In a poor attempt to convince parents of their effectiveness the DUP have misinterpreted the significance of a statement by Father Ignatius McQuillan recently published in the Irish News http://www.irishnews.com/articles/540/561/2009/7/20/622952_388069193305Exambanw.html
and the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/8159283.stm.
In a mandatory coalition executive dependent upon mutual cooperation to avoid collapse the DUP must be seen to be outdoing their Sinn Fein partners. As history has revealed the DUP’s effectiveness in tackling anyone with their own developed strategy is virtually non-existent. Sinn Fein’s destruction of grammar schools has been aided and abetted by token opposition and slick slogans.
While the conflicted anti-academic selection position of the Catholic Bishops in Northern Ireland has been sold to the media on social justice and moral grounds that is clearly not the disclosed position for Catholic schools in England where two very high profile campaigns to save Roman Catholic grammar schools have been initiated by headteachers and parents working together.
There is no evidence of ”growing opposition” to non-selective schooling. Such opposition has been constant since the first attempt to remove the 11-plus. If academic selection is to be ended it must be applied to non-Catholic schools at the same time as Catholic schools lest Catholic parents move their children to non-Catholic grammar schools. Unfortunately there won’t be enough room for all the applicants. Social selection will replace academic selection. Perhaps Mr Storey should consult his East Antrim MP friend Sammy Wilson about the parental pressure group STOP. This pressure group petitioned the Catholic bishops to restore the regulated “interim” CCEA test abandoned by Caitriona Ruane in February. The campaign resulted in a complete failure to change the minister’s and the bishops’ position yet not a meaningful cheep from the loud and vociferous MP.
Mr Wilson will know of Mr Storey’s involvement as a member of the Board of Governors at Ballymoney Model Primary School. Despite his senior position in the DUP and access to communication tools Mr Storey was unable to prevent a teacher led plot to convert the school to integrated status.
If Mervyn Storey, Sammy Wilson and the DUP had been fully involved in opposing Sinn Fein’s strategy to remove grammar schools they would have been aware that Ignatius McQuillan, like the late Monsenior Denis Faul, has always opposed the anti-11-plus, anti-grammar position of the hierarchy. Unfortunately the Catholic Church is not a democratic organisation and the power rests with the Irish Catholic bishops. The DUP were made aware of the loss of social mobility when grammar schools were removed in large portions of England but choose to keep silent on the issue. The DUP were made aware of the negative impact of the revised curriculum project inflicted on Shankill Road primary schools but stayed silent. Diane Dodds MEP was the DUP’s representative for the Shankill. The DUP were made aware of the potential disaster that ESA would bring under the former CCEA boss, Gavin Boyd, but predictably did nothing to prevent his rise to power.
Perhaps Mervyn Storey will now disclose the results of his meetings with Cardinal Brady and contrast the Cardinal’s position with that of the stated DUP position on the 11-plus and academic selection to grammar schools. Perhaps they are not too far apart?
Welsh Inspectorate Report on Literacy
Wales, a devolved government which took up the Revised Curriculum and other questionable ideas from the Northern Ireland Education Department, has evaluated the effects of programmes funded to help the poorest pupils. It will come as no surprise that more money is not the answer to poor numeracy and literacy problems allowed to grow in primary schools. Read the report here. http://www.estyn.gov.uk/ThematicReports.asp
The BBC report highlights some of the shortcomings. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8145113.stm
It will be recalled that Northern Ireland is hardly the exemplar for Numeracy and Literacy modelling throughout the UK.
About £14m a year has been spent since 2006 on the Welsh Assembly Government Raise programme to improve the literacy of the most disadvantaged children but education watchdog body Estyn found that those pupils still “perform significantly less well” at key stages.
According to the report by Estyn, the education and training inspectorate for Wales, the money has been used to pay for additional staff and resources to work with those poorest children. Most schools have used the money to concentrate on reading and writing, but some used the cash to set up homework clubs, others to fund behaviour projects and to work on improve attendance. The performance levels of free school meal pupils in secondary school have deteriorated.
Assaults at school: spot the difference
July 13, 2009
It is worthwhile for parents and the general public to make careful comparisons between the treatment of teachers alleged to have been assaulted by a pupil at Movilla High School in Newtownards and pupils alleged to have been attacked by a teacher at All Saints Roman Catholic Comprehensive School, in Mansfield.
The following stories were widely reported in the Northern Ireland and mainland media last November.
http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/Movilla-High-School-classes-back.4653995.jp
http://muddy.rattleresearch.com/muddy2/articles/208
03 November 2008 MOVILLA High School in Newtownards has today resumed classes. It follows almost three weeks of strike action by teachers affiliated with the NASUWT union. They had walked out after a dispute over an alleged assault on a teacher by a pupil.
The intervention of the Children’s’ Commissioner further muddied the waters. The Commissioner has since failed in an expensive bid to ban parents from smacking children. Perhaps the English Children’s’ Commissioner will take up the case of child protection in classrooms.
The Independent newspaper carried the following account of the alleged teacher assault.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/teacher-held-for-attempted-pupil-murder-1738450.html
Peter Harvey, 49, is said to have assaulted his pupil, named locally as Jack Waterhouse, after the boy swore at him in the classroom. He is alleged to have attacked the teenager with a heavy metal weight, beating him over the head in front of a class of more than 20 children. Two of Jack’s classmates, a boy and a girl, both 14, were also assaulted, apparently when they went to their friend’s aid.
Teacher Arrested After Boy Attacked At School
July 9, 2009
Sky News is reporting on the arrest of a teacher at a Roman Catholic school in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire after an alleged assault of a pupil resulting in serious head injury .
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20090709/tuk-teacher-arrested-after-boy-attacked-45dbed5.html
A spokeswoman for the police force said a 49-year-old man was arrested and remained in police custody.
She added: “The police investigation is being led by Detective Superintendent Adrian Pearson, with specialist officers from the public protection unit.
“They are working with the headteacher and staff at All Saints’ Roman Catholic School.”
Since the Enriched and Revised Curriculum projects had their genesis in Northern Ireland it is striking that the N.I. Education and Training Inspectorate (ETI) have missed an important opportunity to improve their public confidence level.
It has taken OFSTED, their equivalent in England, to raise public concern about the damaging effects of curricular changes.
Inspectors warned that the changes had prompted confusion in some schools.
A “common feature” of less successful schools was that teachers were “left to interpret the curriculum as they saw fit”, meaning it “lacked coherence”.
Some 24 out of 84 schools introduced “integrated courses” covering all humanities subjects. A similar approach was taken in the teaching of citizenships and PSHE (personal, social, health and economic education).
But Ofsted said inspectors “identified emerging problems with the courses”.
“These included the loss of subject content and subject skills development, lack of continuity from primary school, lack of rigour and challenge, uneven quality of teaching and artificial ‘links’ or themes”, said the report.
However in Northern Ireland evangelist educationalists who spend more time appearing on the media than in the classroom peddling claptrap suggest all is well.
Parents may disagree but there is no refund for a failed education.
