Education Minister tells Catholic principals no new 11 plus

Education Minister, Caitríona Ruane, has told the first conference of the Catholic Principals Association that there will be no new 11 plus.

The Minister said: “This conference takes place in an atmosphere of improved political stability and renewed optimism in the wake of the agreements at Hillsborough Castle. In the short life of our new institutions, there has been an enormous focus on education. I welcome that. Our education system, how it serves our children and prepares them for life, is an area which every community should focus on.

“Before I entered the Department of Education, the debate around the 11 plus had dragged on for decades. Claims that we had a world class education system had been exposed as unfounded. Years of consultations, study groups and reports had come to the inevitable conclusion that academic selection was a flawed and failed approach, yet government did nothing to remove this failed policy.

“For educational, social and moral reasons, academic selection – which in reality was academic rejection for the majority of our children – had to be brought to an end. My vision for the building of a modern, child centred and equality-based education system is predicated on this foundation.

“The 11 plus was morally wrong, educationally unsound and it inflicted year on year, wholly unnecessary trauma and suffering on 10 and 11 year old children. I want to give an absolute assurance that it will not be replaced by any other such academic testing as part of our transfer procedures. The policy of the Department of Education is for a non-selective system.

“Working groups established by other parties outside the structures of our political institutions have no status and are no more than hollow publicity gimmicks. The place for debate and agreement was in the Education Committee, in the Executive and in the Assembly. Proposals from the 4-party working group, plagiarising the position I offered for discussion to the Executive two years ago, are now obsolete. We have moved on and will continue to move forward.

“The 23,000 Primary 7 schoolchildren approaching transfer are the first generation of state-educated children in the North whose primary school experience was not distorted by the 11 plus. For this generation, it has been possible for primary schools to deliver the revised curriculum free from the narrowing and reductive effect of academic transfer. It has been possible for P6 and P7 to be purely about the needs of P6 and P7 children, not the needs of grammar schools.

“The Catholic Bishops have signalled the direction of travel for the Catholic Grammar Schools, through the abandonment of academic selection. I very much welcome this positive move, which was reinforced by Cardinal Brady at the conference. Academic rejection is a failed system, socially and educationally. It creates and sustains injustice and inequality. Who can credibly defend or excuse a system that condemned the majority of our children as failures? The education system that we are building today rejects the notion that any child is a failure.

“The abolition of academic selection is at the heart of the programme of change I have put in place. It is the important prerequisite for a range of other programmes I am progressing. These include Every School a Good School, the Entitlement Framework, Area Based Planning and the work to deliver the Education and Skills Authority. In this time of budgetary constraints streamlining the administration of education becomes more critical.

“The small number of schools which have stood outside the mainstream in an attempt to sustain academic elitism ignore the centrality of equality to the other elements of change that are taking place. But I firmly believe that in time this reality and the growing momentum for managed change will cause them to rethink the consequences of their current position.

“The challenge for all sections of the education community now is to make these changes work effectively for all our children. I know that everyone here is committed to that core responsibility. I look forward to working with you to deliver an education system which serves all of our children equally and of which we can all be proud.”

Notes to editors:

1. Media queries to the Department of Education Press Office on 028 9127 9207. Out of office hours please contact the duty press officer via pager number 07699 715 440 and your call will be returned.