Incas and Sparkebox: FOI revelations “without them knowing there were any problems”
February 9, 2010
For those parents suggesting that Incas assessment scores should be used to determine admission to grammar schools instead of objective testing of attainment- a note of caution from PACE.
When the problems surrounding the expensive CEM software failures were first raised in late 2009 PACE obtained confidential communications from the Incas team to CCEA using the Freedom of Information Act 2000 ( FOI).
“What we would like to do is to extract the relevant files from the schools’ file servers automatically without having to contact the schools directly. We understand that C2k can access files on the schools’ file servers directly. If we can have these files forwarded to us, perhaps through some secure ftp method, we can update schools’ feedback without them knowing there were any problems.”
“It is also worth noting that the subscale scores are for information for teachers, not for parents.”
The Department of Education also cautioned against Incas.
The deputy secretary of the Department of Education, Robson Davison, wrote to the chairs of the board of governors and principals of schools setting the new entrance exams.
“It is important that I remind schools that such practice would be an inappropriate use of outcomes from an assessment tool that was neither designed nor intended for such a purpose.”
He also told them there were problems with the scoring awarded to pupils in InCAS because of a computer error.
“The department’s advice is that on no account should grammar schools consider using InCAS assessment outcomes reported to parents to inform decisions on selection.”
So while parents are crying out for accurate information on the results of transfer tests they are being kept in the dark by unaccountable educationalists profiting from testing activities.
and a further concern ….
Sparkebox link to DENI and C2k
http://www.deni.gov.uk/ministers-statement-sparklebox-080210-english.pdf
Sparklebox was originally blocked in late 2009 by councils. Concerns over the sites security were cited in an email to teachers explaining the block. Originally many teachers were confused and some angered over the block, as it was a site that many relied on for essential classroom resources. Kent County Council issued a statement confirming the block, “we feel it right to block the site centrally until more information is available and review whether this site should be blocked permanently after consulting schools and other sources.”
It seems that the Minister, Caitriona Ruane, her Department and computer infrastructure team, C2k must not have accessed the internet in early January otherwise they could not have missed the following post http://www.neowin.net/news/main/10/01/14/uk-schools-blocking-sparklebox-as-owner-is-a-paedo
Are you confident in your child’s security with computers at school or reassured by the Minister’s statement?
Bangor Grammar School and the Freedom of Information Act
February 8, 2010
The Code of Practice on Access to Government Information is a non-statutory scheme which requires Government Departments and other public authorities to release information in response to specific requests. The Act creates a statutory right of access, provides for a more extensive scheme for making information publicly available and covers a range of public authorities including schools and colleges.
Bangor Grammar School in County Down failed to answer a Freedom of Information request made on Monday 21st December 2009 made by The Parental Alliance for Choice in Education (PACE) on pupil attainments in examinations
. The legislation http://www.opsi.gov.uk/ACTS/acts2000/en/ukpgaen_20000036_en_1 allows 20 working days for a reply to issue. The response can include information such as directing the queries to other sources, issuing a partial answer, citing legal exemptions to the request for information.
No such rely was received. Bangor Grammar School has now joined the company of other schools who seem to have failed to have learned the lessons given by their Education and Library Board’s FOI officer on their duties and responsibilities.
This disturbing information is made public to parents to take into consideration when seeking information about how the results of transfer tests such as the AQE Common Entrance Assessment or GL Assessment are to be used to determine admission to a grammar school.
It may be helpful for parents to familiarise themselves with the admission criteria to Bangor Grammar School. Given the school’s choice of the AQE CEA test ( a rank ordered approach) as the instrument to determine admission, the citation of the Minister’s Free School Meal criteria seems to indicate that two horses are being ridden.
To sum up: the School seeks to give due consideration to the constituents who have traditionally been part of the community which the School has served and which it reflects in its ethos; it also wishes to give weight to the Minister’s desire that schools should seek to restore the imbalance in access to post-primary provision caused by social disadvantage. To achieve this in its practice and procedures, the Board of Governors has decided that there should come a point in the selection process when pure academic ability as measured by a score in the AQE CEA as the sole criterion should be balanced against wider considerations. It has therefore resolved that, in principle, up to 90% of its admissions number should be determined by rank order in the AQE CEA and that the remaining 10% should be allocated primarily by means of the non-academic criteria.
Its choice of 90% is determined by the pattern of admission over the last three years, 2007 to 2009, when, on average, 92% of its intake was composed of pupils who had achieved a grade A or B in the Transfer process. The remaining 8% was typically drawn from pupils who had achieved a C1, of whom there were more than there were places available within the admissions number and to whom, therefore, the non-academic criteria were applied. To broadly replicate the position which obtained within the model of selection offered by the Transfer procedure up to and including 2009 and to sustain, therefore, continuity of process, the Board proposes to create a ‘pool’ of applicants drawn from the next pupils in strict rank order after the first 90% have been placed, the size of which is calculated as twice the number of places available and which will be approximately equivalent to the C1 band. Restricting the pool to this number will be more likely to ensure that all will be academically competent, while at the same time giving priority to socially disadvantaged pupils and acknowledging the School’s sense of community as represented by those groups listed in the non-academic criteria.
Perhaps instead of giving weight to the Minister’s desire the Principal should concentrate in compliance with the law.
Enforcement
15. This enables an applicant who is not satisfied with the response by a public authority to a request for information to apply to the Commissioner for a decision on whether the authority has acted in accordance with the provisions of the Act. Subject to certain conditions, for example, the exhaustion of other means of complaint, the Commissioner is under a duty to reach a decision.
The AQE CEA and GL Assessment Test Results: Advice to parents
February 6, 2010
Today saw the delivery of results for the two very different tests used to determine entry to grammar schools. The AQE test and the GL Assessment tests. The AQE results were delivered efficiently and effectively but the GL Assessment results encountered some difficulty with attendant stress for pupils http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/breaking-news/uk-ireland/school-exam-results-delivered-late-14670533.html
- The GL Assessment results delivered late
AQE CEA Tests
Three tests were offered with the best two scores counting. Most applicants took all three tests. The scores range from 55 to 145 with the average score set at 100.
Scores were adjusted to take account of age. The scores will be split into five bands or quintiles. The top band are marks greater than or equal to 113, followed by 106-112, 98-105, 88-97 and, less than or equal to 87.
Within each quintile fall 20% of the scores obtained by the total number of candidates – so 20% of scores fall between 145 and 113, 20% between 112 and 106 and so on.
Only once all transfer applications have been processed and places allocated will a school be in a position to publish how the application of admissions criteria arrived at final admissions decisions.
There is not a direct relationship between each quintile and the traditional Transfer grades. The advice of PACE is that parents should use the Transfer form to put down their chosen schools in order of preference rather than trying to anticipate whether or not the score is sufficient to gain admission.
It was never the intention by AQE that transfer grades (A, B1, B2, C1, C2) would be applied as CCEA did with the regulated transfer test results. Anyone suggesting otherwise is misleading you and should be challenged as to the source of their information. Parents have been conditioned into talking about grades as if they represent some form of ranking but this is not the case. A score of 123 is not the same as 113.
Admission to a grammar school based upon strict rank order is the fairest method. However some grammar schools have adopted different criteria and it is here that parents and pupils are likely to run into difficulty and may be misled. Parents should check the admission criteria published by each of the grammar schools to which the pupil has applied for admission.
The second method claims to be similar to the old 11-plus (it is not)— taking all pupils in first two score ranges (quintiles) and then using other non-academic criteria if oversubscribed within the other bands of scores.
The third method involves schools taking a proportion of available places e.g. 100 of 150 places based on scores alone. Then a pool of pupils is created (the size of which has been decided in advance) and the school will apply other non-academic criteria to all of this group to select for their final places. (social selection) Such schools undermine the principle of equality of opportunity and the purpose of the AQE CEA test. Parents should exercise caution in applying to these schools for admission since they may attempt to rely upon information from the primary school which is unreliable. Some schools have asked parents to access this information on their behalf. PACE recommend that such requests are refused.
Schools using the third method include Inst and bangor Grammar School.
The GL Assessment Tests
The GL Assessment tests are completely different. The questions were multiple choice and marked by computer. To highlight the misinformation campaign mounted by supporters of the GL Assessment campaign (remember the Catholic grammars and others refused the opportunity to use the AQE CEA tests) it has been reported that remarking can take place. If any educationalists can suggest how the computer can remark a test paper designed to be read by a computer and issue a different result PACE would be delighted to investigate this AI device. Claiming that GL Assessment remarks are “free” underscores the attempt at deception. It will recalled that the GL Assessment tests were” free” to applicants but as yet the identity of the philanthropists paying GL Assessment’s bill has not been made public. Interestingly no political party, educationalist or investigative journalist from the local media have even investigated the matter.
Today’s Irish News makes mention of Standardised Age Scores (SAS). Simon Doyle, their education correspondent must not have access to Google or other search engine because if he did he would have immediately discovered that the correct term is Age Standardised Score (ASS). If the Irish News education correspondent does not know the difference between an ASS and the SAS, readers should not rely on his counsel on important education matters It will be of great interest to learn where GL Assessment obtained their standardised scores from. Was it from template? Where did the norms come from?
Attempts to link the results of GL Assessment tests with CCEA grades only further complicates the issue but the most complicated situation of all arises at Victoria College, Belfast where pupils are to be admitted on the basis of results from both tests. The school Board of Governors was warned about the problems by PACE but refused to accept the advice.
Victoria is the only school in Northern Ireland admitting pupils using the outcome of both AQE and GL tests. Dr Darrin Barr, the school’s deputy head, has said pupils will be admitted by considering the percentile ranking in the particular assessment sat. The AQE were queried by a school principal who was concerned whenever a percentile was given as a decimal such as .68 It will concern parents to know that numeracy problems extend to primary school principals not just the pupils. Ms Slevin the principal has rightly stayed silent.
In the case of an applicant who sat both assessments, the higher percentile rank will be used. The first pupils to be accepted will be those with a percentile rank of 60 or above.
This must be the most egregious use of an apples to oranges comparison. The two tests have no useful comparison properties.
If there are more within a band (B1 and B2 are five marks apart) than places available, other non-academic criteria will be used.
Age Standardised Scores
Parents with concerns over test result information should contact PACE at paceni@btinternet.com
Poor Teaching: The Assessment Failure Problem
February 3, 2010
Newsnight Scotland has highlighted hitherto unreported figures in the government’s own Survey of Achievement which show primary teachers consistently overestimate how well their pupils are doing.
In recent years, teachers thought their children would be three times better at science than subsequent tests revealed. In maths, P7 teachers were twice as optimistic as reality. And in reading, teachers thought their P7 pupils would do one and a half times better than the eventual test results. The Scottish Survey of Achievement also shows primary teachers have little confidence in their ability to teach science – even though it is a key part of the government’s new Curriculum for Excellence.
The findings could represent an opportunity for the government – because it has the potential to shift the debate away from class sizes to something that really determines the quality of a Scottish education: the quality of the teachers themselves.
The Scottish government is now setting up a major review of teacher education, which will start work next month. It will have access to a series of findings which cast further doubt on the quality of Scottish primary education – and the teachers who deliver it.
Source: BBC Education http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8484180.stm
These findings lend support to concerns raised by PACE on the overestimation of teachers estimates of pupils’ progress at Key Stage 3 on the elements of numeracy and literacy http://paceni.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/northern-ireland%e2%80%99s-key-stage-3-literacy-levels-crash/
Unfortunately for parents in Northern Ireland the BBC and print media did not cover the story. The DENI or CCEA also failed to offer a comment
Parkhall “Integrated” College: The “pain” ahead?
January 28, 2010
Having rushed ahead to re brand itself as a controlled integrated school despite having failed to attract the requisite percentage of pupils from the minority community, Parkhall College in Antrim may be faced with another harsh reality - no new school building – the promise used to sell “integration” .
The local paper, The Antrim Guardian http://www.antrimguardian.co.uk/articles/news/ carries a story headlined;
“Parkhall College is “misleading parents” over integration – claim”
In the body of the article claims are made that members of the Board of Governors voiced strong reservations about “sectarian headcounts”.
The records show that the move to integrated status was unanimously approved by the entire board of governors.
In the run up to elections it seems the UUCNF want to ride two horses.
It seems that Assessment for Learning in Scotland is not being swallowed as readily as in Northern Ireland.
A guest speaker at the Annual Conference of Headmasters in Scotland created an embarrassment when he criticised the use of “brain training” devices as an aid to the teaching of maths.
Professor Della Sala is prominently featured on the Learning and Teaching Scotland website on the Learning about Learning section http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/learningaboutlearning/aboutlal/biogs/biogsergiodellasala.asp
http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/index.asp
Dr Sergio Della Sala is Professor of Human Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on the relationship between the brain and behaviour, with particular reference to memory and amnesia. He has held appointments at various university institutions throughout the world. Sergio has published many influential papers and has written several books related to the brain.
“The message for parents, is always look at the available data.”
Professor Della SalaThe criticism from Professor Della Sala came in a speech to Scotland’s headteachers at their annual conference. He said: “This research shows that when pupils in a school use a games console after 10 weeks they become a bit better in performing maths but the same applies to the students who did not use the console.
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“It may be fun, but it is not a learning device.”
“The message for teachers who are bombarded with these new flim-flam initiatives about how they should improve their teaching is they are good professionals, they should resist.
“The message for parents, is always look at the available data.
“Who says this improves the performance of their kids? Show me the evidence.
“This study shows there is no advantage – why should we spend money on finding out more rather than spending money on good teaching and good learning?”
Professor Della Sala’s comments were undoubtedly unexpected; the errors behind Assessment for Learning were not.
Why selection at 14 cannot work: Belfast Telegraph Opinion article
December 22, 2009
The future of education cannot be compromised
The search for a consensus in the debate over post-primary education is flawed, simplistic and anti-democratic, says Robert McCartney QC. Either we retain selection, or we don’t
Friday, 18 December 2009
While the good intentions of the Belfast Telegraph in attempting to resolve the chaos in education are praiseworthy, it is doubtful if its Sit Down, Sort It Out campaign will provide the solution.
Sentiments such as ‘agreement’ and ‘consensus’ invest their users with a halo of goodness, but rarely address the complexities of the issues.
The popular belief that every problem is capable of solution by getting people to sit around a table to achieve compromise consensus is both flawed and simplistic. It is also the antithesis in many cases of the democratic process. True representative democracy accepts that the electorate may make a choice between conflicting policies and offers procedures for a decision between them in the absence of agreement.
In place of real democracy, Northern Ireland has a permanent mandatory consensual requirement so in the absence of agreement nothing is decided and chaos prevails.
The DUP claims that at St Andrews it preserved the principle of selective education. Sinn Fein and the SDLP, having removed the 11-Plus as the method of selection can however effectively block any alternative form, thereby rendering any regulated implementation of the principle impossible.
For a newspaper to advocate a particular consensual solution that would require one or other of the conflicting opinions to prevail, is a course of action fraught with danger.
The present crisis in education centres on the differences between those who believe in selection and those who oppose it.
The former see the purpose of an educational system as one which provides every child an equal opportunity to attend a school best suited to the fullest realisation of its potential. This requires a selective process.
Those who oppose selection believe that the purpose of a school system is not simply to provide appropriate excellent education; it is a means of implementing a system of social engineering to advance some ideological idea or political policy of which they approve. They do not believe in the liberal concept of equality of opportunity – they advocate the Marxist idea of equality of results.
Divested of any political content and viewed objectively, the selection system in Northern Ireland has for years produced the best GCSE and A-Level results in the United Kingdom and totally outperformed its comprehensive counterparts.
In terms of upward social mobility which education is supposed to promote, 42% of the Northern Ireland students going to university are from the lower income groups compared with some 28% from the comprehensives in England and Wales.
In terms of quality education, the demise of the grammar schools is now almost universally acknowledged as a mistake which it is nearly impossible to reverse. The eminent sociologist and educationalist Musgrove described the Labour Party’s betrayal of the working class by the introduction of the comprehensive system in the following terms:
”The Labour Party did not abolish the Great Public Schools, the obvious stronghold of upper class privilege. With unbelievable perversity they extinguished the only serious hope of working class parity. The upper class kept their public schools, the working class lost theirs.”
Critics of selection, forced to accept the excellent results of the grammar schools, counter by alleging the system produces a long tail of under-achievers. This is not even supported by the minister’s Education Department. In the department’s report for the year ending 2008 it confirms that of some 24,000 school leavers, only 850 left without a GSCE – a result that compares favourably with mainland Britain’s comprehensive system.
Northern Ireland’s grammar schools have demonstrated their determination to maintain their commitment to academic excellence in the face of pressure from political parties, clerical institutions, and those progressive educationalists whose theories have failed on both sides of the Atlantic.
Parents exercising the choice offered to them by the grammar schools have shown their support by the number of their children they have submitted to the tests provided. Before the introduction of the foundation curriculum designed to abolish the free preparation for the 11-Plus provided by the primary schools, lower-income parents did not need to pay for coaching. It is these parents whose children could possibly suffer some future disadvantage.
Insofar as it can be discerned the Belfast Telegraph’s Sit Down, Sort It Out campaign seems to have settled on transfer at 14 as the preferred option. In support of this, an array of educational experts was assembled.
Of the few that are professionally engaged in education, both Professors Smyth and Gallagher are publicly declared anti-selection activists. At this point, it should be noted transfer at 14 can be effected either by a selective process, as in the Dickson Plan, operating in Craigavon, or an elective process by parents, as proposed by the minister.
Under the Dickson Plan, pupils at age 11 left primary school without sitting the 11-Plus, but having sat year-end tests used for streaming them when they moved to junior high schools for years 11-14.
At age 14, based on tests and streaming, they progressed either to senior 11-16 high schools for the lower streams or grammar schools for the higher-stream pupils. Research indicated that those in the lower streams underachieved.
In November 1998, the Department of Education commissioned Queen’s University Education Department to evaluate the Dickson Plan as an alternative to the 11-Plus. This research was led by none other than Professor Tony Gallagher.
It concluded the Dickson Plan was both too porous and small to provide a comparative position vis-a-vis the 11-Plus. In any event, the Dickson Plan was a selective one and completely different from the elective transfer at 14 proposed by Minister Ruane.
The minister’s proposal is that, at 11, each child would transfer to its nearest neighbourhood school whether a grammar or secondary modern. There would be no selection and each school’s intake would be ‘all ability’ as in the comprehensive system.
At age 14, the child’s parents would elect if it would remain at that school, or move to a school more suited to its abilities. The basis of assessment for such election remains unclear, but the consequences can be imagined.
For example, a child of modest ability from a middle-class suburban home goes to his or her nearest neighbourhood school which is a grammar. At age 14, its parents elect that it will remain there since it is close, discipline is good and they find it socially acceptable.
Their position is, in parental terms, understandable. In an inner-city secondary modern with an indifferent record, the parents of an exceedingly bright child from a public housing estate find it impossible to get a place in a school that will maximise its abilities due to ‘desk blocking’.
The problems that have plagued the comprehensive system will be repeated in Northern Ireland and upward social mobility from lower income group children will plummet. Money, postcode and coaching will replace merit and ability as the basis for selection.
The real objection to elective transfer at 14 is the fact that since every ‘neighbourhood’ school will have to take an unselected ‘all-ability intake’ it will become, by definition, a comprehensive school.
In effect, the grammar school system based on selected pupils will be permanently destroyed; hardly the material for an acceptable consensual compromise!
Over the years, I have been grateful to the Belfast Telegraph for publishing a series of detailed articles on various aspects of education. The contents of this article are, to a degree, critical of the Sit Down, Sort It Out campaign and the consensus principle upon which it moves. In these circumstances, and as United Kingdom Chairman of the National Grammar Schools Association, I offer my sincere thanks to the editor for permitting me to restore, in my view, a degree of balance to the debate.
Consensus is not in every circumstance possible for, as Winston Churchill once remarked, “Where is the point of compromise between the fireman and the arsonist”, or in the circumstances of this debate, between those who seek to preserve the demonstrably excellent and those who seek to destroy it.
SAT boycott by teachers “damages children’s education and futures”
December 20, 2009
So says Conor Ryan, who describes himself as “A blogger about politics, education, a Dublin-born writer and consultant, former adviser to Tony Blair and David Blunkett on education, based in Bath in the South West of England.”
http://conorfryan.blogspot.com/2009/12/just-18-of-nut-members-back-their.html
Citing a Guardian report, http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/dec/10/vote-weakens-sats-boycott
The National Association of Head Teachers, the union that represents many of the heads in primary schools, has already voted to back a boycott of the tests, but is unlikely to go ahead without the NUT.
The tests for 11-year-olds in English, maths and science were introduced in 1995 and have always been controversial. Much of the opposition to the tests stems from the use of results to create league tables.
Ed Balls, the schools secretary, has announced reforms to next year’s tests which will see teacher assessments published alongside the externally marked tests.
Northern Ireland already publish these data. When PACE analysed the results one of the most obvious findings was the disparity between teacher assessments and the externally marked tests. Parents are likely to be misled over their child’s attainment by a significant margin.
Last weeks failure by the local media, including the BBC, to pick up on the dramatic decline in standards of lietracy and numeracy in post-primary schools http://paceni.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/northern-ireland%e2%80%99s-key-stage-3-literacy-levels-crash/ demonstrates the problem of accepting teacher union claims as being representative of their members.
The crying shame for parents and children is that individual teachers do not have the courage to raise their heads above the parapet and speak out.
The Los Angeles Times warns about lack of teacher accountability: The Northern Ireland position
December 20, 2009
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/education/la-me-teacher-tenure20-2009dec20,0,2529590.story
The Northern Ireland General Teaching Council has no power to fire poor teachers
A Times investigation found that the Los Angeles Unified School District routinely grants tenure to new teachers after cursory reviews — and sometimes none at all.
Evaluating new teachers for tenure is one of a principal’s most important responsibilities. Once instructors have permanent status, they are almost never fired for performance reasons alone. The two-year probation period, during which teachers can be fired at will, offers a singular opportunity to weed out poor performers.
Northern Ireland’s Key Stage 3 literacy levels crash
December 17, 2009
The Parental Alliance for Choice in Education Northern Ireland Branch Press Release 17/09 Thursday, 17 December 2009
PACE has uncovered that in the last 2 years Northern Ireland’s Key Stage 3 literacy levels have crashed. The general decline in pupils’ attainment is best evidenced in the results obtained in English at Key Stage 3. Statistical figures obtained from the Council for Curriculum Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) demonstrate a year-on-year decline in the Levels of attainment obtained in the examinations. Key Stage 3 tests are taken by students in third year at post-primary school.
Selected Results of Northern Ireland Key Stage 3 Assessments 2004 – 2009 Source: CCEA: Key Stage 3 Assessment 2008/2009 NORTHERN IRELAND SUMMARY http://www.ccea.org.uk/ HOME » CURRICULUM » KEY STAGE 3 » Research and Statistics
The Direction of Change Data Source: http://www.ccea.org.uk/ Graph prepared by: the Parental Alliance for Choice in Education©2009
In an unexplained development the pupil absence figures for Key Stage testing have risen from a baseline of around 3% to a staggering 44.5% this year.
The Government examination body statistics also show that in recent years following the introduction of the revised curriculum Teacher Assessment predictions have overestimated the pupils’ actual results by a factor of two or more. (See Table above) The natural consequence is that both the parent and pupil will believe that satisfactory progress is being made and discover too late the truth of the matter after irreplaceable learning time has been lost.
In 2006 the decline in standards in literacy was critically highlighted by reports of the Northern Ireland Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee in Westminster. Responses by the Department of Education Permanent Secretary, Will Haire, promised to focus on improvement. (See DENI Circular 2007/11) The Circular states: “The Department of Education accords a high priority to literacy and numeracy in line with the revised Northern Ireland Curriculum and asks all teachers, at all key stages, to seek to promote literacy and numeracy in the classroom.” In February 2007 the Northern Ireland Department of Finance and Personnel issued a Memorandum on the 2nd and 3rd Reports from the Committee of Public Accounts Session 2006-2007. An abstract from the report states: “The creation of a new, single Education and Skills Authority (ESA) to support the school system from April 2008 will also have a positive impact on literacy and numeracy. The primary task of the ESA will be to work with schools to improve quality and raise standards across the system and to place literacy and numeracy at the centre of this responsibility.”
Instead of improvements the Key Stage 3 literacy levels have crashed. As parents can see from the CCEA figures the Department of Education has failed on this vital issue yet again. While the decline in pupils achieving Level 6 at KS3 has doubled over a five year period and the negative trend has almost tripled at Level 7 there has been no comment or concern raised from any quarter of the education establishment. The fact that none of the highly paid education watchdogs have reported that something has gone seriously wrong must reflect a degree of complacency over numeracy and literacy.
PACE believes the Revised Curriculum to be the chief suspect in the literacy decline. The questions must be put;
• What is going to be done to reverse this numeracy and literacy decline in schools before the betrayal of an entire generation of pupils in Northern Ireland becomes irreversible?
• When will those responsible for failed education initiatives be actually held to account?
