects such as German and other modern languages would decrease — those are the low-uptake subjects. We would have to go to secondary schools and poach their good remedial teachers. Let me be clear about remedial teachers: as the principal of a secondary school, I can tell you that they are among the most talented teachers. I consider myself to be a reasonably confident teacher. However, for me, the idea of going into a class of 10 or 15 children who have the attention span of a click of your fingers is impossible. I team-taught with people in those schools. There are a limited number of those very talented teachers, who are, at the moment, concentrated where they are needed. Another group of teachers is concentrated on teaching the difficult sciences, high-level English, maths, and so on.
If you want an example of a really good teacher, one is sitting here — Sammy Wilson. Education in Northern Ireland has lost Mr Wilson as a teacher. He was a leader. He will laugh, because I am going to embarrass him. He was a talented teacher; people recognised that about him. However, if I had been his principal, I would not have let him near the first-formers. He would have been a star with the fifth years and the lower and upper sixth; they would have thought that he was wonderful. He would have worked them to death. However, if he were put among the first years, it would not have been so good. That is a fact: teachers are just not meant to teach every year group.
If you were to put me in a primary 1 class, I could not cope. The seats are too small, the kids are too tiny, and their heads are buzzing. I am too old — I was too old when I was 21 years of age. You must choose horses for courses.
Mr McElduff: I notice that Sammy has been silenced. [Laughter.]
Mr McCallion: Is that a record?
Mr McNarry: Roy Beggs Jnr in East Antrim is going to talk to him. [Laughter.]
Mr Young: Differentiation is the key. Any teacher will tell you that in order to pitch lessons appropriately and stimulate pupils in the same classroom, it is not easy to separate the bright ones from those who struggle. One of the strengths of the current system is that top-class grammar schools and top-class secondary schools cater for two different groups. Secondary schools deal with the children who Mr McCallion talked about — those young people who struggle and who need extra help.
Secondary schools also identify the late developers. That is extremely important, particularly for males, who can develop as late as 14, 15, or even 17 years of age, some even after they have left school. Secondary schools have the academic stream that allows those children to make progress. That is one of the system’s strengths.
I want to return to several issues that Mr Bradley raised about the 11-plus. Perhaps there will be a chance to do so later.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): There will not be a chance later. Five minutes are left before the meeting is suspended. I want to do a quick round up with members, so — I had a good education — that is one minute each. [Laughter.]
Mr McNarry: Can you imagine her being a teacher?
Mr D Bradley: I do not accept, nor am I convinced by, your argument that grammar schoolteachers cannot teach children of varying abilities. After all, all teachers in Northern Ireland receive similar basic training. If you do a degree and then do a postgraduate certificate in education, you are just as qualified to teach in a secondary school as in a grammar school. In addition, I am not convinced by the argument that grammar schools contain homogenous groups of pupils. They do not; that is far from being the case.
We could say that at one time the grammar school sector took about a quarter of the supposedly top pupils. However, last year 13 grammar schools drew less than half of their intake from this group. For example, at Campbell College only 37·4% of new pupils had grade A. At St Joseph’s Grammar School, Donaghmore, the percentage was 38·4%; at Cambridge House it was 25·7%; and at Hunterhouse it was a mere 10%. What is happening, possibly through a process of demographic change, is that grammar schools are gradually becoming all-ability schools, and the teachers in those grammar schools are coping very well with that expanding range of ability. If they can do it now, surely they can do it in the future.
Mr Young: Chairperson, I thought we were here to give some answers, not to listen to lectures.
Mr D Bradley: Chairperson, that was a question. The witnesses have put certain points to us.
Mr McCallion: Can I run the question the other way round?
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): May I remind you that I am the principal of this school? Mr Bradley is entitled to add a comment.
Mr McNarry: It is either 100 lines or a whacking, Dominic?
Mr Patterson: For a number of years, over 90% of children accepted into grammar schools have had an A or B in the transfer procedure. The suggestion that grammar schools are becoming comprehensive schools is complete nonsense. There are a couple of schools in which the intake has gone down to pupils with a C, but we are talking about a small number of schools. Over 90% of pupils taken into grammar schools have an A or a B in their transfer test — that does not denote a comprehensive intake.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): May I just remind you that this is being recorded in evidence, and if you want to make a written submission to any of the comments that the members have made, feel free to do so.
Mr McNarry: I see now why Dominic did not want the Catholic head teachers to be attending these sessions — they might have given him a bit of a shock.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): It is 45 seconds now.
Mr D Bradley: I take it that they are represented here by Mr McCallion, if I am not mistaken.
Mr McNarry: Can the witnesses quickly address the impact of falling rolls and school closures on the reforms, bearing in mind that the reforms may eventually dispose of selection of any kind? What is the match-up in terms of the children, who Sir Kenneth rightly identified as the most important aspect of this?
Mr McCallion: One of the problems is that we have done nothing for 10 years. We have argued, and we have not thought of the issues. Our population is now back to where it was in 1985. We should have done something. In 1985, voluntary grammar schools came together and agreed to take cuts in their numbers. That is where the quotas came from. What has happened since? Nothing, except that we have opened integrated schools which have taken children out of the system. If we are going to have a selective system, we are going to have to come to an agreement about selection and about intakes. That is life. It is hard. It is going to be very difficult, but it is life — no free lunches.
Mr McElduff: To be directly specific to the terms of reference, I am anticipating that academic selection will have gone in the future. Has the grammar school sector given any thought to aptitude testing at the key stages of children’s education to enable them to be placed on the basis of subject choice?
11.45 am
Sir Kenneth Bloomfield: Setting is carried out in many English comprehensive schools. Interestingly, at one of our meetings, the principal of a grammar school said that people talk all the time about the sense of failure that children feel when they do not pass the 11-plus. She wanted to assure us that a pupil in a comprehensive school who is in the bottom set for all subjects has no less a sense of failure than a pupil who has failed the 11-plus. Whether we like it or not, some pupils will do better than others.
I am conscious that, yet again, selection is dominating the education debate. However, the real problem lies elsewhere: at primary level. It lies not in poor teaching but in the conditions in which our children are taught in primary schools. If, by 11 years of age, a child has no motivation or interest in learning, it is possibly too late to do anything about it.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): If anybody wishes to comment on that, they should feel free to do so in writing.
Mr Young: I want to ask what Mr McElduff meant by his question; I would like to answer it properly. Was he referring to aptitude tests that pupils take before they start secondary school or tests that they take when they are there?
Mr McElduff: I was referring to tests that they take when they are there.
Mr S Wilson: All this morning’s evidence suggests that those who support the move away from academic selection towards pupil profiles do so on the basis that profiles will give the ultimate parental choice. Parents will be able to choose a school based on a report that will enable them to make the best choices for their youngsters. Against the picture of falling school rolls, will the inevitable outcome of pupil profiles mean gains in pupil numbers for the schools that are correctly or incorrectly perceived to be the most successful — your schools — while the secondary sector loses out? If people have freedom of choice, they will choose grammar schools.
Mr McCallion: Some parents will do that. The situation in Great Britain must be considered. Who would want to be principal of a school that is six times oversubscribed? Hundreds of children are being turned away from such schools. That will happen here: people will begin with the school that they perceive to be number one and ricochet their way down a list until they finally find a slot. What method is that for placing a child in a school?
Mr McNarry: Are you referring to good schools and bad schools?
Mr McCallion: Yes, schools that are perceived as good schools or bad schools, handy schools, schools that are far away, schools that offer T-shirts if you go to open days — it will not matter.
Mr Donaldson: Thank you for your submissions. My question relates to comprehensive education. I went to Kilkeel High School, which is a comprehensive school. Given the locality, comprehensive education was the only available option. Should there be a one-size-fits-all solution? In places in which there is oversubscription, should we consider area-based solutions that could include academic selection?
Mr Young: One strength of the current system is the variety of schools that are available. I am not against comprehensive schools as such; various types of school here are doing really well. Mr Donaldson hit the nail on the head when he asked whether we want a one-size-fits-all solution or separate solutions for separate situations. Study after study in the Republic of Ireland has found that parental choice is a myth: it leads to confusion and to the oversubscription that Mr Donaldson and Mr McCallion mentioned.
Sir Kenneth Bloomfield: I wish to return briefly to the point that I made at the beginning of the session. The Department of Education has repeatedly assured us that there is no threat to grammar schools, that there is no intention to introduce comprehensive education to Northern Ireland and that there is no search for a one-size-fits-all solution. We want substance to be added to those assurances to make them credible, because we do not think that they are credible.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): I thank the witnesses for their presentations.
Mr D Bradley: I have a point of information. Mr McNarry said that I objected to the Catholic grammar school heads —
Mr McNarry: Quote me correctly; I did not say that. I said that I could now understand why you did not want them. That is different.
Mr D Bradley: Can I correct that? I knew that this group of witnesses, and Mr McCallion in particular, would be more than able to represent the views of all grammar schools.
Mr Young: I would like to say one thing to everyone: no successful business would put pressure on so many variables at the same time. The 11-plus, the Bain Report, the review of the curriculum, the review of public administration, and the review of procurement have all contributed to the uncertainty of the last five years in the education sector. The Bain Report should have happened first, followed by the curriculum review. We must think of teachers and pupils in the primary schools, where there is a very serious vacuum. Something must be done.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): Thank you for giving up your time this morning, and thank you for your presentation. We have a lot of people to see this afternoon, and that is why I am pressing the pace. If you feel that you need to respond further to any of our comments or questions, feel free to do so in writing to the Clerks.
Sir Kenneth Bloomfield: We thank you for the opportunity to come and talk to you; we appreciate it.
The subgroup was suspended at 11.46 am.
On resuming —
11.48 am
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): I welcome the new witnesses to the Subgroup to Consider the Schools Admission Policy. In a moment I will allow time for introductions and presentations. Members will then be free to ask questions.
We have been struggling with time all morning, because there have been more questions and comments than expected. If I push you, it is for that reason and because a number of evidence sessions are scheduled for this afternoon.
Mr Jim Clarke (Council for Catholic Maintained Schools): I was nearly going to say good afternoon, but it is definitely still morning.
My name is Jim Clarke, and I am the deputy chief executive of the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools (CCMS). I was also a member of the Costello Group. I understand that Stephen Costello was invited today but was unable to attend; I will make a comment or two on his behalf.
It does not make sense to consider pupil transfer in isolation from everything else that is happening in education. CCMS does not consider education to be an end in itself. However, it is important that there be coherence and connectivity in education policies throughout the education system. Perhaps equally, if not more, important is the link between the education system, society and the economy. I commented on that point, particularly with respect to the economy, in my paper to the subgroup
The Costello Group faced the same issues, and I suppose some people were surprised that we actually came up with a solution. We did it by establishing principles and drawing practical outworkings from those principles. We tested everything that was proposed against those principles.
I would like to remind the subgroup of those principles. There should be equality — each young person should be valued. All education should be high in quality. The curriculum should be relevant, in order to motivate learning. There should be effective access to education, with appropriate support to allow everyone to fulfil his or her potential for lifelong learning. There should be the flexibility to provide a range of choices, with information and advice available to guide those choices — whether it is for parents in the early years of their children’s education or students in later years.
The education service should promote tolerance and reconciliation through understanding and respect for diversity, not only from a religious or political perspective, but in relation to the social differentiation in our society. It should be based on the principles of partnership, and the education service should foster effective partnerships. That makes sense in the context of the education of children, not the preservation of schools per se.
Schools exist to meet the needs of pupils. We must examine that point carefully in the context of a range of issues, not least the fact that a recent report on literacy and numeracy highlighted those who are disadvantaged in education and the link to those who are disadvantaged in society as a whole. The question is how we ameliorate that situation in the context of social justice.
As regards the demographic downturn, there are 2,000 fewer pupils in schools this year than at the same time last year, which follows a trend that started in 2002.
The Government have accepted the broad principles contained in the Bain Report, which proposes area planning, something that we should consider in relation to resolving some of the pupil transfer issues.
I mentioned the need for coherence and connectivity of policy. We cannot look at demographics, the Bain Report and area planning without looking at transfer, admissions and transport policy, because another strand of the Bain Report was that we need to get better value out of the education service by not spending money on things that do not affect the child in the classroom.
Before we start talking about transfer procedures, there is a question that must be asked. Sir George Bain has said that Northern Ireland has more schools than it needs, and perhaps schools in places without children. The question is: what kind of post-primary arrangements will there be? Until that question is answered, the issue about the kind of procedures that should be in place for the transfer of pupils at age 11, 14 or any other age cannot possibly be addressed.
In particular, with reference to rural areas, should we always be looking at the structures we know? Can we not consider ages four to 14 or ages seven to 14 in certain areas, because the curriculum model we now have, via the Education (Northern Ireland) Order 2006, is creating core skills, which are really in the middle part of the education cycle between the ages of seven and 14. This is about a skills curriculum, and about coherence within that skills curriculum. We need to ask what kinds of post-primary arrangements should be put in place to facilitate that.
Finally, we also need to look at things such as the pupil profile and remember what the intention was. The pupil profile is a document that guides pupils, parents and teachers in identifying and meeting children’s learning needs over a period of time. It was never designed to be a tool to aid selection. It was designed to reinforce assessment for learning and build on good practice in the classroom.
So, those are some of the issues. I have no doubt that there are other issues about admissions arrangements that you will come to in the course of your questioning.
12.00 noon
Mr Uel McCrea (Association of Head Teachers in Secondary Schools): I am Uel McCrea, Headmaster of Ballyclare Secondary School, a non-selective school with just over 1,000 students. I am also Chairman of the Association of Head Teachers in Secondary Schools, which is an association of principals from controlled and maintained schools throughout the five education and library board areas in the Province. I have provided the subgroup with a paper that attempts to set out our position on the inclusion of academic selection as part of admissions criteria.
Our association, although it represents non-selective schools throughout the Province, is not primarily concerned about the preservation of our schools or our type of school. Our main concern, and I know this is shared by many, is that we really wish to have the child at the centre of our focus. The reason for our very existence, as Jim Clarke said, is that schools are there to provide the educational opportunities that will meet the diverse needs of children, with their wide variety of talents and abilities, at each stage of their development.
We want to see young people from Northern Ireland better qualified, more confident and more competent in their skills than ever before. I quote Jeremiah 29:11, where God says to his people:
"For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future".
That is what we want for all our children — a hope and a future. We believe that if that is what we are interested in then we are not living in the 1950s, we are moving into the twenty-first century.
There is no reason for academic selection at the age of 11 — children simply do not need it. It is a device to facilitate a ranking order so that a particular type of school can select its intake. That is all it is. Why do we want to separate children artificially at the age of 11? What benefits are in it for them?
I can see why the grammar schools wish to have a pecking order, but what is the cost to the children — the children we serve? What are the negative effects on the primary school curriculum? George Buckley is with me today. He is the parent of a child at my school, but he is also headmaster of a primary school in Magherafelt, and I will let him speak on that point.
My paper clearly states our view that academic selection completely distorts the curriculum. It focuses our minds on things that do not primarily address children’s needs. There are now new proposals for computer-adaptive tests (CATs) — we have not learned the lesson that CATs will do exactly the same thing. For 40-odd years we have tried different methods of separating children artificially at the age of 11. They have all been doomed to failure. Now we are told that there is another system comprising 27 tests for children in primaries 5, 6, and 7. The simple question I ask is — why? Why do we do that? Why do the children need to do that? It is simply because certain types of institutions want to have a pecking order.
Education is not about pecking orders: it is about giving everybody hope and a future. Personally, and as an association, we believe firmly in all-ability schools — the Scottish or the Finnish models — but we accept that it seems as though we will not achieve that. The Education (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 gives us the opportunity to formulate an education system that meets the needs of all children and young people and creates a solid foundation for a learning society. When academic selection at the age of 11 is abolished, we can improve choice and flexibility for all pupils.
We believe in the formation of partnerships. We will build on the strengths of existing schools, including grammar schools, which are not threatened by the Education (Northern Ireland) Order 2006. Those partnerships will enhance educational opportunities and, if they are strategically placed, as the recommendations in the Bain Report suggest, we could form local networks of institutions and learning communities and offer a comprehensive range of courses and provision. All children would have a minimum entitlement regardless of where they live or their social-class backgrounds. We should not shut off possibilities for young people, rather we should ensure that they continue to learn and develop and gradually take decisions — along with their parents — on the sort of education and training that they would like and to which they are best suited.
The pupil profile, to which Mr Clarke referred, is designed to help parents and children to choose the most appropriate pathway. It is not meant to be a means whereby a particular school can choose its intake or deal with oversubscription. Mission criteria that best suit local networks of schools, including grammar schools and colleges, can be chosen from the broad categories outlined in the consultation document. Those local partnerships can be given the responsibility to develop appropriate criteria that best suit their community and students.
We cannot retain the present system. It is a socially stratified schools system suited to the 1950s. I do understand, however, why it was created in the 1950s. We need a system that promotes the skills of all our citizens, puts Northern Ireland at the top of the schools’ league, encourages entrepreneurship and ends false distinctions between academic and vocational study.
Mr George Buckley: Good afternoon. Mr McCrea asked me to come along to give a parent’s perspective. I am a product of the secondary school system. I am a past pupil of Ballyclare Secondary School, and I went through the selection procedure. I have two daughters; one proceeded through the grammar school system, and the other is in the secondary school system.
From a parent’s perspective, selection is fine if the child achieves the grade to which he or she aspires, which applies to around 25% of children. However, the impact of a grade that does not allow the child to go to the school of his or her choice can be devastating. Parents see at first hand that their child’s self-esteem is damaged when he or she is separated from friends of six or seven years of age. Regardless of having been told that a B, C or D grade is not a failure, society, children and parents regard those grades as failures, and the damage caused can be long term.
As a parent, I question why our children are put through that trauma. My two girls, because of the superb teaching that they have received, will probably end up receiving third-level education in the same place, and I am not quite sure why the selection system needed to separate them at 11 years of age.
Wearing my other hat, I operate within the school system as a primary school principal. Politicians have commented that there is a little distortion in year 7. That is not correct. There is a distortion in the primary curriculum for years 5, 6 and 7, and it is devastating. Our teaching is geared towards the selection test. We do not teach a differentiated curriculum to those children who select the test, and I tell parents that. Parents are under tremendous social pressure, because it is social engineering.
We do not differentiate. Children are taught at level 5, often above their individual ability level. They suffer as a result, and they are frustrated. That teaching method is contrary to the educational principles that have been set out for primary schools, yet schools have to teach in that way because the examination is competitive. Children go through that procedure in years 5, 6 and 7.
The revised curriculum, which has just been launched and which contains a foundation stage, is an enriched curriculum that will operate from year 1 up to year 7. That new curriculum will not dovetail into a system of selection. Neither the in-service training nor the structures that are being put in place for the pupil profile lend themselves to such a system at the age of 11. Therefore there is a huge anomaly.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): Members may now question the witnesses. However, I would appreciate it if they adhered to their five-minute time limit. For fairness, I will start with the DUP this time.
Mr Donaldson: Gentlemen, you touched on the implications that the Bain Report will have for the reconfiguration of the education system. Given Northern Ireland’s changing demographics, I accept that that change will occur. In light of that review and its consequences on the reconfiguration of post-primary education — never mind primary education — is now the right time to change the transfer procedure? Should that change now be put on hold and a temporary arrangement put in place until we see the outcome of the Bain Report and how the system will be reconfigured? Is now the right time to make those decisions about which the subgroup has to make recommendations?
Mr U McCrea: Perhaps Mr Clarke would like to comment on the strategic view; I have no comment to make.
Mr J Clarke: This is absolutely the right time. Earlier this week, Maria Eagle indicated that the Department of Education would take immediate action on the Bain Report proposals rather than wait until the Education and Skills Authority is established. The subgroup should bear in mind the comments that have been made about the curriculum. A new curriculum will be rolled out from next September, and, as I said earlier, we must ensure that we have coherence and connectivity in education policy.
Area planning recognises an area as a cogent unit. It involves ascertaining pupil numbers in an area, and it considers the kind of educational structures that are needed there. That may mean acknowledging that in some areas there are not enough schools and that in others that there are too many. Therefore relocation of schools may have to be considered.
However, area planning must be addressed within the right context. We need to know the kind of post-primary education into which we are transferring children. Until we know that, some of the other issues that we have discussed are irrelevant. We need to know what we are moving towards, and, as Uel McCrea said, parents want to make genuine choices.
As a community, we need to make real choices. As I have said, we must stop looking at education as the preserve of some and not the preserve of others or as an end in itself. We have to create a much closer link between our education system and our economy. If we want to buy people into the idea of a prosperous Northern Ireland, we must have an economy that underpins that concept. At present, there is considerable debate about the attitude of the Protestant community to education, and the results in the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts’ report question that.
Our educational success is another factor. Some 50% of our people go to university, but our economy can employ only 20% to 23% of graduates. Where do the rest go? We are exporting them. However, we may also be creating an even more insidious problem: people with degrees are working at sub-degree level, doing jobs that they could have obtained with GCSEs. That is not the best way to buy a community into the value of education. Our education system must therefore play into our economy.
The Bain Report has several strands. Besides addressing area planning, it considers school funding. Much of what we do, particularly transporting kids from one area to another, takes money out of the classroom. Therefore to answer your question, we must consider the big picture. Bearing in mind the work that has been done in the Catholic sector, with the agreement of education and library boards and other school providers, we could move quickly to area planning.
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Mr U McCrea: We are probably 50 years too late. However, that is a personal view. As a school principal for 20-odd years, I have seen youngsters coming in every year, and I know the damage that selection has done to them. My heart bleeds for them, and I say that this is wrong. I do not believe that an academically capable 11-year-old will lose anything by not having academic selection as one of the criteria for admission. I honestly believe that with all my heart. In the best interests of children — and long term, in the best interest of our Province — we should remove selection.
Mr Donaldson: Supposing that an academically gifted child ends up in an underachieving school on which inspection reports indicate that there is a problem. How does that benefit that child?
Mr U McCrea: There are examples of very good practice. I could take you to Birmingham, for example, where a group of educationalists came together and simply said that they did not want any sub-standard schools in their area. They share expertise to ensure that every child in the area gets an education of a very high standard. There is no doubt about the quality of teachers in Northern Ireland. We already know that they are better qualified and, I would say, have a greater commitment. We simply cannot allow the scenario that Mr Donaldson described to happen. Therefore, in partnership with others, we must ensure that that academically gifted child gets a first-rate education and that nothing blocks his or her way. Moving towards this system will not hinder a child like that.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): I wish to remind witnesses that they should feel free to forward any other information that could be relevant to the subgroup. If we have time at the end, members will ask questions.
Mr S Wilson: I have a question for each of the panel. First, Mr Buckley talked about separating children at the age of 11. It is inevitable: we had a submission this morning from one of the teachers' unions, which claimed that if we go for area-based schools, we could have youngsters separated on the basis that one house was in one place and another was 5 yards away. Separation at the age of 11 is going to happen where there is a choice of schools and oversubscribed schools.
You also mentioned the distorting effect of testing on the curriculum. Is it not your job as a principal to manage that? If you believe that the curriculum is being distorted, it is up to you to ensure that that does not happen.
I do not like talking about people’s personal choices, but you said that you chose a grammar school for your daughter. Were you not making a choice about the differences in schools when you made that decision?
My question for Jim Clarke is on the matter of choice. Mr Clarke was a member of the Costello Report team, and the main thrust of Costello at the time was that parental choice would be central when determining which schools youngsters went to. How can parental choice be exercised without producing the result that Mr McCrea described in which there is an artificial pecking order? People have perceptions about "good schools" and "bad schools", which will not disadvantage some secondary schools. The alleged emphasis on parental choice could result in some good secondary schools going to the wall while some bad grammar schools might be preserved — the exact complaint that Mr McCrea made in his submission.
Mr Buckley: I acknowledge that. We have experience from both perspectives at first hand. We had a child who was a so-called success in the transfer selection procedure. She got an A grade in the competitive examination, so we directed her down the route that the system indicated.
It must be remembered that academic selection was imposed externally. Primary schools have been forced into competition: our children are competing against other primary schools to get into the top 25% of primary-school pupils who are accepted into grammar schools. Our parental body is under pressure as a result and requires that we ensure that pupils are as ready as possible to compete in that examination.
There is no intrinsic educational advantage in sitting a selection test, because the same material is covered over and over again, with the result that children eventually stop learning and become exam-wise. The distortion of the curriculum comes from the system, not what happens in the school.
Mr S Wilson: If that were true, one would expect there to be a far higher rate of failure among pupils who have got into the school of their choice after having gone through that process, and there is no evidence of that.
Mr U McCrea: That is another myth. In the 1950s, the intake of grammar schools was about 20% of pupils; in the North Eastern Education and Library Board the intake is now 45%. The tail of the issue needs to be considered. For instance, the last statistic that I read was that 95% of grammar-school pupils were getting five or more GCSEs. If we assume that 45% of the total academic range of pupils is accepted into a grammar school, 5% of those pupils are getting fewer than five GCSEs. Forty-five per cent of the ability range goes to the so-called academic schools. However, of the next 20%, for which schools such as mine cater, 100% get five or more grades A* to C.
It is a myth that academic selection is a wonderful system. I have yet to meet a foreign gentleman or lady who has viewed our system and thought that it was so fantastic that they wanted to replicate it in their part of the world.
We must be realistic and wake up to the figures. The Department can produce figures that, with respect to Mr Wilson, question that assumption.
Mr S Wilson: You mentioned five passes at GCSE. I must say that one in 20 hardly represents the distortion that Mr Buckley mentioned.
Mr U McCrea: No, no, no. With respect, Mr Wilson, you have misinterpreted what I said. I was talking about the 20% of pupils who fall into the next ability range; I was not talking about our own standards — where 50% of youngsters get five or more GCSE passes — but the ability range. I am talking about the assertion that if we did not have our own selection system, somehow standards would fall. Teachers in both types of school are doing a fairly good job. Quite honestly, however, it is a false notion that separation is necessary in order to maintain standards. That argument does not hold water.
Mr J Clarke: To reinforce that, it should be remembered that there is a common curriculum, which will continue; there is no division in our curriculum. It is nonsense to separate; it is also nonsense to subvert the primary-school curriculum to carry out what is essentially an administrative exercise in transferring children.
Sammy Wilson asked about parental choice. The Costello Report talked about parental choice in the broadest sense: allowing all children — including the most academically able — to have the choice of a curriculum that they value.
The Council for Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) commissioned NFER to conduct a cohort study into attitudes to the curriculum. The first thing that the study found was that there are about 11 different curricula. The study also found that children, particularly those in grammar schools, were demotivated by the curriculum and that many aspects of the curricula that reflected their learning styles were diminished because they were not regarded as academically elite subjects.
Our community, our society and our economy do not require people with academically elite subjects; they require a broad range of skills, some of which will be determined to be academic, others as applied. We need to enable everyone to follow whichever pathway suits their needs. Parental choice is about a type of school in Northern Ireland, not a particular school; by "type", I mean a Catholic school, an integrated school, a state school and so on. In the context of area planning, all those needs should be met.
The aspirations of schools to deliver particular kinds of curricula should be agreed in the same way as the Birmingham model, which Mr McCrea described. That may mean that some grammar schools continue to offer courses that are primarily academic or vocational. However, it should be remembered that the Education (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 makes it clear that there should be access to 24 subjects at Key Stage 4, and 27 subjects at post-16, or a broad selection at least, to every pupil. That policy is underpinned by the notion that opportunities should be created — not closed.
Mr S Wilson: You have redefined parental choice. Your interpretation is different from that in the Costello Report, and that is interesting.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): I must interrupt. We are working to a time limit and, as I said earlier, if witnesses wish to provide any additional information, they should feel free to do so.
Mr McNarry: The debate is passionate, and I welcome your deep interest. During previous evidence, a witness said that he had been working on this matter for 10 years and had not yet succeeded. I am a newcomer to the debate, and I think that if someone has worked at this matter for 10 years and has not succeeded, he needs his ass kicked. The problem is that we have not really been trying to find a solution. Everyone has been setting up his own little empire. That worries me, because we have now boxed ourselves in. We have backed ourselves into a stalemate. The Assembly is not going to be able to address the problems that people think it can solve, and it is mischievous of the Government to put the Assembly into that position.
Having said that, I think that members should not give up. The subgroup has a particular remit, and a key role to explore the possibility of consensus on a schools admissions policy. You are the third group of witnesses that the subgroup has heard, and on the basis of that, we have not a hope in hell of succeeding. With all due respect, all members have heard is your side, their side, and somebody else's side, and this, that and the other.
We know that the pro- and anti-selection debate is divisive, and remains so. I would therefore be grateful if you could not simply adopt those standpoints, but give the subgroup some idea of where you think you could be flexible, where you think that there might be compromise in your ideals or where we could help to build a post-debate consensus. The debate is over, and it has been interesting to listen to, but I have heard most of it before. We want to try to move on from that.
Finally, I would like to hear your opinion on whether 14 is a more significant age in a young person’s education than the age of 11. That has come across from what has been said. Does that have implications for how the transfer procedure should be approached, or for school admissions philosophy?
Mr J Clarke: I am sorry that what you have heard from us sounds as though we are defending a position. Essentially, this is a political issue, and I have been asking why matters have not moved on. The issue would have been resolved by now had it not been for political intervention. Let us be clear about that.
Mr McNarry: Political intervention from where?
Mr J Clarke: From the St Andrews Agreement. The date in the Education (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 was clear. That date has now been moved forward again. Educationalists have reached solutions on selection, and had taken the view that, over a 10-year period, the Costello recommendations were the way forward.
Mr McNarry: With all due respect, educationalists are like lawyers and consultants. We hear from one group, then another, and, as I say, you all have your little empires. We must move on from that, because you have not succeeded. My priority is children’s welfare. The report that you referred to investigated underachievement. Grammar schools seem reasonably sound, according to that. Below grammar schools, however, we find good and bad schools.
Mr J Clarke: No, we do not. We find schools that do a good job with the pupils that they admit, and the circumstances in which those pupils come to those schools. I have sent a paper to all the education spokespersons on how additional money might be spent. One of the matters that I have stressed in that paper is that we must focus on year 0 to year 7 in order to prevent failure in the education system.
That is a fact. Mr Buckley has provided a very clear picture of what primary 5, primary 6 and primary 7 are like. We create failure and we force children through arbitrary thresholds when they reach a certain age. There is sufficient evidence to show the differential between a child born in June and a child born in July, and who happen to be in two different year groups. We need to face the realities.
I have tried to steer this debate away from the narrow view of transfer and selection. In essence, I agree with you — those arguments are gone.
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Mr McNarry: The subgroup’s remit is to look at the admissions policy, and also to look for options and alternatives.
Mr J Clarke: As a potential Government, you also have a remit to look at the purpose of the education system.
Mr McNarry: We do not have that remit.
Mr J Clarke: We cannot ignore the realities of how the education system fits in relation to our social and economic development. Members should find out what needs to be done to secure the best possible education system. The notion of selection and transfer is irrelevant, in the first instance. We must first build the system that we want, and then find out what mechanisms are needed to make that system work.
Mr McNarry: Are you saying that the reforms that you support will maintain the excellence that we have on one level and will also improve the poor results? Do you really believe that?
Mr J Clarke: Absolutely. Paper 13 of the Department of Education’s review of public administration (RPA) proposals looks at school improvement, and it places a duty on every school to engage in a continuous process of improvement. One of the reasons for that is a recognition that many of our schools — secondary and grammar — are coasting along and are not adding value. We could do so much more.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): I asked everyone to keep to a five-minute time limit, and so far everyone has used seven minutes. If anyone has anything else to add, they should hand their comments to the Committee Clerks.
Mr D Bradley: I have a question for Jim Clarke, and if either of the other two gentlemen wish to comment, they are more than welcome. Mr Clarke, you mentioned area-based planning. Can that be reconciled with catchment areas, and would such an arrangement assuage the anxieties that people have about postcode lotteries and rural disadvantage?
Mr J Clarke: First, the catchment area should be the area plan. It does not make sense to have an area plan if it is not regarded as the means by which the education of children will be managed in that area. Secondly, if those areas are large enough, and they should be large enough — in our sector, and looking at post-primary education, we have about 20 to 24 areas across Northern Ireland — they could be easily mapped into other sectoral areas as well, and that should provide a catchment area. Everyone in that catchment area should have the same general right to a level of education. While Mr Wilson may feel that my definition of parental choice departs from the Costello Report, we must look at parental choice within the context of the Bain Report. Catchment areas and the area plan are integrally linked.
The Department is charged with two tasks: first, cutting the amount of money spent on school transport in the current spending round and, secondly, coming up with a new policy. The policy should be area based, and that would result in economic savings.
Mr D Bradley: Since you are standing in for Steve Costello, tell us whether the Costello Report was a good compromise among competing educational interests.
Mr J Clarke: We did not set out to compromise. We set out to look at a future educational structure for Northern Ireland. We took all the interests and balanced them by testing them against principles and coming up with proposals. However, that did not mean that we were not changing the system; we were changing it for everyone, and we were mindful of the changes that were taking place at the time on the development of the new Northern Ireland curriculum, which was skills based. We were also cognisant of the development of the pupil profile; we were trying to get connectivity into our educational system.
Mr McElduff: How do you define an area? Mr Donaldson was very specific about situations pertaining to Lisburn. I am looking at it from an Omagh or west Tyrone perspective. For example, Castlederg is a natural social or cultural pathway to Omagh, and yet could be allocated elsewhere. How would you deal with such anomalies? Castlederg is technically in the Strabane district, but is a natural social and cultural pathway to Omagh.
My second question is about pupil profiling. What sort of information do you think parents want or need to inform them about their child’s ability? What type of information do they tend to seek?
Mr J Clarke: I will take the first question. As I said, definition of areas will require careful consideration. Within the Catholic sector, CCMS has used the diocese as the base; however, it recognises pupil movement across diocesan boundaries, and structures have been set up to examine that. We believe that those could easily be mapped onto what George Bain has talked about with regard to district council areas. I am not sure whether he was referring to 26 or seven councils, but I assume that it was 26. We could organise that, but we would have to address the questions that you have posed before the areas could be defined.
It must be recognised also that there may be overlaps. Habits of pupil movement build up, sometimes as a result of the road network in particular areas. At a specific level, CCMS considers Holy Cross College in Strabane to be a school for the future. At the moment it is a bilateral school, but it is an all-ability school. It is area-based; however, we recognise that children from Castlederg, which is in that district, are more naturally inclined to travel towards Omagh. We have taken that factor into account in looking at the long-term enrolment of that area. That is area-based planning.
It is significant that the Western Education and Library Board is now engaged in a similar process in relation to the controlled grammar school in Strabane. That is area planning in operation.
Mr U McCrea: Although there has not yet been broad agreement on admissions criteria, learning communities are already becoming established, within which different sectors are co-operating. I know, as a member of the North Eastern Education and Library Board, that that is happening throughout the board area. There is a classic example of cross-sector co-operation in Ballycastle. In Coleraine and Ballymoney there is also a coming together of schools in different sectors. In my own area, Ballyclare, the two schools are co-operating on a common agenda to enhance 16+ courses. Next year, God willing, one of our courses will be health and social care at advanced vocational level. That course will be on offer for the first time.
Those are natural progressions for educationalists, and they give the lie to the notion that we are building our separate empires. My school has been oversubscribed for the past five or six years. What interest would I have in —
Mr McNarry: Do you rank the pupils in your school?
Mr U McCrea: There is nothing in this for me personally. It is about educational opportunities, and I believe that educationalists can work together in the best interests of children, even though they may approach the issue from different angles. We believe in non-selective, all-ability schools, but we are not getting that. Our position is already compromised. We believe that the Scottish system works best; however, we accept that we are not going to get that, so we have to work together for the benefit of children.
Ms Ruane: Go raibh maith agat. You are very welcome. I thank you for your passion. I love to see that — it is great. Your passionate interest and your sense of equality are qualities that are needed in the education system.
I speak both as a parent and as a politician. I grew up with the system that operates in the South of Ireland. Transfer was not an issue; it just happened. No one talked about it. Parents made choices with their children. By and large, the right choices were made, although they were based on many different factors. I am not as worried as others seem to be about change, because change is creative if it is managed well. We can co-operate to manage change well, and we will do so.
There is a border, and my question is about catchment areas for those living in border areas. How will that be dealt with? I have a personal as well as a political interest in this. My children go to the nearest school, which is in Newry, although we are resident in Louth. What changes can be made to admissions criteria to help those in that situation?
You mentioned distortion of the curriculum. The first time my child said to me, "I hate school" was when the school started planning for the 11-plus, and it broke my heart. The key years are nought to seven and then seven to 11 years of age. How do you see the new system stopping that distortion in the primary schools?
Mr Buckley: The idea is that the new curriculum will be skills-based. Assessment is nothing to fear; assessment for selection is where the difficulties arise. Primary schools are all about summary and formative assessment of the children from year one right through to year seven. We do not have a difficulty with developing the children within a skills-based curriculum, developing them as individuals, focusing on their strengths and assessing them.
A comment was made earlier about ranking. We know exactly where our children are in relation to each other; that is not the difficulty. The difficulty is when it becomes competitive to suit the needs of a grammar school and when the children are selected on that basis. The focus of this curriculum is not on the needs of an individual area or sector, it is on the needs of the children. Assessment, and knowing exactly where our children are at the age of 11, will not be a problem.
Ms Ruane: Do you have a problem with Key Stages 1 and 2?
Mr Buckley: No.
Mr J Clarke: Your question on admissions is an interesting one. It is certainly one way of reversing the demographic downturn. The answer to your specific question about Louth, however, is a matter for European countries and how they deal with the issue of crossing borders.
CCMS sees admissions criteria as an artificially constructed problem. If we engage in area planning and produce schools to meet the needs of the area, many of the difficulties that we have experienced will be diminished. I accept that that is not going to happen overnight, but we can make significant progress.
The Department of Education has stopped all building proposals until they are reassessed. They are going to be reassessed within the context of an area plan. When we have that plan, we will know where things are headed and we can quickly move children into an arrangement that points ahead to the new structures. The sum of £3·3 billion has been notionally allocated by the Strategic Investment Board for rebuilding the schools estate over the next number of years. We have to ensure that that money is well spent to create schools for the future, not schools for the past.
The other aspect of your question about the curriculum is that it enables children to develop at their own pace. It is important to recognise that. I know that proposals exist for an alternative to the transfer test, such as CATs. As I understand it, CATs comprises 27 tests of 35 minutes each, taken over three years. Fifteen of them are taken in year seven and the rest divided between year five and year six.
I ask you as politicians: is that electorally logical? Could you sell that to parents? Could you say to them: "We are going to put your kids under pressure for no reason other than to help them move from one building to another."? As Mr McCrea said, our focus is not on buildings; it is on children, and the focus on choice is on the subjects that meet their needs. We should not be forcing kids beyond their learning capacity until they are ready. In the paper that I sent to the party education spokespersons, I said that we should start challenging the cultures that exist in our society.
The pupil profile will help teachers to know when a child is ready to learn certain things. The evidence from the enriched curriculum, as it is emerging, is showing the underlying creativity of children in their capacity to learn — not when people think they ought to learn, but when they are ready. If that means that a child has to repeat a year — fine. If yet another year has to be repeated, it should automatically begin a resourced, bespoke special needs programme for those children.
The big question is: why are 25% of our children transferring with literacy and numeracy deficits? It is because we create failure. Let us stop creating failure.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): I am going to allow members to have a brief round-up. I remind members that they agreed this agenda. All I am doing is trying to ensure that we stick to time.
Mr Donaldson: Mr McCrea, you mentioned the benefits of a comprehensive, all-ability system. I went to a comprehensive school — Kilkeel High School — and the comprehensive model was introduced there due to the isolation of the area; it was the best option for the area. I am, therefore, not against the provision of a comprehensive model when it is chosen as an area-based solution, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Are you saying that comprehensive, all-ability education is the one-size-fits-all solution for Northern Ireland, or are you prepared to make provision for locally based solutions, which might include some form of academic selection, in cases where schools are oversubscribed? Is there any way that such provisions could be accommodated in the future system?
12.45 pm
Mr U McCrea: The comprehensive model was ideally suited for Kilkeel, but it is also suitable for Ballyclare, because the children in Ballyclare go to all-ability schools until they are 11. What mysteriously happens to children when they are 11? They can be educated together until they are 11 because the parents or grandparents — along with the children — decide between Fairview Primary School and Ballyclare Primary School. Each of the schools may offer a different ethos or style, and no one questions the choice of school that is made for a child up until the age of 11. However, when the child is 11, something mysterious happens and the children from Fairview Primary School and Ballyclare Primary School are told that they have to go in one of at least two different ways. Why should that be the case?
Mr Donaldson: That might also happen in the system that you are advocating, because if a school is oversubscribed it may not be able to take all of the children who want to go there. Mr Buckley’s daughters may still have to go to different schools, because of oversubscription. Is it not correct that comprehensive schools stream children as well? Therefore, there is a form of selection for 11-year-olds in comprehensive schools.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): I will not allow another debate to start. If members or witnesses have questions or comments, please forward them to the Clerks. Sammy, please be brief, or you will get 100 lines.
Mr S Wilson: For understandable reasons, Mr McCrea and Mr Clarke have tried to downplay the role of the 11-plus — as it is now — but it was not for purely administrative reasons. Mr Buckley admitted that he has seen a difference between two schools. He had the choice to send his daughters to Ballyclare Secondary School or to a grammar school, and he did not send both of them to Ballyclare Secondary School. He obviously recognises that there is a difference between the schools, and that is why he decided that one daughter would go to one school, and that the other daughter would go to the other.
Costello recognised that there were differences among schools, and his report mentions different pathways for different children through different schools. Mr McCrea also recognises that there is a difference
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): Sammy, please be brief.
Mr S Wilson: Yes. Mr McCrea recognises that things happen in his school that do not happen in Ballyclare High School, and vice versa. Therefore, the 11-plus is not merely an administrative arrangement; it is a process that decides what school a child may choose. Is that not the case?
Mr U McCrea: I would love it if you would work in our school for a while.
Mr McNarry: He has been offered a job in another school.
Mr Donaldson: Only in the second form. [Laughter.]
Mr U McCrea: I wish that you would talk to parents such as Mr Buckley, whose second daughter is a lovely girl and who is doing well with us.
Mr S Wilson: Perhaps Mr Buckley can tell us about that.
Mr U McCrea: There are instances when children are artificially separated on the basis of some sort of pecking order. There is no need for that. All children will be entitled to the same curriculum, and they will be doing the same examination at GCSE. They will be competing for the same jobs, but no one will publicly declare that they achieved a particular grade at age 11 just so that it could be used by certain schools as a means of dealing with oversubscription. We can deal with oversubscription, but we do not have to resort to making a statement about the child.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): We are not starting another debate.
Mr S Wilson: In that —
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): Sammy, I remind you again that I am the principal.
Mr McNarry: The subgroup will be considering computer-adaptive tests. What is your opinion on those?
Mr J Clarke: As I have already said, they are unproven, they will place even more pressure on children, and they might — as is the case with the current transfer test — distort the curriculum.
Mr McNarry: Are computer-adaptive tests not just as unproven as what the Government are forcing on us? Does the same argument not apply to other types of pupil profiles?
Mr J Clarke: Those are not predictive tests; they are mainly diagnostic tests. Diagnostic tests are there to find out the learning strengths and deficits of a child, and we absolutely support them.
The research into pupil profiles has recognised that many teachers are using standardised tests, but do not know what those tests are telling them. That is the focus of the training programme, alongside the roll-out of the new curriculum and assessment regime.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): I will take three questions together, and the witnesses can answer them as best they can.
Mr D Bradley: Do you agree that the all-ability model, far from being the one-size-fits-all solution that some people claim is, in fact, the opposite? That model has the flexibility to deal with pupils of varying abilities, talents, interests and capabilities, from supported learning right through to A level. Is it not the case that selective education creates a narrower model that has far less flexibility?
Mr McElduff: Can I seek clarification that computer adaptive testing would amount to 27 tests of 35 minutes each over primaries 5, 6 and 7?
Ms Ruane: North/South co-operation is part of the Good Friday Agreement. We have the North/South Ministerial Council, which includes the Minister for Education and Science in the Twenty-six Counties and the Minister of Education in the Six Counties. Education is a specially designated issue and should concern arrangements between the two member states. Both Departments, North and South, should work together when examining catchment areas. Otherwise, we are wasting resources, and that is short-sighted. I agree with what was said about CATs. That is unbelievable — if you were a parent, you would have to go on strike.
Mr J Clarke: None of us are saying that we are for a mixed-ability learning environment. We are interested in differentiation in terms of choice, learning styles, and pace for children of all abilities. Schools organise themselves in different ways. Some schools, mainly grammar schools, use mixed-ability organisations. Many utilise bands and sets, which means that a pupil could be in a top group for one subject and a lesser group for another.
Mr D Bradley: By all-ability, I meant a non-selective model.
Mr J Clarke: Yes; it is non-selective, but we should be focusing on the notion that children make choices that meet their particular needs. I made the point about coherence and connectivity. Everyone can be under the one roof, but can follow different strands. I am not committed to labels such as "comprehensive", "all-ability" or "one-size-fits-all". I am committed to looking at needs. When we had the notion of specialist schools, we were talking about meeting the needs of areas, which will differ, perhaps due to their economic profile. That is another form of differentiation that we need to build into the curriculum. We are trying to bring children through an education system so that they fit into society and the economy in later life.
Mr U McCrea: I am a firm believer in all-ability education in the primary sector and in the post-primary sector. I believe that one can differentiate within the system according to children’s needs. Schools must change as the needs of the children change. We must adapt and change. We cannot be fixed and expect children to fit our model; we must adjust our teaching approach to the needs of the children.
The Chairperson (Ms S Ramsey): Thank you for your presentation. If you have any other comments to add, you can forward them to the subgroup. If members wish to ask further questions, the Clerks are willing to forward them.
The subgroup was suspended at 12.55 pm.
On resuming —
1.32 pm
(The Chairperson [Mr W Clarke] in the Chair.)
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): My name is Willie Clarke, and I am an MLA for South Down. Welcome to Stormont. I want to do a bit of housekeeping first. Will all members and witnesses please turn off their mobile telephones?
I want to make it clear that I have no professional interest in the education sector. The first group to give evidence is from the Council for Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA). Perhaps you would introduce yourselves.
Mr Gavin Boyd (Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment): I am Gavin Boyd, chief executive of the CCEA. On my right is Richard Hanna, my senior manager in charge of the pupil profile project. On my immediate left is Dr Charlie Sproule, the senior manager in charge of curriculum and assessment policy and on my extreme left is Robert Shilliday, my communications manager.
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): Perhaps you will give a short presentation, after which I am sure that members will ask questions.
Mr Boyd: CCEA has provided the subgroup with a short paper. However, it may be useful if I spend a couple of minutes talking about the pupil profile and explain what it is, and what it is not.
The pupil profile is a standardised annual report supported by informed teacher judgement. It builds on the best practice that already exists in classrooms. It supports the current statutory requirement on schools to provide parents with an annual report. The standardised format seeks to ensure that an annual report is provided in the same format across all primary schools, which is not currently the case.
In future, the difference will be that schools will be required to have a meeting with parents early in the school year to discuss each child’s specific attributes and learning programme for the year ahead. That meeting will be informed by the previous performance of the child in the school, by the teacher’s observations of the child early in the new term and also by two new diagnostic assessments in literacy and numeracy.
I will explain what is meant by diagnostic assessment. We are well used to assessments or end-of-term/end-of-year tests, which are designed to tell us how a child has performed. Diagnostic assessment is designed to tell us how a child has performed in a particular assessment and why. There are several component elements in literacy that contribute to a child’s performance in reading. By analysing the child’s performance in each of those components, we can identify if there are any particular issues for that child and use appropriate strategies to improve that child’s performance.
One of the essential themes of that approach is to ensure that we improve outcomes for children and that we seek not just to identify where children are in terms of their performance, but also seek to improve their outcomes by supporting them where we have identified particular needs.
I could talk for the rest of the time on pupil profile, but it would be better if I handed over to you and your colleagues.
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): Thank you, I appreciate that. Members will want to spend some time on this. I remind members that any questions should relate to the pupil profile. I will start with members to my left. Caitríona Ruane apologised that she had to leave for a short time, so Barry McElduff will start.
Mr McElduff: Does the council have a view on CATs? The South of Ireland uses a report-card-template system. Has any scrutiny been done on the effectiveness of that system?
Mr Boyd: We do not have a single view on CATs. The diagnostic tests, which I mentioned in my opening remarks, are computer-adaptive tests. Computer-adaptive tests is where the system, or the computer, looks at the answers that candidates give, sees how they are responding to particular questions and decides on the next question or the next series of questions. The diagnostic assessment that we plan to use for literacy and numeracy are computer-adaptive tests.
There are other circumstances in which we use computer-adaptive tests — for example, in testing skills. We could talk to you in some detail about that. We have also looked, in considerable detail, at the use of computer-adaptive tests in other jurisdictions.
Mr McElduff: Is there any specific thinking on the effectiveness, or otherwise, of the report-card-template system in the South, which helps parents make informed choices about their children’s future?
Mr Boyd: No, we have not done any specific work on that, but we would be happy to have a look at it.
Mr D Bradley: The subgroup met with representatives of the teachers’ unions this morning. Some of them expressed serious reservations about the development of the pupil profile. For example, they claimed that the profiles, as they are at the moment, are not manageable. The profiles take 60 minutes for each pupil — work that could previously have been done in 30 minutes. They also said that there are presentational problems with boxes and graphs; the timing of the tests is not appropriate; there is not sufficient hardware in the schools to carry out the computer tests; and the testing is too disruptive for the class and it takes too long to carry out. The tests themselves demonstrate improved accuracy, but the concept of awarding scores flies in the face of the thrust of the revised curriculum. They based some of those claims on a report that you commissioned, which was published in September.
Mr Boyd: I will make some initial comments, which Mr Hanna will follow up. First, in line with all our advice to the Government and with all the policies that we seek to develop, we conduct trials widely. We are keen to ensure that the advice that we give to the Government has demonstrably worked in schools in Northern Ireland.
Secondly, I want to split the pupil profile itself, which is the standardised annual report, and the methods that we use to produce the profile. Currently, schools are required by law to provide parents with an annual report in respect of their children. The pupil profile is another form of annual report; of itself, it is no more onerous than previous reports and can be completed manually. In other words, if teachers choose to write reports by hand, they can do so.
The specific comments about the manageability of the reports — for example, that they take an hour to complete — relates to the use of a computerised report writer. Some teachers do not feel comfortable using computers to write reports, and there are other issues about hardware and manageability.
Before I hand over to Mr Hanna to comment on the use of a report writer, I want to point out that, in order to ensure the quality of the information and advice that we give to the Government, we engaged BDO Stoy Hayward to carry out an independent evaluation. We will receive the second part of that evaluation next week, and all the information will be placed on the CCEA website in due course.
Mr Richard Hanna (Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment): Mr Boyd made a distinction about the physical completion of reports and administering the diagnostic tests. We have used two report writers. One was included in the evaluations and trials of pupil profiling in order to inform our own judgements and opinions about the functionality of the report writer.
A second report writer is used through the service provided to schools by Classroom 2000 (C2k). That report writer has been very successful with regard to functionality, but we recognise that teachers have concerns about it, because it has been the first time that they have used this type of technology to prepare reports. Traditionally, those teachers would have handwritten reports.
We have now conducted two trials for administering diagnostic assessments through the interactive computerised assessment (InCAS) system. The purpose of the trials was to identify teachers’ concerns, manageability issues, and so on. Through those trials, concerns were expressed about the length of time that the tests take to administer and the access to hardware in schools, which we accept.
We have evidence from schools that do not have many computers in classrooms that have managed to administer the tests very successfully, albeit that that has been challenging in respect of classroom management, and so on. We are aware of the issues in relation to the use of report writers and are working with our colleagues in Classroom 2000 in an attempt to alleviate any, or all, of the manageability pressures.
Mr McNarry: May I welcome the witnesses to the subgroup.
The subgroup heard three presentations this morning, two of which rejected CATs and another that supported such tests. In the context of the overall education debate, is it likely that there will be an argument over the type of CATs that will be used in schools? Will the purchase of the hardware required be put to tender, or will a strict recommendation be made that a particular type of hardware must be used?
We know that the Order does not provide for profiles to have a role in the transfer procedure. Is there a role that profiles could play after transfer decisions have been taken? Can you elaborate on that and on how you view any assistance that would be given to a post-primary school in the delivery of educational provision?
1.45 pm
Mr Boyd: Mr Chairman, in relation to the CATs and the particular assessments that are to be used in schools, we are very keen that the same assessment tool is used in all schools. The reason for that is that we want to ensure that there is complete comparability of information across the system.
Mr McNarry: Does that mean that you will be recommending a tool?
Mr Boyd: We have recommended a tool. We have been working very closely with Durham University, which is acknowledged as one of the world leaders in the area of literacy. The interactive computerised assessment system (InCAS) tool that Mr Hanna referred to earlier is Durham University’s computer-adaptive literacy test, which has been built out of years and years of experience of the standard reading test that it ran before.
Mr McNarry: Is that it? Under European law, there have to be open tenders, and it seems to me that this would be quite a lucrative contract for someone. Who are the handling agents for the Durham tool that you mentioned? To be blunt about it, to avoid suspicion, will your organisation derive any monetary gain from the purchase of this?
Mr Boyd: No. Nor will we be involved in the purchasing process. Our role is to develop advice for, and to give advice to, the Department. The procurement agent in these circumstances would be Classroom 2000, which is the service provider for IT in schools.
Mr McNarry: I asked about that because I do not think that the Department has been great at managing its money. I will say that; you do not need to comment.
Mr Boyd: I am trying to look blank, Mr Chairman.
Mr McNarry: I would be sensitive to the aspects of procurement. There are rules that we have to go through in the Assembly, particularly when approving systems that include hardware and tools. I want to be clear that, while you may make a recommendation, the Department is under no duress to accept it if some other methods are suggested for consideration. Is that a correct assessment?
Mr Boyd: Factually, the situation is that Ministers and the Department make all the decisions; we provide advice. A range of other parties can provide advice or may be asked to provide advice. However, all decision-making resides ultimately with Ministers.
Mr McNarry: Have you any comments on the role that profiles could play after transfer decisions?
Mr Boyd: If I could put this in the wider context, the profile has been developed to travel with a child throughout his education. It is not designed specifically in relation to transfer; it is meant to provide good-quality information to inform decisions all the way through a young person’s education. There will be, therefore, a profile in Key Stage 3 and a profile in Key Stage 4. They will differ, but the principle will be the same. It is there to inform decision-making.
Mr McNarry: There is no way that you would envisage profiles being used for selection purposes?
Mr Boyd: The profile is not designed to put children in rank order, whereas the current transfer test does precisely that. Our intention is that the profile will have good-quality information, but it is not designed as a selective tool.
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): I will allow other members to speak, and, if we have some time left, I will allow further questions.
Mr McNarry: This is a new Chairman we have, and boy it is great. [Laughter.]
Mr S Wilson: Mr Boyd, you have used the word "standardised" on three occasions so far. Do you mean "standardised" as defined in the format that you have included at the back of your paper?
Mr Boyd: Yes; however, "standard" is probably a better word than "standardised".
Mr S Wilson: I ask that question because there is no way that the reports, in their present format, could be regarded as standardised across comments or across schools. This morning, we heard a witness from a teachers’ union say that, for example, she might state that someone was brilliant at drama. It was felt that that was an objective assessment, but do you accept that, in their present form, there is no way you could use the reports to compare teachers’ comments within a school, let alone between schools?
Mr Boyd: I am not quite sure that I understand the context of the question. The purpose of the profile is to provide a full picture of each child.
Mr S Wilson: For example, suppose I have two youngsters at two different schools, and the reports are meant to guide me. One report states that my youngster is very good at maths, brilliant at English, and excellent at drama, but the other, from a different teacher, in a different school, says that my youngster there is not bad at maths, all right at drama, or whatever. How can I use those reports as a guide in deciding which school my youngsters should go to, given that there is absolutely no guarantee that the comments are relative or mean the same thing when they come from different teachers?
Dr Charlie Sproule (Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment): Some comments that teachers will use will be drawn from comment banks. They relate to levels of progression, so teachers will be able to refer to levels of progression that relate directly to the curriculum content for mathematics, communication or information and communication technology (ICT), when making their comments.
Mr S Wilson: The ability to draw comments from a comment bank does not mean anything. You and I could draw comments from the same comment bank about Jeffrey Donaldson, and you could —
Mr Donaldson: He knows me too well. [Laughter.]
Mr S Wilson: Well, perhaps I know him better, so the comments could be radically different.
Mr McNarry: He would probably prefer Dr Sproule’s assessment.
Mr S Wilson: Levels of progression — the very term that you have used — tend to be vague. I am simply saying that the purpose of the reports, even if it is not to guide schools, is to guide parents, and it is a very vague instrument, is it not?
Dr Sproule: You may be overlooking the quality-assurance element involved in teachers’ judgements. It is not simply down to individual teachers making judgements. Those judgements are supported by external moderation arrangements, and so forth, and are supported by statements on levels of progression. Therefore, judgements are not made on the whim of an individual teacher.
Mr S Wilson: The fact that you mentioned levels of progression indicates that it is not specific and that it is open to interpretation.
I wish to address another point, which Dominic Bradley made earlier. You have been working at this matter since 2003. You received a report from BDO Stoy Hayward and, after three years of development, we are still hearing the type of comments that have been made today: "not fit for purpose"; "not manageable"; "insufficient hardware", and so forth. You have heard all of that from Mr Bradley, so I am not going to repeat it. If, in three years, you have only reached the stage where you are getting what I would describe as fairly fundamental criticisms, how on earth do you ever expect the reports to be effective from 2007?
Mr Boyd: First, it is a necessary but perhaps slightly painful part of any evaluation process that one learns hard lessons, so I do not mind getting pretty hard feedback.
Secondly, I will return to what I said at the beginning. I shall split this up into easy pieces. Many of the comments that were made on manageability do not relate to the report itself but to the processes that we use to produce the report.
We have identified that hardware availability is an issue in some schools. So, despite the money we have spent on integrating IT into the education system, some schools are finding it very difficult to put young people through their assessments using the existing hardware.
There are two responses to that. First, we will put the point to the Department, and it will take the additional hardware provision very seriously. That is the first response, and it is an investment decision.
Mr S Wilson: We are talking about September next year.
Mr Boyd: There will be a significant roll-out of the Lot 6 refresh programme in C2k, which will start at the beginning of the new year and be completed by next September. That is a huge additional investment that will be going into our schools between now and then.
Mr S Wilson: I want to take up that point. Given that you have already told the unions about that roll-out, will you accept that you are not too confident about the roll-out because you are talking about buses with computers going around schools?
Mr Boyd: I will put that one in context presently. Mr Hanna referred to the fact that approximately 100 primary schools — almost 10% — and over 5,000 children were involved in the latest evaluation.
We identified a number of schools with manageability issues and another group, with precisely the same resources, in which there was no manageability problem. Therefore it is a question of us disseminating good practice — how some were able to manage while others were not.
We discovered that despite significant investment in IT, some teachers are not comfortable using it, and that was why it was taking some them more than 60 minutes to produce reports. However, according to the evaluation, even those teachers admit that once the system is up and running and they become used to it, the process should be considerably quicker in future.
Mr S Wilson: You are telling me that we will have a pupil profile, which will still contain subjective comments from teachers, regardless of the assurances that have been given. You are also saying that many schools do not have the hardware, and that even if they did, teachers are not comfortable using it and will therefore need to be trained.
Furthermore, we have not even talked about how we can ensure that parents, whom we expect to be able to interpret this material, will know how to interpret it. You propose that everything will be done by September 2007 — is that realistic?
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): Please answer that question and then we will move on to Mr Donaldson.
Mr Boyd: I take issue with every element of Mr Wilson’s statement, and it would take me quite some considerable time to go through it.
Mr S Wilson: I am only quoting your own words to you.
Mr Boyd: You may be quoting my words, but not in their original order, which makes all the difference.
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): I think that I heard some Ulster Scots in there as well.
Mr Boyd: I apologise, Chairman. If I had the time, I would give you a very detailed rebuttal to just about every element of Mr Wilson’s statement.
Mr Donaldson: Thank you gentlemen, you are very welcome.
You indicated that computer-adaptive testing is not an appropriate means for academic selection or for testing pupils so that schools and parents can make decisions. However, under the legislation that was passed after the St Andrews Agreement, academic selection will be retained in Northern Ireland if there is devolution by 26 March 2007.
Last week, the Department of Education told the subgroup that it has not conducted any research into alternatives to the 11-plus should academic selection be retained. Has CCEA conducted any research into alternative forms of testing for academic selection purposes, and has it informed parents or schools of its intentions?
Mr Boyd: First, we have not commented about appropriate ways to make academic selection. That is not our business; it takes us into political territory.
My comment about computer-adaptive tests was that we are using them to support teacher judgement and reporting in the pupil profile. The straightforward answer to the second part of your question is, no.
Mr Donaldson: Therefore, there is no research available from the Department or CCEA on alternatives to the 11-plus? Have you been asked by the Department to conduct such research?
Mr Boyd: No.
Mr Donaldson: Are you content to leave it to the politicians to make that decision, or would CCEA be prepared to look at alternative forms of testing in the event of academic selection being retained?
Mr Boyd: CCEA operates under political direction, so if Ministers ask us to carry out such work, we would do it to the best of our ability.
Mr Donaldson: Are you aware of any models in European countries or elsewhere where there is a form of academic selection and an alternative to either the computer-adaptive test or the 11-plus?
2.00 pm
Mr Boyd: We have not carried out any research looking at alternatives to the current transfer procedure.
Mr Donaldson: Are you, or any of your colleagues, aware of any models that we might look at from your professional work?
Mr Boyd: I cannot think of any system in the world where children are tested at the age of 11 in order to transfer them from primary school to post-primary school.
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): We have some time left; I will give each member a couple of minutes again.
Mr D Bradley: I would like some clarification on CATs. You said that the CATs that you use is a diagnostic instrument. Is that right?
Mr Boyd: What I said was that the CATs test that we are using is a diagnostic instrument. That is not to say that all CATs are diagnostic.
Mr D Bradley: That is the distinction that I want to make. We had the Association for Quality Education here this morning, and its members were advocating using CATs as a means of academic selection. Is that a totally different computer program from the CATs that you are using for the pupil profile?
Mr Boyd: We have not seen a lot of detailed information, but as I understand it that is a pure test of knowledge.
Mr D Bradley: I just wanted to make sure that there is no confusion between what you describe as a CAT and what someone else describes as a CAT.
Mr Boyd: We are simply describing a process in which a computer uses a bank of knowledge to identify the next appropriate question to ask a candidate — if the candidate is doing well, the computer asks a harder question; if the candidate is not doing well, the computer asks a less hard question — until the system can identify the level at which that candidate is operating.
Mr D Bradley: I am just trying to make a clear distinction between two different forms of CAT.
With reference to what Mr Wilson said earlier regarding the comparability of comments on pupil profiles, if teachers are using comment banks — pre-written statements which can be drawn upon by teachers to describe a level of attainment that a pupil has reached — then surely they are comparable right across schools in the North of Ireland?
Mr Boyd: I have two comments to make on that. First, comment banks are provided to ease the burden on teachers when they are filling in reports using a computerised system. In fact, if you look at traditional non-computerised teacher reports, you will see that most teachers actually draw on their own comment banks; in 30 reports that a teacher has written on one class you will see similar comments appearing in groups of reports.
Secondly, it is very important to note that all teachers’ comments included in a pupil profile will be informed professional judgements. They will be informed by reference to levels of progression, which are quite detailed statements of attainment, specific skills, attributes and achievements. Dr Sproule has teams of people working hard on that at the minute. Teachers make reference to those levels of progression when they are filling in reports.
We will have in place, as we already have with Key Stage testing, a system of moderation that ensures that there is a level of comparability across the system.
Mr McElduff: Perhaps I misunderstood, but the impression I got from the teachers’ unions was that more general statements would not be recorded in the pupil profile scores for literacy or numeracy; rather, there would be a more holistic development of the child. Yet I see that there is a fair bit of scoring recorded in the pupil profile. Do scores not act as a tool for a form of selection?
Mr Boyd: Scores in themselves cannot act as selection tools; the issue is what people choose to do with those scores. The papers that we have submitted to the subgroup show how children’s reading and mathematics outcomes would be recorded over time. To use fairly common terminology, we have set those outcomes in the context of reading and maths age. We are used to primary schoolchildren being assessed and being told that they have a reading age of seven and a half or seven and three quarters. That objective information is derived from the diagnostic assessments that are included in the reports and that are meant to be discussed with parents annually.
Mr McElduff: I am seeking a restatement of the purpose of the pupil profile, which is to inform parents.
Mr Boyd: That is exactly right.
Mr McNarry: David Woods, a senior official in the Department of Education, said at last week's evidence session that:
"Parents and teachers in the schools that have undertaken the pilot generally reacted positively to it …
Teachers were generally content with the pupil profile. At an early stage, they expressed fears about its being an additional burden. However, since it is meant to replace the annual reports that schools already provide, there should be no extra burden …
People have issues with parts of the pupil profile, but the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment has been adjusting the format of the profile to address those concerns."
What adjustments are ongoing? Have teachers and parents found that the profiles add quantitatively to children’s educational experiences?
Mr Boyd: The simple answer is yes. The BDO Stoy Hayward evaluation of the pilot reported very high levels of parental acceptance, particularly in relation to meaningfulness. For example, 84% of parents agreed or strongly agreed that the pupil profile provided them with a clear description of their child's progress throughout the school year. Some 96% strongly agreed or agreed that the information that the diagnostic assessments provided was useful.
Whenever we design reports that are meant to be of use to parents, it is very important that they tell us that they understand them and that they find them useful. That means that we can continue to work on the presentation of that information.
Mr McNarry: Did you begin with CATs, or have they just been introduced? Are you getting parental responses to those?
Mr Boyd: We have been working on that for some time. Mr Wilson has reminded us that we have been working at those for two and a half years; indeed, they have always been part of the process.
Mr McNarry: It has taken longer than inventing the wheel. [Laughter.]
Mr Boyd: There is a serious point, however. Presentation of information is very important, and we continue to work on that. One of the lessons that we learnt from the most recent evaluation was that teachers were concerned about the amount of time and effort that it took to fill in the reports. As a result, we reduced the scope of the reports. The work is ongoing.
Mr R Hanna: The iteration of the pupil profile report that is in the subgroup’s paper has been refined over time as a direct result of the evaluations that we —
Mr McNarry: I was asking whether work on the report is ongoing. Are you still adjusting it?
Mr Boyd: We will continue to work on its presentational aspects until it goes live. In fact, I make no apology for continuing to work on those aspects as far into the future as we can see. If parents say to us that they do not understand certain aspects of it, we will work on changing those.
Mr S Wilson: I want to come back to standardisation, because I am getting more confused.
According to Mr Boyd, standardisation will be introduced, because there will be a bank of comments that could be open to interpretation by different people. However, Dr Sproule says that those comments will not be open to interpretation and that there will be different levels of progression. Given that this report has 17 different sections and that some of those have five subsections, how many levels of progression will there be for each of those sections?
If, for example, there are five different levels of progression, against which one of the comment banks will be used, how confusing will that be for teachers? Will there be levels of progression for each of the 25 sections, and how many levels of progression will there be? Can you explain how teachers will be able to ensure that their comments are standardised? For example, will the system be able to ensure that David McNarry assesses a youngster in exactly the same way as I would? Will it be able to ensure that children are not treated differently because some teachers take either a harder or easier approach than others?
Mr Boyd: Dr Sproule will deal with the detail of your question. However, I want to come back to the point about comment banks, because I am not sure that I have made myself clear. The comment banks will be a series of computerised records on which teachers may draw to make the writing of their reports easier. Teachers can choose not draw on the comments; they can choose not to use the computerised records. The computerised comment banks are not part of the standardisation process: they are there to make life easier for teachers.
Mr S Wilson: That approach will make standardisation even less likely, because teachers will be able to make different comments. In fact, words mean different things to different people. We had an example this morning where one of the representatives of the teachers’ unions talked about using the word "brilliant" on the report. "Brilliant" could mean something totally different to me than it does to you. That is my point exactly: how can these reports be used to make an assessment when they are open to so much subjectivity?
Mr Boyd: Dr Sproule will deal with the detail of that issue. However, please bear in mind that pupil profiles are simply building on the best practice that exists in our schools. I am sure that Mr Wilson does not mean to, but it almost sounds as though he is asking whether any of the information contained in school reports over the past 20, 30, 40 or 50 years could have been trusted. I know that that is not what he means to say, but we are seeking to demonstrate that we have built a higher level of utility to support the system. The report system will be supported by levels of progression, by assessment units and by all the other tools that teachers can and do use in their daily practice.
Dr Sproule: The levels of progression are not a new measure. They exist and are used by primary and post-primary teachers to inform their judgements. The levels of progression that we are revising will apply to reporting performance in the three cross-curricular skills of understanding maths, communication and using ICT.
Mr S Wilson: Therefore, those levels of progression will not apply to 14 sections, meaning that teachers will not receive guidance for nearly 60% of this report. That means that each of those sections will be wide open to subjectivity. Therefore, even with the levels of progressions, an element of subjectivity remains.
All I am trying to get at is that if these levels of progression are to be used as guidance for parents, they will be virtually useless. Is that not the case?
Dr Sproule: The levels of progression relate to the basic skills of literacy, numeracy and ICT. The report reflects the fact that some of the other aspects on which parents would wish teachers to report, such as personal development, do not lend themselves to such strict measurement. The report refers to whole pupil development along with more specific development in certain skills.
Mr S Wilson: I would like a yes or no answer to this question. Given your comments about the lack of hardware and teacher training, the fact that no explanation has been given as to how parents will be prepared for this system, and the work that Mr Boyd has said remains to be done, will a fit-for-purpose pupil profile be ready by September of next year?
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): Yes or no, Mr Boyd?
Mr Boyd: Yes.
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): Sammy, are you happy enough with that?
Mr S Wilson: Yes.
Mr Donaldson: Sammy mentioned parental preparation, which is crucial because the whole purpose of the pupil profile is to inform parents. These documents are much more complex than I envisaged and, following today’s exchange about subjectivity, the levels of progression do not appear to be very clear-cut. What are you going to do to inform parents about, and educate them on the role of, pupil profiles?
2.15 pm
Mr Boyd: First, I refer back to the most recent evaluation, which involved 5,000 children and their parents. We picked up on what parents do and do not like, and on what they know and what they need to know. Secondly, a huge programme of assessment conferences for teachers will take place in January. Although I do not know how many teachers will be involved, I can tell members that there will be 47 conferences.
Mr R Hanna: The conferences will involve well over 1,000 teachers.
Mr Boyd: We intend to build on the relationship between parents and teachers. Think back to the process that I described at the beginning. The idea is that a teacher would meet with parents early on in the year to discuss, for example, Jane. The teacher would outline what the school knows about Jane, her strengths, the areas in which she might need help, and how the school proposes to provide that help. The suggested approach might involve Jane’s parents sitting down each night to read with her. That system would work effectively if Jane’s parents were to take that information on board, along with the other interaction that they have with her teachers. We all rely on guidance from primary schoolteachers to make the right decisions for our children.
Mr Donaldson: We do, and I accept that. However, the advent of the pupil profile changes the nature of that guidance, making it much more crucial than it is today. This may be an unfair question to ask CCEA, but I will ask it anyway: does that not leave teachers more vulnerable to pressure from parents who have a preconceived outcome for their children? Let us face it, parents will, in many cases, have selected the ideal school that they want their child to attend well before they enter the pupil-profile process. Is there not a danger that parents will put pressure on teachers as to how the profile is prepared? In the end, the parents take the final decision, but, nevertheless, they do have the right to give the pupil profile to a school. I am concerned that this could result in pressure being put on teachers.
Mr Boyd: This is getting into territory that is a little bit away from our home base. Our objective is to ensure that the best quality information is available in the profile. The situation at the minute — given that pupil profiles were not designed to be a selective tool — is fundamentally different from the situation that pertained in 1978, 1979 and 1980, when children transferred on the basis of primary school decisions or, in the couple of years when there was no transfer test, information from teachers. That led to the situation that Mr Donaldson identified. Indeed, there were one or two incidents where teachers had to move home. This situation is different because pupil profiles are not designed to be a selective tool.
Mr Donaldson: I have one final question. How do you feel pupil profiles will help parents and children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds?
That process tends to be of more benefit to parents from an affluent background than to parents from a disadvantaged one, who might not have had the best educational experience themselves.
Mr Boyd: That is an important question. There is no way that we could answer it in a couple of minutes, but I would be happy to come back to the subgroup on the matter. That issue takes us a little bit beyond our territory. However, when advising Ministers on other issues, we have pointed out that there are circumstances in which young people need multiple interventions, particularly those from disadvantaged areas or from socially difficult backgrounds.
The Chairperson (Mr Clarke): Each member may ask a question, after which the witnesses can sum up their answers.
Mr McNarry: I was struck by a thought when listening to Jeffrey’s line of questioning. Surely there is bound to be a risk of a parent mounting a legal challenge against a pupil profile if, having disclosed their child’s profile to a head teacher, their child then receives a rejection letter from the school? What indemnity is there in such an event? How can the matter be foolproofed? That is a serious issue, as rejection could shape the child’s future. What happens if the parent does not accept the pupil profile?
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): Mr Boyd, can you please take note of that question?
Mr Boyd: Yes.
Mr McNarry: Can he not answer it?
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): He will answer it at the end.
Mr D Bradley: Does the pupil profile have sensitivity to children with special needs?
Mr Boyd: Yes, and we have carried out additional work on that.
Mr D Bradley: Can you elaborate?
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): That question can be answered in the summary.
Mr S Wilson: I want to follow on from Jeffrey’s point. It is not enough for Mr Boyd to say that Jeffrey’s question is very important but that he does not have time to answer it now. I do not accept that this issue is not CCEA’s responsibility. Mr Boyd, you must have some idea about this if CCEA is to achieve the Government’s objective. If CCEA is placing in the public domain a report that is meant to be for the guidance of parents, it must have some idea of how to make it accessible to them. As Jeffrey pointed out, it will be more accessible to some parents than others, depending on their educational experience, their knowledge of how the schools system works and their interest in their youngsters’ education.
That will add to the timetable, so we should at least be told how CCEA believes that it can be achieved. What plan will CCEA put in place to ensure that the report is accessible and that it is not full of gobbledygook that a teacher is left to explain at a parent-teacher meeting? I know from experience that the parents of the youngsters whom teachers most want to reach often do not attend such meetings.
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): I thank members for their questions. I now ask the witnesses to sum up.
Mr Boyd: I will deal first with the question on special needs. Some additional work has been carried out with special needs teachers to adapt the profile to make it relevant to young people with special needs without reinforcing feelings of underachievement. We will happily provide additional information.
Mr McNarry’s question about pupils being rejected because of their pupil profile goes beyond our competence, but I do not know how such a circumstance could arise if the profile is not to be used as a selective tool.
Mr McNarry: I asked about the potential for legal challenges.
Mr Boyd: I am trying to envisage how circumstances involving a pupil profile would be different from circumstances involving a third-form report or the primary 6 report that children receive. These reports will show teachers’ professional, informed judgement, backed up by objective information. The grounds for challenging a profile are no different from the grounds for challenging the reports that schools issue now.
That is my first reaction to the question, but I would be happy to get back to Mr McNarry on that.
Mr McNarry: If you would.
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): Mr Boyd, could you furnish the subgroup with any additional information by the middle of next week?
We now move on to Sammy’s question.
Mr Boyd: I was not trying to dismiss Mr Donaldson’s question in any way, shape or form. I was trying to react to your direction, Chairperson, because I sensed that time was moving on. Parental involvement is hugely important to the entire community, and CCEA has put in place tools that will allow it to improve the educational outcomes for all young people.
However, putting those tools in place will not work without the strategies to support them. There will be an extremely detailed programme of support, including the sort of parental support to which Mr Donaldson referred. There are already one or two schools in Northern Ireland in which that happens. The need for that support is recognised.
Mr Donaldson: You will be giving the subgroup a paper on that, Mr Boyd?
Mr Boyd: That sounds like a request.
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): Thank you very much for your contribution, Mr Boyd, and congratulations on your appointment as chief executive of the new Education and Skills Authority.
Mr McNarry: Crawler.
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): I also thank members for their patience. Mr Boyd, is it possible to furnish members with copies of the pupil profile evaluation report?
Mr Boyd: Yes; as soon as we receive it, we will happily do so.
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): Thank you very much to all your team.
The subgroup was suspended at 2.26 pm.
On resuming —
2.35 pm
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): The subgroup will hear three presentations; therefore, each session will take 20 minutes, including questions. It would be good to have an hour, but, unfortunately, our time is restricted. Each party will ask one question. Representatives of Comhairle na Gaelscolaíochta are unable to attend, but they will give the subgroup a detailed submission.
The delegation is most welcome. If Mr Wardlow would give a brief two- or three-minute presentation, we may have time for questions.
Mr McNarry: Is this not the fifth session? Should we not be hearing from the Transferor Representatives’ Council? Has that been changed?
The Committee Clerk: Yesterday the agenda was reshuffled, and a new version was issued this morning. Please take a copy.
Mr McNarry: When will we hear from the Transferor Representatives’ Council?
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): We will hear from that group at 3.10 pm.
Mr S Wilson: Could we not be integrated with someone else? I want to be separate. [Laughter.]
Mr Michael Wardlow (Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education): Equal and separate.
I am so small that, had you told me that the seats were so low, I would have brought a cushion. You could have raised me up in hire purchase.
It is good to have the opportunity to speak to members. I have given the subgroup a paper that contains brief overviews of the two main subject areas. However, I have only three or four minutes to highlight some aspects of those.
My first point is with respect to the general overview. One cannot discuss the pupil profile and admissions criteria without considering the planned changes to education. I do not mean the implications of the review of public administration alone; I am referring to ‘A Shared Future’ and the Bain Report, which was published last week, and the statement that Maria Eagle, the Minister with responsibility for education, issued in response to that. In that statement, she announced that 95 projects will be frozen. At the moment, everyone is trying to find out what is happening. Ultimately, however, education will change profoundly: we all know that.
In considering pupil profiles and the admissions criteria, admission will be to a different type of school than that which we have been used to. However those matters are agreed, they will probably be part of a much better, and wider, collaborative arrangement. Therefore, admissions and pupil profiles should not be thought of as a high-stake changing of schools at the age of 10 or 11.
My second point is that integrated schools, about which I am speaking in particular, are distinct from others simply because there are relatively few of them. Their catchment areas, therefore, tend to be much wider. For example, Integrated College Dungannon has a catchment area of a 30-mile radius. When I discuss that later, members should be aware that integrated schools do not have local catchment areas.
I turn now to the two main issues: pupil profile and admissions criteria. The Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education (NICIE) broadly welcomes the pupil profile. We have been following its development and evaluation by the Department of Education and the Strategic Advisory Group. Although this is not the appropriate time for philosophical argument, I need to make it clear that most integrated schools are all-ability schools. The exceptions to that are two schools that have chosen to select a cohort of pupils. The fact that, in some integrated schools, 70% or more of pupils consistently achieve A to C grades confirms, to our satisfaction, that all-ability education can be delivered.
The council has stated in its paper its reasons for not wanting the pupil profile to be used for any form of selection. It was never designed for that: selection means ranking a child at a particular age, on a particular test, to go to a particular type of school. Schools, on the other hand, are more concerned with knowledge, experience and attitude. Given that the pupil profile reflects those concerns, it could not be used for a one-off ranking process.
For the same reason, the council is not in favour of computer-adaptive testing; it is also a selective process. I can discuss that later, if members wish. The council would like the subgroup to refocus slightly and ask why pupils should consider any high-stake changes of any sort at the age of 11. The council would like the subgroup to focus on the age of 14 and to consider how selection might proceed at that age. That might involve academic selection, but it could also involve election, because children are more mature when they are 14 years of age.
Teachers have some concerns about the pupil profile. They fear, for example, that parents might want to influence teachers unduly so that they put particular subjects on a pupil’s record. The council has also spoken to a number of parents who feel that the profile needs to be readily accessible and easily read because sometimes teacher-speak does not always translate easily for parents. Time and resources must be applied to that. The council’s evaluation highlighted those points.
The second aspect was admissions criteria. Our response has been that far too many admissions criteria are used as selection tools. We are in favour of a drop-down menu that contains compulsory groups. For example, our overview paper mentions elements such as geographical location, feeder primary schools and family connections. We argue that those criteria should be compulsory but that there should be an option to choose from within them. In fact, it should be the same for every school. We want to do away with interviews and other forms of specialist admissions criteria.
The overview paper highlights some methods that schools currently use to select pupils. The methods used by grammar, integrated and secondary non-integrated schools are very different. We argue that a drop-down menu would streamline the process. Schools should be able to select from a common criteria menu. Our argument is that compelling individual needs should be very much reduced.
When the survey was carried out two years ago, post-primary integrated schools had 50% more statemented pupils than the other sectors. Our schools would not want to close the doors on, or have a quota for, special-needs children. We accept that schools should not be required to have more than 2% to 3% of their total intake made up of special-needs children. The quota should not be supernumerary. However, schools can accept more special-needs pupils, and they should be resourced accordingly, if that is the case.
The final page of the overview paper details the four different areas of criteria. We consider aspects such as family criteria and, for the integrated sector in particular, it is important to have family connections at the top of the list of criteria. All our schools use family connections; most use the criterion of the eldest child in a family already attending the school, followed by another sibling. Second families, adoptive families and step-families must also be considered in that regard.
We argue that a child who has attended the school, but who has since left, should also be counted as a family member. That is not only to consider second families, but to allow for the fact that, on some occasions, there was no integrated school available for an older child to attend.
Community-based and local criteria have been problematical for us, simply because we are not sure what that means for an integrated school that has a catchment of 60 feeder primary schools, for example. That is one area that needs to be debated. We are concerned about nominated feeder primary schools and parish schools because they run contrary to the Shared Future agenda.
Furthermore, if a state or Catholic-maintained school, for example, wants to move towards becoming integrated, but is situated in a single-identity community, which 94% of public housing areas are, how on earth would community balance be achieved? For NICIE, community balance is a key factor. Using local criteria as part of the overall admissions criteria needs to be put in the context of community balance. In fact, we still need to select children on the basis of community balance.
If a tie-breaker is required to be used as a selection tool, NICIE uses a randomised alphabet through computer sorting. The feedback survey that was carried out in 2005 found that the majority of views supported that process, with one or two exceptions. We advocate the use of randomised selection on pre-published surnames, which would change every year. When the way in which tie-breakers work is considered, it does not actually cover many schools at present.
The big problem is that significant numbers of schools are oversubscribed. In the academic year 2004–05, almost 100 schools were oversubscribed. Almost all grant-maintained integrated schools are oversubscribed, so admissions criteria are something that must be viewed in the new context of collaborative arrangements. That will mean that children will not have to take a high-stakes test that brands them as certain types of learners from the age of 11.
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): I ask members to ask succinct questions. There will be three minutes allowed for each question and answer, but that should include two minutes for the answer. As we want to hear complete responses, members should not make long speeches when asking their questions. We will begin with the DUP.
Mr S Wilson: My question is to seek clarification. Mr Wardlow said that he does not want specialist criteria. He also mentioned academic selection. Does attending an integrated primary school not count as specialist criteria?
Mr Wardlow: To be frank, our problem is that we are stuck in a situation where there are around 20 integrated post-primary schools, yet there are 40 integrated primary schools. There are not enough integrated post-primary schools. One issue is to ensure that parents who have chosen integrated education for their children from the age of four can rely on systemic integrity throughout. If a child does not sit a transfer test and writes off the opportunity to go to a grammar school, we want to be able to offer that child the potential to finish his or her education in an integrated school.
Integrated primary schools do not count as feeder schools in the sense that they are not locally based, but we want schools to be open to the possibility of accepting children from other schools. Around 50% of kids come from integrated primary schools, so I do not want them to be closed.
Mr Wilson said that he felt that attending an integrated primary school counted as specialist criteria, and I understand that view. We are trying to highlight the fact that 800 pupils were turned away from integrated secondary schools last year, and we want to try to do something about that.
Mr S Wilson: It is not that I consider attending an integrated primary school to be a specialist criterion, but it cannot be denied that that is a specialist criterion in so far as it can apply only to pupils who have attended integrated primary schools. How do you justify using that criterion when you want to deny grammar schools the right to use specialist criteria?
Mr Wardlow: Let me answer very quickly; perhaps it is my use of the language. The specialist criteria to which I referred include interviews and extra-curricular activities, which are used by 50 or 60 schools. Selection is not a specialist criterion; it is a fundamental criterion that transcends specialism. However, if you are saying that it is the same as attendance at an integrated primary, we would have to differ philosophically on that.
2.45 pm
Mr S Wilson: That is not just my interpretation; anybody would accept selection as specialist. There is one point that you have not addressed. Given the political arrangements, we are still likely to have academic selection after 26 March 2007 as the basis of at least some transfer from one school to another. What means might be put in place to facilitate that?
Mr Wardlow: There are two issues — how to address the admissions criteria and how to set the test. I am fundamentally against selection of any sort. The potential to select still exists, but the admissions arrangements do not, so we have to create those arrangements and the test. The parties agree that selection should continue; however, NICIE recommends that if selection must continue, it should happen when pupils are 14 years of age. We should consider how to assess the capability of a child of the age of 14, not in a high-stakes test but in some way that we have to work through. I do not have a simple answer. It should not be a two-Friday test; at the age of 14, it is more serious than that.
Mr McNarry: I mean no disrespect, but I have been here since 9.30 am and have heard nothing new; the debate is going nowhere. People are adopting rigid attitudes, and I suspect that you will not change yours. I want to ask two questions. Do you rank pupils in your schools and how do you rank them? Secondly, to be more positive, how can we build a post-debate consensus on admissions criteria? Where will we take matters? We need to hear something new — you are meant to be innovative and all things to all men in education.
Mr Wardlow: I am not sure what is fact and what is opinion, but I shall assume that most of what you say is opinion rather than fact.
Mr McNarry: That is your opinion; I am only giving it back to you.
Mr Wardlow: Since I am not sure what you mean when you ask how we rank — whether you mean by set or by streaming — I will explain both very simply, because it answers your two questions. The boards of governors of Lagan College and Slemish College have decided to select a certain number of pupils. I am against it, and NICIE opposes academic ability as a form of selection.
Mr McNarry: Do you punish them in any way?
Mr Wardlow: I suspect that there has been a misunderstanding. We are a charity: we have absolutely no control over any school. We exist to give parents access to integrated schools. There is a debate in the sector among the schools about selection. Personally, I do not accept academic selection even in part.
Some of our schools, such as Shimna Integrated College, do not even put pupils into sets in stronger or weaker subjects until the third year. Other schools will set, which means that if a pupil is strong in English, he or she will be put into a stronger English class. However, to the best of my knowledge, none of our 20 post-primary schools uses streaming, in which pupils are placed in a stream based on some sort of academic ability and remain in that stream for every subject.
We have come up with new ideas on the post-admissions criteria. Our paper stated our fundamental opposition to selection at the age of 11, and I suggest that the debate should refocus on the age of 14. That is new, and consensus is possible. First, we could look at some form of empowerment for pupils at the age of 14 in a new collaborative arrangement under the Costello and Bain Reports to consider how we get that choice at the age of 14. Selection is one of those issues. With respect, Mr McNarry, that is new.
Mr McNarry: I am glad of the newness, although choice at the age of 14 is hardly new. The NICIE paper states that the organisation favours pupil profiles; however, if a school does not set or stream, what are the profiles for?
Mr Wardlow: I am sorry; I have answered you incorrectly. The schools do set, but they do not stream. For example, if your child comes in —
Mr McNarry: However, you are not in favour of either.
Mr Wardlow: No. That is where there is misunderstanding. I do not accept the high-stakes test at 11 years of age — selection through academic ability. It is fundamentally important that children reach their potential, but I do not accept that that should be done by selection at 11 years of age.
With regard to children who have different abilities in a school, I accept that there is absolutely nothing wrong or contradictory in allowing a child whose English is stronger than his or her French, for example, to be put in a more able English class. That child may not be as strong in three or four other subjects. However, the whole idea of trying to set children is to allow the less able to progress upwards. There is currently a debate on that issue in all the education sectors. I am fundamentally opposed to sending children to a particular type of school and deciding whether they are academic or more suited to a vocation at 11 years of age.
Mr D Bradley: Mr Wardlow, you mentioned earlier that you had been tracking the progress of the pupil profile. Are you satisfied with the progress that has been made to date?
Mr Wardlow: Part of what I receive comes from the Strategic Advisory Group, of which I am a member. As a parent, I am not satisfied that the pupil profile is at the stage that it ought to be. Several pilots have been carried out, and the results will roll over to the next evaluation. I would prefer to be further down the line with profiling. However, progress has been made on the new, more straightforward form. The original form was much more complex. The expectation on teachers to complete the profiles in 35 to 40 minutes is unreasonable. Teachers must be trained in how to complete profiles.
Teachers still believe that they will have to make decisions for parents about which schools their children should go to. That is not a teacher’s role. The relationship between the parent and the school — particularly the primary school — must be specified. Furthermore, young people say that they want to see post-primary schools earlier. They have said in the responses that they want to find out what the post-primary schools look like. However, they are not allowed to do so until the year before they are due to leave primary school.
The pupil profile is only one issue. My fear is that it will become yet another issue like class averages. I do not believe that class averages should come into the matter. That is the carrot-and-stick approach.
Mr D Bradley: You said that you were strongly opposed to the high-stakes decision at the age of 11 and that 14 is a more strategic age for making choices, choosing pathways, and so on; and that selection may be in the mix.
Mr Wardlow: Purely pragmatically, I agree that we must be mature, have a debate and not allow fundamentalism to get in the way. I am, therefore, happy to debate the matter.
Mr D Bradley: By the age of 14, a child could be studying 12, 13 or 14 subjects. What type of test do you envisage for 14-year-olds?
Mr Wardlow: I am not sure. We must consider how the stage between the age of 11 and the age of 14 will look. The Craigavon model has been mentioned. However, that model leaks because young people can get out and go to grammar schools. There is, therefore, no hermetically sealed homogeneous unit that can be examined.
There is enough creativity in Northern Ireland to prevent us from always having to borrow the educational philosophies of others. There are plenty of us, and we are mature enough. I welcome being able to talk to the subgroup again because I have missed that. It sets the standard that the subgroup can have such debates where I must put my philosophy to one side for the greater good of young people.
Mr McElduff: My question is about the admissions criteria and the tie-breaker that will come into play. Will proximity to the school be introduced earlier than the tie-breaker with regard to integrated schools?
Mr Wardlow: Our integrated schools do not have proximity criteria. Part of the problem with that is exactly what I referred to earlier. Many integrated schools have a catchment area of perhaps a 15-, 20- or 30-mile radius. Proximity has never been an issue. Our integrated schools are, in fact, fundamentally opposed to proximity criteria in any shape or form.
Mr McNarry: Is it true that you are going to buy a bus company?
Mr Wardlow: I may have to buy two in order to have a community balance.
The council believes that random selection that is based on pre-published surnames, with "Mac" surnames included as well, is a better way. The survey seems to agree with that.
Mr McElduff: It is interesting that the Ulster Teachers’ Union, I believe, preferred the geographical criteria to the randomised criteria. Your view is that criteria should be randomised without any reference to proximity.
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): Caitríona arrived late at the meeting, and I had said that each party would have one question. However, Caitríona can have the rest of the time that is available, if Barry agrees. There is one minute left
Mr McElduff: I will give way.
Ms Ruane: Thanks, Barry.
One of the issues that you mentioned was special needs. What are the percentages?
Mr Wardlow: A survey of integrated post-primary schools that was carried out in either 2003–04 or 2004–05 — I cannot remember which year — found that on average 50% more children are on statements in integrated post-primary schools than in other comparable schools.
Ms Ruane: That interests me. How do those children get on as they get older?
Mr Wardlow: I could give you individual examples of young people who have come to school with low self-esteem — most of whom are included in the mainstream. At Integrated College Dungannon, where there are 30 of those young people, or Shimna Integrated College, where there are 35, my experience is that the majority of those young people are well rounded, get extremely good results and outperform what they are predicted to achieve. However, there are exceptions to that.
Ms Ruane: The work that you are doing is very interesting.
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): Michael, thank you for your contribution.
The subgroup was suspended at 2.56 pm.
On resuming —
2.59 pm
The Chairperson: (Mr W Clarke): You are welcome to the Subgroup on the Schools Admission Policy. You may introduce yourselves and follow with a short presentation of around three or four minutes.
Ms Dorothy Angus (Department of Education): I am from the equality, inclusion and pupil support division of the Department of Education, and my colleagues are Irene Murphy, who is head of the special education branch, and John Leonard, who is from the open enrolment transfer procedure branch.
I will begin with a summary of the paper that we have provided. My colleagues attended the subgroup meeting last Friday, and some members expressed interest in special educational needs (SEN). The short paper that we have provided sets out the current arrangements for the provision for children with SEN. Approximately 3% of the school population has a statement of SEN, and about 16% have some learning disability.
We have set out the interface between SEN and the current admissions arrangements in particular, bearing in mind the subgroup’s terms of reference.
Children with statements are considered for post-primary placement outside the usual arrangements to ensure that they are placed in the school best suited to their needs. Other children with SEN follow the usual procedures but with an opportunity for their special circumstances to be considered.
The paper also refers to the ongoing review of special educational needs and inclusion. I can outline the process of that review, but, as indicated in the paper, the outcomes have not yet reached the stage that would allow them to be explored with members.
Will I continue?
The Chairman (Mr W Clarke): Does everyone have a copy of the paper? We will take questions from the floor.
Mr McNarry: The subgroup was specific in its acknowledgement that it could have been better informed on special needs. It is something that, sadly, is neglected in the plethora of papers that come at us.
The session has been interesting up to now, and I am sure that you will continue to make it so. Pupil profiles have been highlighted in many instances. How can children who have SEN adapt or respond to the equipment that pupil profiles will demand of them? Or should there be different tools from the pupil profiles for children who have special needs, and, if so, would there be a parental reaction to that?
3.00 pm
Ms Angus: The pupil profile is a standardised form of annual report, and the intention is that it will apply to the majority of pupils. However, CCEA is developing an alternative format for reporting to the parents of pupils who have multiple learning difficulties. To achieve that, it is consulting principals, teachers and parents on the most suitable format. The SEN dimension will, therefore, be considered.
The statement reflects the child’s ability and needs. The pupil profile will build upon and complement that. Computer-based tests form part of the pupil profile, and there will be provision to modify or disapply those for pupils for whom they are not appropriate. That is my understanding, having spoken to colleagues who work in that area.
Mr McNarry: Will the Department of Education work with parents on those modifications? I am particularly interested in the equipment involved.
Ms Angus: I am sorry that I cannot give you a detailed answer, because CCEA is developing the pupil profile. However, my understanding is that CCEA will consult principals, parents and teachers to adapt the profile so that it is suitable for children with special educational needs.
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): Are you happy with that, David?
Mr McNarry: I am not sure that CCEA is qualified to modify specialised equipment. The pupil profile is a different matter; I am talking about the tools and equipment that are used. If a standard piece of equipment needs to be modified, the pupils who use it and their parents should be consulted. Can you assure me that CCEA is doing that?
Ms Angus: I am not sure what you mean by tools and equipment.
Mr McNarry: The computers.
Ms Angus: Are you referring to the computer-based tests?
Mr McNarry: I mean the use of the equipment or machinery for assessment purposes. Mr Boyd talked about diagnostic tests in which pupils hit buttons to answer questions. If they get a question wrong, the computer moves them on to the next question, which is not as difficult. If they answer a question correctly, however, they move up to a more difficult question, etc. Does that clarify what I mean?
Ms Angus: My understanding is that CCEA will modify or disapply the use of those tests, but I expect CCEA to work with experts in the Department, principals and teachers. I believe that an individual from the teaching profession has been seconded to CCEA to work on the pupil profile, but I cannot be absolutely sure about that, Mr McNarry. I hope that that is helpful.
Mr McNarry: It is.
Mr Donaldson: The Special Educational Needs and Disability (Northern Ireland) Order 2005 and the new arrangements to encourage and facilitate children with special needs who want to attend mainstream education mean that any changes in the wider remit of education and, in particular, the transfer procedure, have some impact.
Are you saying that, in relation to the transfer of children with special needs from primary to secondary education, statementing will still have primacy over the pupil profile when informing parents, schools, and education and library boards (ELBs) which school is most appropriate for a child’s needs?
Ms Angus: The statement of special needs is the more detailed of the two documents that will be available to parents, children, schools, ELBs and everyone involved in deciding how children transfer to their new schools. Therefore, under the current arrangements, the statement has primacy.
Mr Donaldson: I must declare an interest. I am a governor of a special school in Lisburn.
The statement would have primacy, but is there an academic content in the statementing process?
Ms Irene Murphy (Department of Education): I will outline the statutory assessment process. The education and library boards, as currently formed, have a statutory duty to assess children, who may then be statemented. That statutory assessment must formally take advice from parents, schools, the child, health professionals and other education professionals. That is then considered in the round. The assessments that the boards’ educational psychologists undertake have an academic element that covers English and mathematics and considers the results of psychometric testing.
Mr D Bradley: There is a special category in the proposed admissions criteria called "compelling personal circumstances". Is that directed towards children with special needs?
Mr John Leonard (Department of Education): No, it is a provision in the legislation that will enable pupils with compelling individual circumstances, such as looked-after children and children with severe medical conditions, to be placed in suitable local schools.
Mr McElduff: Some people argue for academic selection at the age of 14 rather than 11. If that were to come about, how would the education interests of children with special educational needs be protected?
Ms Angus: Those are hypothetical circumstances that have not been considered, but, at the moment, there is a process in place for children with special educational needs to transfer at age 11. A process would be put in place to look after children with special educational needs if the transfer process was changed to age 14. I do not foresee any major difficulties, but that matter has not been considered in detail.
Mr Donaldson: I wish to return to the use of psychometric testing as part of the statementing process. I appreciate that the purpose of that is different from a transfer test that grades a child. Nevertheless, when a child reaches the age of 11, or whatever the age is under the new arrangements, what is the process? If a child has been statemented in primary school and is at the point of transfer to secondary education, presumably you undertake a reassessment and decisions are then taken about the school to which the child will transfer. Will you describe that process at age 11, and explain the factors that determine which school the child transfers to?
Ms I Murphy: When a child is in primary 6, his parents will be considering the options for post-primary education. The parents liaise with the school, and the school liaises with the education and library board. Detailed psychometric tests may not need to be applied, but there will certainly be a review of the child’s work in class, in conjunction with the class teacher and the parents, and consideration is given to the child’s and parents’ aspirations. If it is felt that the parents and the child want a grammar school education, as it is now, the education psychologist will be asked to review the documentation and make a decision on whether further testing is required.
The result of that testing, along with all the other work that the child has done over the past number of years, will be taken into consideration by the psychologist. That is the advantage of the system for children who have statements: rather than a one or two-day test, the child’s all-round achievements are considered.
Mr Donaldson: It is a combination of continuous assessment and testing?
Ms I Murphy: Yes.
Mr Donaldson: Thank you. That was very interesting.
Ms Ruane: We always hear about how children with special needs "hold back" those children who have "different or higher abilities". As experts in this field, what are your opinions on the benefits of children from all ranges of ability studying together? In particular, what are the benefits for those children who are not viewed as having special needs?
Ms Angus: I do not believe that it is within our remit to express any personal views or to comment on policy. We can give members guidance on how many children are in mainstream schools, if that would be helpful. Did the question refer to children who are educated in mainstream schools as opposed to special schools?
Ms Ruane: My point goes slightly further than that. In certain countries, the school of thought is that educating children of all abilities together benefits and enriches all those children. In the North, however, the education system is divided, and some sectors believe that children with special needs hold back the other children. I understand that you cannot give personal opinions, but studies show that children who do not have special needs benefit from being educated alongside those children who do.
Ms Angus: Ms Ruane has referred to the policy of inclusion. The Government’s policy is to include all children in mainstream schools. However, parental choice is important, and a growing number of parents are choosing to send their children to mainstream schools. Of those children with special educational needs, 65% attend either mainstream schools or special units attached to mainstream schools. Therefore, the policy is to educate children with special educational needs with other children. The availability of parental choice means that some parents still choose to send their children, depending on their needs, to special schools.
Ms I Murphy: The policy provides for measures to meet the continuum of need and to fit with the current legislative requirements. It is a mixture of considering the needs of the child, the wishes of his or her parents and the education of other children. In comparing two children with similar needs, one could be more comfortable at a special school, while the other would be better placed in a mainstream school. That is why current policy allows for a continuum of provision coupled with parental choice.
Mr D Bradley: At what stage is the review, and when will it be completed?
Ms Angus: The review of special educational needs is at its development stage. As the review will cover a wide-ranging and complex area, one of its initial characteristics has been a lot of pre-consultation work to determine people’s opinions of what issues should be included. We have started to develop a model, but proposals are not yet far enough developed to have received ministerial clearance. A fair wind permitting, we hope to have the new policy in place by the late summer. Of course, special educational needs are governed by legislation and, if legislative changes are required, the implementation of the new policy will depend on the legislative timetable and developments in the Assembly. That is the timescale to which we are working.
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): On behalf of the Committee, I thank Ms Murphy, Ms Angus and Mr Leonard for their contributions.
The subgroup was suspended at 3.14 pm.
On resuming —
3.30 pm
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): You are all very welcome. We will have a brief presentation and then take one question from each of the parties, followed by a supplementary question. The session should last approximately 20 minutes.
Rev Dr Lee Glenny (Transferor Representatives’ Council): It will be helpful for you to know who we are and whom we represent. We are here as part of the executive of the Transferor Representatives’ Council (TRC), which seeks to serve on behalf of the Church of Ireland and the Presbyterian and Methodist Churches, which in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s largely handed their schools over to the state, so that they became Church-related schools instead. Under that name, we were involved in the governance of schools with members on each board of governors and on the education and library boards.
I am the Methodist secretary for the board of education, and my colleagues are the Rev Ian Ellis, the Church of Ireland secretary of the board of education and the Rev Robert Herron, the Presbyterian secretary of the board of education.
Rev Ian Ellis (Transferor Representatives’ Council): Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you and to share and touch on some of the general issues around the post-primary arrangements that have been proposed. We are acutely aware that since we submitted all our responses to the draft Education (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 last year, the process has moved on in some ways yet seems to be standing still in others.
The matters of pupil profiles and admissions criteria were consulted on, based on the assumption that academic selection would be excluded as a criterion, but now, since the passing of the 2006 Order and the Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Act 2006, it is no longer clear that that will be the case. Perhaps we can get some clarity on that soon.
It is our understanding that an incoming Minister of Education would have to establish very quickly the context for admissions arrangements, whether it be a selective system or not, and to come forward with some kind of regulations about those admissions criteria.
I want to say something briefly about where our Churches stand on the issue of academic selection to try to help you see our stance. We considered the decision to abolish academic selection very carefully indeed. We believed, as many do, that it has been a blunt instrument to determine a child’s abilities, aptitudes, career destinations, and so on.
We balanced that criticism with an acknowledgement of the very high achievements in schools in Northern Ireland, but we also had to take seriously the other criticisms of the selective system’s negative effects and, most notably, the disadvantaging effects that it has had on children from deprived and disadvantaged backgrounds — in particular, it seems, children from working-class Protestant backgrounds. Among other reports, this week’s report from the Committee of Public Accounts shows a clear differentiation in outcomes for children from those backgrounds.
We are also acutely aware that academic selection is an issue on which people are divided. I know that the parties are divided on this issue, and there is a division of opinion within our Churches, too. As members of the education boards and the TRC, we have tried to take a balanced view. We decided that, on balance, transfer by informed parental election was a better way forward. We have listened to the views of many who support academic selection and fear a lowering of standards. Many people are unconvinced that the proposed system will work, and we have, on many occasions, pointed out to the Department that it has failed to demonstrate with enough conviction that the system will work in future.
Our paper outlines some of our opinions on pupil profiles, admissions criteria and other general issues. We do not know how much detail the subgroup wants to go into on each of those areas.
We feel that a pupil profile would be a helpful tool. The Northern Ireland Continuous Household Survey has shown that most parents feel that it would help them to choose the best pathway for their child. Although the pupil profile has been well tested and piloted, no real information about the outcome of those tests has been placed in the public domain. Such information has been promised, but we have not heard much about it. Disclosure of that information would help to boost public confidence.
As the Department has not yet issued the promised regulations, it is difficult to see how the admissions criteria will work. If distance is used as a criterion, that will affect rural areas as review of public administration policy papers suggest that transport costs will be charged in future. There are likely to be many disputes about exact calculations of distances and who is eligible and who is not.
Our paper includes comments on the education system that we feel is needed. It must be adaptable and flexible, and it must allow for people’s development later in life. Pupils who find that their education path does not work out as planned should be able to have their needs met in an adaptable system.
Oversubscription is also an issue. We have no research estimates about the likely future levels of oversubscription and which areas are expected to be oversubscribed. It seems that it will be a problem in areas such as Belfast and greater Belfast, but less of a problem elsewhere in the Province.
I am simply touching on issues; I am not sure which topics the subgroup would like to expand on.
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): No doubt members will draw out the issues in their questions. We will start with Mr McNarry this time.
Mr McNarry: You are very welcome. It is good to see you. I noted the Rev Dr Lee Glenny’s point about how the Churches disposed of their schools long ago. Perhaps in his report, Sir George Bain will recommend that the Churches be given the ability to re-purchase some of those schools and put them back into community use. It would be great to see the Churches consider playing such a role in the future of education.
The TRC paper is very interesting, and it raises issues that have crossed all our minds. It comments that the council would like "honest and accurate feedback" on pupil profiling to be placed in the public domain — I am sure that that is not suggesting that what we might get is dishonest or inaccurate feedback, but I will leave that for the council to answer. How can such feedback be placed in the public domain? As politicians, we have information on these results, but is the problem that the council and the wider public does not have it?
Rev Ian Ellis: I was hinting at wider public confidence that the pupil profile will do what it says on the tin.
Rev Dr Lee Glenny: To follow on from that, Angela Smith made a statement in December 2005 in which she said:
"Our key aim is to ensure that pupils, parents and teachers have confidence in the Pupil Profile."
There are vague details about pupil profiles in the public domain and they have not been brought forward as they should have been.
Mr McNarry: I concur; the issue is about information and communication. How can that be addressed? If the wider public were in receipt of information on the pupil profiles, how could their confidence be gained, bearing in mind what you know about pupil profiling and how it will be developed?
Rev Robert Herron (Transferor Representatives’ Council): It would have been interesting to see how parents would have used pupil profiles if they had had them before academic selection vanished. We are in a difficult situation because we have no idea about the choices parents will make. As the Rev Ian Ellis said, we can see major problems with possible over-subscription to schools in the greater Belfast area, whereas, in the west — where I come from — the difficulty for some schools is in surviving.
Mr McNarry: Paragraph 3.2 of your paper is interesting. It states:
"the present selective system has diminished the esteem of non-grammar schools… Even if a non-selective system is agreed, a prolonged investment of resources would be required."
What do you mean by "prolonged investment of resources"?
Rev Ian Ellis: My view is not one that is shared by all. I believe that the selective system has counted against secondary schools in particular; they have lost the oxygen required to survive. A secondary school pupil in the 1960s and 1970s would have been in a mixed environment with many pupils with a wide range of abilities. Many children did well through the system. Even though they may have failed the 11-plus, they got good qualifications and achieved reasonable levels of attainment.
The selective system has sucked many able pupils into grammar schools, which means, ultimately, that the range of abilities of those children attending the secondary schools is narrower. That is what I mean when I say the schools are being starved of oxygen — the oxygen of wider-ability pupils.
Secondary school head teachers say that the loss of more able pupils has had many effects. It has removed role models, pupils whom other children might look up to, and those with leadership qualities who might inspire others. The wider mix of pupils has been diminished through parental choice and the transfer system.
Mr McNarry: Is parental choice not a key point in this case? Parents voted with their children’s feet.
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): Could we have a yes or no answer?
Rev Ian Ellis: The other thing is the reduction in the numbers.
Rev Robert Herron: Pupil downturn is a major issue, and if I am allowed the time, I will give you an example, because it will be useful for everyone to hear. For the past year, I have attended meetings with the governors of a high school and grammar school in Strabane. The situation there is that two thirds of the pupils in the controlled sector are going to the grammar school and one third — about 200 pupils — is going elsewhere. Therefore, the high school does not have enough resources or pupils to offer the broad curriculum required. In such cases, not only are teachers being made redundant every year due to the downturn in pupil numbers, the grammar school is continuing to fill its complement. Pupil downturn has a negative impact on schools, and it affects the morale of the teachers and pupils.
Mr S Wilson: I am confused. You began by saying that election was better than selection and that — further to that — the pupil profile would be helpful in that regard. However, you are now saying that in the west, where there are plenty of places, parents can elect whatever school they want for their children. You have, therefore, got exactly what you said in paragraph 3.2 that you did not want — the diminished esteem of non-grammar schools and their decline.
The policy that you advocate seems to be in line with current Government policy. If that policy were to be adopted, is there not a danger that the situation in Strabane that you described will become even more commonplace? That is that parents will elect schools that are deemed as, or perceived to be, good schools. Is there not a further danger that some good secondary schools could be diminished as a result?
3.45 pm
Rev Robert Herron: Where there is a limited number of pupils, it is a question of balancing parental choice against keeping a viable school. What are schools to do when their numbers are continually falling? That is the experience right across the west of the Province.
Mr S Wilson: Would a better option be simply to continue with selection but to make it clear that, if a selection system will operate with one route for academic education and another for vocational or general education, the number of places in academic schools will be limited to protect the other schools, as you suggested? Is that not a better way of managing the situation than simply allowing parents to select the school that they want?
Rev Ian Ellis: I agree with part of what you say, Mr Wilson. Somewhere along the line, grammar schools have lost their raison d’etre. As I understand it, grammar schools were established to encourage academic rigour and to develop analytical thinking and the skills that are needed for professional jobs. As the years have gone by, however, their role has expanded, and grammar schools have become popular, good schools that provide a good education. Perhaps the solution would be to restrict grammar schools to what their primary purpose ought to be.
Mr S Wilson: Would that not be a step back towards selection rather than election?
Rev Ian Ellis: The difficulty with having a test as a selection tool is that it favours advantaged pupils, that is, those whose parents can afford to pay for their children to have extra tuition to prepare for a test and those parents who aspire to send their children in that direction.
Mr S Wilson: You said that schools take youngsters down a particular educational route. In the absence of educational assessment, how on earth would youngsters be selected? You now seem to be arguing for the retention of grammar schools, albeit with limited numbers.
Rev Ian Ellis: Our argument is that selection should not happen at the age of 11, as it is perhaps not the best age to make such an assessment. The new proposals, and the thinking of many people, seem to favour the age of 14 as a key pathway decision time. At that age, pupils can bring something to the decision-making process themselves. I do not know whether we all have 14-year-olds in our families, but they can easily say what they want to do. It is important to hear that voice when making a decision on whether a pupil will study French verbs or something more vocational.
Mr D Bradley: I note your concern about the admissions criteria and the effect that they may have on children from a rural background. You are anxious that a situation may arise in which such children would be discriminated against. Is a possible solution to draw catchment areas as widely as possible and use random selection as a tie-breaker?
Rev Ian Ellis: I have a feeling that we could end up using tie-breakers very quickly. The different proposals contain a variety of criteria. Some focus on effectively drawing a circle around a child and finding the nearest appropriate school; other proposals draw the circle around schools or suggest that schools identify the predominant feeder schools.
That could disadvantage children who have to travel a very long distance to school. Do we really want our children to have to travel for more than one hour to get to school? We need much more thinking and research into how the regulations and criteria could disadvantage children who have a long way to travel.
Mr McElduff: Dominic Bradley asked a good question, which concerned the understanding of rural communities. I had in mind a similar question about whether academic selection is randomised or geographical. However, I shall ask another. Does the Transferor Representatives’ Council draw a direct connection between the system of academic selection and underachievement on the part of many pupils?
Rev Ian Ellis: We have to conclude that there is a systemic problem with academic selection, which enables those who are capable and well resourced to do extremely well and achieve some of the highest results in the UK. By "well resourced", I do not mean money; I mean pupils whose parents will encourage them and take them forward. However, as we mentioned earlier, we have also received notice that many children are underachieving. It seems to be a systemic effect that when large groups of children who have been failed by the system are brought together, there is nothing to motivate them to achieve higher standards.
I was interested to read that many members, in their political comments on the report, said that there is a poverty of aspiration. How can we improve that? As I suggested at the beginning, part of the solution concerns the mix of pupils in our schools. Beyond that, we must also tell children — in our case, Protestant working-class children — that education is a route forward. It seems that many Protestant families in impoverished areas see education as a turmoil and a travail; whereas many Catholic families seem to see it as a transport and a route to a better life.
I believe that much work needs to be done to change that poverty of aspiration. Resourcing is also part of the solution: we need long-term investment.
Ms Ruane: There is a real issue with the Protestant working-class community, and that is something that we, collectively, have to look at. However, although some sections of the Catholic community see education as a way forward, huge sections of it are being left behind. We should not be under any illusion: the Catholic working-class community is not benefiting from academic selection. We must work on that matter collectively. However, traditionally in Ireland, even in the most rural and disadvantaged areas, education was seen as a pathway, although not everyone had that pathway.
Rev Robert Herron: That is difficult to measure. There is plenty of evidence to demonstrate a clear correlation between social need and academic achievement. However, sometimes this matter comes down to a personal family situation. I have three children, two of whom were selected and one of whom was not. Perhaps members have been in a similar situation. I drop my three children off to school each morning, and one of them wears a uniform that represents the words: "I didn’t make it." Not only do we say to children that they failed the 11-plus, but we then put a uniform on them for the next six years just to remind them.
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): I will allow two more questions of one minute each.
Mr McNarry: It is very difficult in a session such as this not to make throwaway remarks, but we must not simply dismiss underachievement in Protestant areas by saying that academic selection has had a great bearing on it.
The three of us on this side of the table work very closely with the Protestant working class, as I am sure you do. In identifying the deprived areas, we must ask ourselves why they are deprived, how they became deprived and what the areas are like. They are known as the interfaces in Belfast. The grandparents of today’s children were not attending school, so there are two generations whose parents and grandparents have not contributed in the home to benefiting their children in the way one would expect to be normal two miles away on the Malone Road. I do not dismiss the idea of aspirations, as that is a positive aim, but we cannot write off underachievement as the cause of a test that children do not aspire to pass.
Rev Ian Ellis: Of course it is much more complex than that. The conflict has a lot to do with it, as does the social and geographical setting. We think that the problem with the system feeds into those factors and exacerbates and ingrains the differences that already exist.
Mr Donaldson: Gentlemen, you are very welcome. Robert, I will pick up on the last point that you made, as it was a very powerful one about your three children. I know that that is replicated in many families and homes across Northern Ireland. My difficulty, however, is that in some areas, schools will still be oversubscribed. In the area I represent, Lisburn, I can see immediately that at least three of the schools will be even more oversubscribed than they are today. There will still be good schools and better schools — I do not like to call any school a bad school — in the public consciousness for years to come. Purely because of demographics and year of birth, and so forth, those situations will continue to arise; the problem you are talking about will not fully be overcome by the new arrangements.
Is there not the possibility of another unfairness arising, in that a pupil may find that they did not get into a school simply because of where they lived rather than because of their educational or academic ability? Dad is a farmer, they live in the countryside, the proximity rule is applied as a tie-breaker, and they lose out. Are you not in danger of replacing one unfairness with another? Is there not some other approach to this that strikes a better balance?
Rev Robert Herron: This is balancing one unfairness against another. I sit on the board of governors of a grammar school, and we are already applying the criteria about family and geographical focus and being community-based — after academic selection. There is unfairness now.
Rev Dr Lee Glenny: Thank you for that. We would like to emphasise the importance of the end of Key Stage 3 and the question of the esteem of secondary schools. If that esteem is raised and there is a common curriculum at Key Stage 3 with flexibility and adaptability so that at the end of Key Stage 3, a child will have greater maturity and a greater opportunity to be aware of his gifts and talents, and a change of school can be appropriate. If those elements are built into the system, some of the inequalities of the first three years can be negated.
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): Thank you very much for your contribution. On behalf of the subgroup, I would like to wish you all a very enjoyable Christmas and a peaceful new year.
Rev Dr Lee Glenny: We appreciate the opportunity to be here and to share ideas. We realise that you have big responsibilities in front of you and we too wish you every blessing as you seek to find an equitable and helpful way forward for the children of this and future generations.
Mr Donaldson: If you find a Solomon out there, please send him in.
[Laughter.]
The Chairperson (Mr W Clarke): Thank you.
Adjourned at 3.59 pm.