The Disparity in Catholic Schools
January 31, 2009
Concern over the social stratification in Catholic schools is highlighted in this blog post by Hugh Green
http://hughgreen.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/camels-passing-through-eyes-of-needles/
Stepping back 15 years takes the Catholic school system in Northern Ireland to a period before the Good Friday Agreement. That’s progress!
The Importance of Education for Caitriona Ruane
January 30, 2009
From the Vatican II document Gravissimum Educationis (The Importance of Education)
The Council also reminds Catholic parents of the duty of entrusting their children to Catholic schools wherever and whenever it is possible and of supporting these schools to the best of their ability and of cooperating with them for the education of their children… This Sacred Council of the Church earnestly entreats pastors and all the faithful to spare no sacrifice in helping Catholic schools fulfill their function in a continually more perfect way, and especially in caring for the needs of those who are poor in the goods of this world or who are deprived of the assistance and affection of a family or who are strangers to the gift of Faith.
Since the NFER admission test on offer by Catholic Grammar schools comprises a verbal, non-verbal and mathematics paper and cannot be prepared for in primary schools under the revised curriculum it follows that any tuition, coaching or practice for the Catholic test will disadvantage the poor. Any preparation must take place outside of school time.
Gravissimum Educationis is about Christian education but only for Catholic Christians it seems. Reading it, if they have been taught to read, must make the poor child wonder if and when they will ever get an equality of opportunity from the Education Minister and Department of Education in Northern Ireland.
The Duties and Rights of Parents
In addition it is the task of the state to see to it that all citizens are able to come to a suitable share in culture and are properly prepared to exercise their civic duties and rights. Therefore the state must protect the right of children to an adequate school education, check on the ability of teachers and the excellence of their training, look after the health of the pupils and in general, promote the whole school project. But it must always keep in mind the principle of subsidiarity so that there is no kind of school monopoly, for this is opposed to the native rights of the human person, to the development and spread of culture, to the peaceful association of citizens and to the pluralism that exists today in ever so many societies.
Caitriona Ruane and her Departmental officials may benefit from a reading of The Importance of Education
The ESA-loving DUP stay silent
January 29, 2009
The DUP has been sitting on information that would assist in clarifying the “unregulated tests” issue.
Extracts from communication from CCEA state unequivocally that a test of the revised curriculum will be available. This despite Caitriona Ruane claiming that the revised curriculum was untestable.
Information provided by CCEA indicates that a regulated test will be available by the Autumn of 2009. No details of the specification for the test have been provided however despite a request for the detail.
……”The test development schedule is outlined below. Subject to policy decisions and if the contingency arises, the test will be available for delivery from autumn 2009. (The policy decision is simply whether the DUP will accept the phased ending of academic selection)
Test Development
Stage of Development Date Status
Question writing & reviewing
October – February
Ongoing
Question trialling & analysis
March – April
On target
Construction & review of draft tests
May – August
On target
Printing of tests
September/October
On target…………..”
Why have the DUP kept silent on this when on the BBC Stephen Nolan Show this morning Mervyn Storey had an opportunity to clarify the matter to a parent caller?
Mr Storey on behalf of the DUP also gave silent assent to John O’Dowd’s claim that the revised curriculum was the basis for improved educational outcomes. It seems that those advising the DUP (can any one guess who?) have been caught with their pants down and have accepted the pass. The Trojan Horse of the revised curriculum was the brainchild of that supreme organisation of failed initiatives,CCEA.
One in the Eye from Newt
January 28, 2009
Newton Emerson made a comment in the Irish News on August 30, 2005. It was
Alas for those unable to buy their way out of the coming catastrophe, the Department of Education is about to learn that it is only what parents want that matters.
Parents will be watching and listening with interest when Education Minister, Caitriona Ruane brings her proposals for regulation of a comprehensive, sectarian education system before the Northern Ireland Assembly tomorrow.
The Executive had better make the right decision. Problem is only parents know the acceptable solution. For almost a decade educationalists and politicians have singularly ignored their views. A major mistake.
Testing days ahead for parents
January 27, 2009
For parents caught on the horns of a dilemma on choosing which of the proposed academic selection admission tests by grammar schools to enter their children for – the answer is available from The Parental Alliance for Choice in Education.
The answer is: - BOTH TESTS.
The NFER test on offer from mainly Catholic schools is a single test. The NFER test is a verbal, non-verbal reasoning test with mathematics.
The so-called AQE tests are a best score of three. This test is like the 11-plus without science and technology.
So parents should have the pupil take the NFER test (realising that it may only be acceptable at Catholic grammars) first.
Then have their child take TWO of the three AQE tests on other Saturdays.
How schools will determine the acceptability of either test remains unknown.
The failure of the SDLP
January 27, 2009
to secure an accurate and complete response from Education Minister, Caitriona Ruane to a question about costs for the CCEA Pupil Profile rumbles on.
In an earlier posting about the cost of the Pupil Profile the Assembly question posed by Tommy Gallagher of the SDLP was highlighted.
The Belfast Newsletter published an article by political editor, Stephen Dempster in which the DENI claim the revised cost to be around £500,000 Costs of Pupil Profile Newsletter
Unfortunately this does not gel with figures provided by the organisation responsible for the project, CCEA.
Mr Gallagher has been contacted by telephone at his local office , the Northern Ireland Assembly and by e-mail yet remains silent. *see update
Perhaps he is now aware of his role while a member of the Education Committee in oversight of initatives and projects such as the Pupil Profile, including the expenditure of public funds.
UPDATE
Mr Gallagher made contact with PACE and made available copy of a letter received from the Minister citing her latest figures. Unfortunately the figures do not add up again.
ESA and the Revised Curriculum: what it means to parents and pupils
January 25, 2009
The Minister’s 5th December reply in the Belfast Telegraph to Mr McCartney’s letter shows her lamentable grasp of the issues. In the article she cites no evidence for her “model” of education, but simply offers her opinion. Two of the most highly regarded studies in the history of education research prove that she is wrong. The Revised Curriculum, together will “election” at 14 via a Pupil Profile will damage profoundly the life chances of the poor. The evidence is unequivocal that underachievement will dramatically increase if the Minister’s ideas are implemented.
“Project Follow Through” is arguably the largest and most sophisticated educational project ever undertaken to discover, once and for all, the type of curriculum that maximizes the academic achievement of the poor. To give a sense of the scale of this study, it lasted 20 years, cost a billion dollars to fund, and involved 79,000 children from 180 low-income American communities living in poverty. The conclusion was that the curriculum which helps children out of poverty is a traditional curriculum in which the teacher determines what is to be taught and children work in learning environments which are orderly and highly structured. (The reader can find details of this study by “googling” the words Project Follow Through.) Curricula of the type the Minister is currently demanding that all primary school children follow were shown to be damaging to the development of the numeracy and literacy skills of disadvantaged children. A Minister who expresses concern for children being failed by Northern Ireland’s education system is promoting a curriculum that will increase that underachievement. The evidence that curricula of the Revised Curriculum type push the poor deeper into poverty is overwhelming.
As with all her pronouncements to date, her romantic notions of how one enhances the academic attainment of vulnerable children are entirely at odds with the evidence. The Minister therefore needs a mechanism to impose an incoherent damaging education model on our children. That mechanism is the new Education and Skills Authority (ESA) to be headed by Gavin Boyd, the man whose Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) developed both the Revised Curriculum and the Pupil Profile. Mr Boyd’s approach to curriculum was tried out on the children of the Greater Shankill. The evaluation report concluded that in academic terms, the rich were getting richer and the poor poorer. Few parents in Northern Ireland are aware that Mr Boyd’s educational ideas have already been tried out and found wanting. Research carried out on behalf of CCEA demonstrated that the model of education he advocates is damaging to the life chances of the poor. The Shankill study replicates high quality international research on the impact of innovative curricula on the poor. The Shankill study (which refutes in every detail the case set out by the Minister in her reply to Mr McCartney) is rarely mentioned by the Minister, Mr Boyd, CCEA, the Department of Education, the Education and Library Boards or the media. The Minister’s support for ESA, with Mr Boyd at its head, will serve to entrench and deepen underachievement and is damaging to already vulnerable children.
The really curious development is that the DUP have joined the Minister in endorsing Gavin Boyd’s ESA. Thanks to the DUP Mr Boyd’s contribution to the current mess we find ourselves in, is to be rewarded by assigning all aspects of our children’s education to his care. Rather than setting up an enquiry in which Mr Boyd might be asked to provide the evidence base for his ideas, Mr Boyd’s capacity to undermine a world-class education system is to be enhanced. The framework for such an enquiry already exists in the ten “features” of good policy-making developed for the Office of First Minister and Deputy First Minister. Mr Boyd should be asked to evaluate his history of education policy-making against each of the ten features.
This sets the context for where we now find ourselves. This document aims to set out what the DUP must now do to protect standards of education in Northern Ireland in general, and lever up the basic skills of underprivileged children in particular. The DUP have highlighted their concerns for primary six children, and the plight of these children will be of particular concern in what follows.
The DUP must insist that schools should be free to ignore the Revised Curriculum because of its pernicious effects on the achievement of poor children. DUP politicians should be aware that there is peer-reviewed evidence that the scientific basis for the Revised Curriculum is non-existent.
Why should schools adopt a curriculum whose scientific basis has been refuted and which is damaging to the education of underprivileged children?
It is a measure of the depth of the chaos into which we’ve descended that the Minister has threatened to use the law against primary schools who privilege traditional teaching and learning over the Revised Curriculum. Indeed, in this brave new world in which Sinn Fein seem ready to use the courts against law-abiding schoolteachers, curriculum documents on the assessment of cross-curricular skills begin not with a rationale for such skills, but with a statement of the legal requirements on the teacher. Under Ms Ruane the law is being invoked to deliver what educationalists call the “Matthew Effect” whereby the rich get ricer and the poor get poorer. This from the avowed champion of the poor and underachieving!
It is important to reflect on the educational model which existed prior to the Revised Curriculum and to which schools could return if the Revised Curriculum were rejected. Mr Boyd’s own CCEA described the model which pre-dated the Revised Curriculum in these terms: “Education in Northern Ireland has an excellent reputation. In fact it’s no exaggeration to say that teachers here are regularly achieving results that are the envy of many other areas of the UK.” Who wouldn’t want to return to an education system described in these glowing terms? In addition, any move away from the Revised Curriculum is likely to free up much-needed finance for use elsewhere in education.
Finally, turning to the DUP’s commitment to the primary six child, it is instructive to examine the particular pressures on the primary six classroom. While the DUP continue to negotiate with Sinn Fein, primary six teachers are dividing their time between:
(i) preparing the children for the Minister’s test (by focusing on the Revised Curriculum);
(ii) preparing children for InCAS assessment (in anticipation of schools possibly incorporating InCAS measures in their admissions criteria); and
(iii) preparing children for unregulated tests (whether the AQE achievement tests or NFER’s “intelligence” tests favoured by at least one Catholic grammar school).
The most effective way in which the DUP can bring the misery of primary six children to an end is to take a clear stand on the Revised Curriculum, Pupil Profile and InCAS, leaving schools free to return to a model of education which focuses on maximising the literacy and numeracy skills of children, poor as well as rich. There can be no doubt that the DUP’s failure to take a firm stand in respect of the Revised Curriculum is contributing to the chaos in primary six classrooms.
If the DUP were to highlight the fundamental shortcomings in the Revised Curriculum (of which InCAS is a part), primary six teachers could engage those who demand that they emphasise cross-curricular skills at the expense of literacy and numeracy, with much greater confidence.
In summary, therefore, the DUP must:
· withdraw from negotiations with Sinn Fein, making clear their support for a return to the education model which pre-dated the Revised Curriculum (which was ordered and structured and in which “teachers here [were] regularly achieving results that [were] the envy of many other areas of the UK”);
· require the designers of InCAS to demonstrate that inferences drawn such tools can inform decision-making in respect of post-primary selection;
· require the designers of the Revised Curriculum to explain why they’ve pressed on with a discredited curriculum framework in the teeth of compelling evidence from the Greater Shankill study and Project Follow Through.
Education Minister in need of numeracy lesson
January 22, 2009
Not only has Caitriona Ruane failed to deliver on promises to end academic selection for grammar schools but it seems that the minister has failed on basic numeracy attainments. In the Hansard record of the Northern Ireland Assembly of Monday 19th January the minister answered a question on the cost of the failed pupil profile project. She claimed the total cost to be £180,000
Mr Gallagher: In the Minister’s response to an
earlier supplementary question, she referred to a money
shortage in the Department. Recently, she announced
the end of the pupil-profile initiative. Surely when she
took that decision, she calculated how much money
her Department had spent on the initiative. Will she
tell the Assembly how much money the pupil-profile
initiative has cost her Department?
The Minister of Education: there is a presumption
in the question that the Department has wasted money.
No money has been wasted. the approach to annual
reporting to parents has not changed significantly.
In 2007-08, 2008-09 and the current financial year
to date, the cost of training and support of teachers on
reporting to parents via a standardised pupil-profile
format has been £180,000. I am sure that all Members
understand the importance of reporting to parents,
which was emphasised during all the pilots and
consultations that were carried out. Are Members
suggesting that teachers should not report to parents?
the Department has listened to educationalists and
parents. It has decided that instead of “pupil profiles”,
they will now be called “annual reports to parents”.
PACE had sought information from CCEA, the organisation responsible for the Pupil Profile, on costs in a Freedom of Information request. The information does not match the Education Minister’s statement to the Assembly.
Only one party can be correct. The Minister of Education or one of the constituent organisations of the new Education and Skills Authority (ESA).
Even with generous rounding of Caitriona Ruane’s figure up to £200,000 that leaves £1,800,000 unaccounted for.
Click link to see CCEA FOI figures CCEA FOI Figures for Pupil Profile
Now add up the figures and get £180,000. That’s the revised curriculum in action.
Conservatives sell parents short on failing academies
January 16, 2009
Half of academy schools, rebranded comprehensives, have failed to meet government targets on GCSE attainment. This may come as no surprise given that academies were a New Labour product designed to take the scent away from problems of curriculum and assessment. What will continue to surprise and dismay parents is that the Conservative Party under David Cameron are avid backers of academies. This policy support for failure should be evaluated in the context of Cameron’s abandonment of support for grammar schools in 2007.
No doubt David and his Conservative shadow ministerial team will draft up the standard pr, “let’s give them more time” excuse to cover up the obvious policy failure.
Coming to Northern Ireland next?
January 14, 2009
Where faith schools are the only schools. Note that declining rolls was used as the justification.
