The Catholic Test and the distributive justice of the DUP

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academic selection, Catholic Bishops, DUP, north, northern ireland churches, Northern Ireland schools, Roman Catholic Church, transfer from primary school, transfer system, transfer test, unregulated system

On the eve of 2009 it is opportune to reflect on the legacy of ending the 11-plus in Northern Ireland. The “unregulated” system has left a vacuum of uncertainty for parents and children in primary schools. One group of grammar schools are offering a privitased transfer test similar to the most recent form of 11-plus testing.

 

The Catholic sector, unwilling to join their Christian fellows in the Voluntary and Controlled grammar schools, have broken away and will offer a retrograde “intelligence test” impossible to teach for using the current revised curriculum.

The Apartheid system facing parents in 2009 will result in further and formal segregation of schooling on a denominational basis. There will be no parity between the tests and parents living in Belfast will struggle to decide which test to enter their child for. The practical difficulties alone only serve to highlight the ineptitude of those charged with delivering education services. The peculiar moral and ethical juxtaposition of the Catholic Church’s position over a retrograde test for admission is best highlighted in the following passage. It should be remembered that the Church supports the revised curriculum.

As for the DUP; their support for the ESA and the litany of failures delivered by CCEA is only matched by their facile reversal of the St Andrew’s Agreement promises on academic selection and grammar schools.

CONGREGATION FOR CATHOLIC EDUCATION :THE CATHOLIC SCHOOL

In the specifically educational field, the scope of educational functions has broadened, becoming more complex, more specialized. The sciences of education, which concentrated in the past on the study of the child and teacher-training, have been widened to include the various stages of life, and the different spheres and situations beyond the school. New requirements have given force to the demand for new contents, new capabilities and new educational models besides those followed traditionally. Thus education and schooling become particularly difficult today.

Such an outlook calls for courageous renewal on the part of the Catholic school. The precious heritage of the experience gained over the centuries reveals its vitality precisely in the capacity for prudent innovation. And so, now as in the past, the Catholic school must be able to speak for itself effectively and convincingly.

The Catholic school, therefore, undertakes a cordial and constructive dialogue with states and civil authorities. Such dialogue and collaboration must be based on mutual respect, on the reciprocal recognition of each other’s role and on a common service to mankind. To achieve this end, the Catholic school willingly occupies its place within the school system of the different countries and in the legislation of the individual states, when the latter respect the fundamental rights of the human person, starting with respect for life and religious freedom. A correct relationship between state and school, not only a Catholic school, is based not so much on institutional relations as on the right of each person to receive a suitable education of their free choice. This right is acknowledged according to the principle of subsidiarity.(18) For “The public authority, therefore, whose duty it is to protect and defend the liberty of the citizens, is bound according to the principle of distributive justice to ensure that public subsidies are so allocated that parents are truly free to select schools for their children in accordance with their conscience“.

New Year’s Revelations from GBA: 2008 that is

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academic selection, Dominic Bradley, DUP, Fr Patrick Delargy, GBA, GBA Executive, Grammar Schools, pupil profile, Roy Lilley, SDLP, Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, UUP, Wilfred Mulryne

The Governing Bodies Association of Northern Ireland’s voluntary grammar schools are an organisation in disarray.meltdown. 

The following extracts have been taken from notes of a meeting of the GBA Executive held on 18th January 2008.  Events subsequent to that meeting which raise questions about the resolve of the Governors of Grammar Schools to preserve academic selection at 11 as a criteria for admission. The Pupil Profile, much loved by the GBA and Wilfred Mulryne, has met the outcome predicted by PACE years ago. Yet Mulryne continues to exact influence on the future of grammar schools in much the same way he did on the revised curriculum, the early years enriched curriculum and the Pupil Profile.

 2009  may be the year to kiss the Mulryne influence goodbye.

RHL: He suggested it was pointless to try to cobble up some form of words or find some phrase that would enable the pretence to be maintained that there was consensus or unanimity when patently that was not the case. He also suggested that it could be significant that in recent weeks and months the words “pupil profile” appeared to have been deleted from the vocabulary of the Minister and her senior officials.  Was it not fatuous to think that the Dept could be persuaded to modify the pupil profile to such an extent that it would become a reliable indicator of a pupil’s abilities?  In any event why should the GBA continue to believe that the pupil profile could be used as an instrument to match pupils to schools when the Dept itself declared that it was unsuitable for this purpose?

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield He acknowledged that it was extremely difficult to reach a consensus but there was a real danger of accepting what was simply the lowest common denominator.  The GBA’s  previous policy document with its requirement for a genuinely robust pupil profile and provision for a receiving school not to accept any pupil clearly unsuited to the curriculum on offer were the very minimum acceptable criteria. 

Dr Mulryne replied that this was not exactly the case.  It should be remembered that initially it was proposed that the receiving school would not be entitled to see the pupil profile but this position had been changed as a result of representations by the GBA.  Moreover the pupil profile as now envisaged would contain objective assessments of a pupil’s abilities, eg reading age.

 

Fr Patrick Delargy agreed. They should leave the Dept with what had already been submitted last year.  No response had been forthcoming to that document. To forward another now might be seen as a watering down of the GBA’s position.  At this stage the new paper should be considered as a basis for healthy internal debate.

 

The suggestions of Sir Anthony and Fr Delargy were agreed.

 

Executive officers are to meet Dept officials on Tue Jan 22 at 8-30am.

There can be no doubt for parents that the subsequent proposals from Mulryne, Young and Donaghy were hatched well in advanced by the core architects of the GBA retreat away from academic selection.

 

A footnote on “lobbying activity” reveals some possible explanation of the DUP mirroring the GBA position.

 

 

At the start of the meeting Sir Gerry Loughran reported on a meeting which he and others had had with Mr Dominic Bradley of the SDLP.  He said Mr Bradley had been “very open to our thinking” but was a supporter of the proposed ESA.  It was essential to pursue other MLA’s to get the GBA’s position established in their thinking.  Efforts were now being made to die down appointments with Mr  Sammy Wilson and Mr Basil McCrea

Testing Apartheid for 11-plus replacement

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academic selection, AQE, ccea test, Grammar Schools, Lumen Christi, transfer test

Mrs O’Boyle , a teacher said ,

” like everyone else, have been waiting impatiently for twelve months, to hear the details of Ms Ruane’s elusive ‘proposals’ and so far, all we have been served up are platitudes about how much she cares for children.”

Mrs O’Boyle said Ms Ruane was

 “a woman who either preaches or harangues”

and attacked her espousal of the education system in the Republic of Ireland — while she sends her children across the border from her Louth home to a grammar school in Northern Ireland- untill she left.

Referring to the announcement  that the Association for Quality Education (AQE),  that it intended to set up its own transfer process-

“She has presided over the privatisation of selection by allowing the AQE enough time to advance their proposals, and, like Lumen Christi College in Derry, other Catholic grammar schools will follow suit, or risk catholic children opting to do the entrance tests to the voluntary grammars.”

 

So parents will be faced by two tests  and forced to choose from Association for Quality Education (AQE) test- private and costly -the other NFER Catholic test – free but inferior and invalid.

 

A struggle is ongoing as the two sectarian groups of grammar schools decide on which test they will stick with. The losers, as ever, will be the parents and pupils forced to endure an apartheid testing system for entry into gramar schools.

More to follow.

Why Janet Daley isn’t popular with Betty Orr or other Shankill enriched curriculum zealots

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Betty Orr, curriculum, Daily Telegraph, education, enriched curriculum, equality, Janet Daley, revised curriculum, Shankill Road schools, working class boys

White working class boys need structure and competition to succeed

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/janet_daley/blog/2008/12/16/white_working_class_boys_need_structure_and_competition_to_succeed

Except in Northern Ireland where constructivist education zealots experimented on vulnerable pupils using an “enriched Curriculum” to ensure that “the rich got richer while the poor became poorer”. The experiment failed but the researchers escaped without censure.

What is most interesting in the latest statistics is that the boys who do worst are those in isolated, inward-looking, deprived working class communities.

 

The real reason, I suggest, for working class boys having lost almost all interest in education is that their two chief motivations for achievement were systematically removed from the primary school curriculum: competition and a clear sense of measurable, structured accomplishment.

 

So determined was the education establishment to ensure “equality” in the classroom, that it banned any reference to winners and losers, to high achievers and lower ones, to being the best or the poorest in any capacity. So the thing that spurred on many boys to excel – the idea of being “top of the class”, or the best at maths, or the prize-winning reader – has now been eradicated in the very schools (those in deprived areas) where it is most needed. And thrown out along with this will-to-win, were the clear, identifiable signs of goals having been reached: in order to avoid any child feeling that he had failed in relation to his classmates or his teacher’s expectations, the steps to progress were obscured and the expectations lowered.

There was no longer any way for children to be rewarded for climbing the rungs of a ladder. “Learning through play” meant that the accomplishment of learning itself could be disguised in a way that would conceal who was quicker to learn than whom. If working class boys are to regain any sense of education being worthwhile, the schools will have to offer them prizes and accolades when they do well, and encouragement to join the race when they fall behind.

Two Transfer Tests on the same day

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11-plus, ac, Appitude /Reasoning examination, AQE, Catholic Bishops, CEA test, Lumen Christi, Sir Kenneth Bloomfield

Will the Common Entrance Assessment Examination to be offered by non-denominational (Protestant) grammar schools http://www.aqe.org.uk/be carried out on the same day as the Catholic (Lumen Christi) Appitude /Reasoning examination http://www.lumenchristicollege.co.uk/index.php?sec_id=241

Or will the Catholic schools join the AQE and adopt the CEA test of numeracy and literacy?

Perhaps the AQE will adopt the Appitude /Reasoning examination?

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield and the Bishops should have a chat about this. Then parents may be told about how to send their children to two exams at the same time.

Since no teaching for these tests is to be carried out in schools room has to be found for preparation elsewhere in the day.

The CCEA Pupil Profile and Incas tests

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BBC, CCEA, DENI, Incas, Minister of Education, Northern Ireland schools, pupil profile, transfer from primary school

Parents should closely examine  Caitriona’s Pupil Profile/Incas Assessment reports.
Since principals and teachers have been fully aware of this for quite some time it is remarkable that they provided no warning to parents. Why the silence?
http://www.nicurriculum.org.uk/docs/pupil_profile/letters/letter_to_principals_20_05_08.pdf

Why did the media reports from the BBC education correspondent  cover only the principals’ comments. Indeed the Twinbrook principal admitted ignoring the comment bank provided. It probably means she could have staff work from home rather than in the classroom.

 In case Santa doesn’t bring you a better read.

http://www.nicurriculum.org.uk/docs/pupil_profile/letters/preparation_for_using_inCAS.pdf

Saving the best for last.
Exactly what is a developed ability and how is it measured? What is the Education Minister’s attitude?

http://www.nicurriculum.org.uk/docs/pupil_profile/letters/preparation_for_using_inCAS.pdf

David Cameron must turn on daytime running lights on TIMSS

David Cameron suggests that the Conservative Party follow the Swedish model for education.

Perhaps his PR team and shadow Education Secretary of State, Michael haven’t pointed him to the results from the 2007 International TIMSS Survey in which England are in the top 10 worldwide.

 

This week a major global analysis of maths and science standards – the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study – found that 10 and 14-year-olds in England were among the best in the world.

The study found that both primary and secondary pupils were ranked seventh in tests – ahead of pupils in other industrialised countries including United States, Germany and Australia.

Oh yes David and well ahead of Sweden too.

David Cameron and Conservatives get it wrong – again

David Cameron spells out his position on academic selection and grammar schools  in Belfast.

http://sluggerotoole.com/index.php/weblog/comments/cameron-answers-three-questions-from-slugger/

Department of Education warn about Incas use

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CCEA, CEM, DENI, Incas, parents, Peter Timms, primary pupil assessment instrument, pupil profile, University of Durham

The Department of Education has made clear howthe CCEA  Incas assessments are to be used in schools to school heads, teachers and governors. Unfortunately, as ever, parents have not been given this information. This extract  has been taken from DE Circular 2008/22 Para 9, 30 September 2008

 

“The InCAS assessments are not for any purpose related to transfer of pupils from primary to post-primary school.”

 

Taken from DE Circular 2008/22 Para 11, 30 September 2008

 

“The Department/CCEA will not collect the InCAS information centrally recognising its diagnostic purpose within a class or school.”

Which facilitator is responsible for your child’s education?

The Teacher as Facilitator
In an active classroom environment the role of a teacher is often that of a facilitator,
supporting pupils as they learn and develop skills in, for example, assessing evidence,
negotiation, making informed decisions, solving problems, working independently and
working with others. Pupil participation and involvement in their learning is essential.
Sometimes it is appropriate for the facilitator to take on a particular role/function in an
attempt to enhance the learning within the class or to challenge their thinking in a new
way. Some of these possible roles include:
*Neutral facilitator: The facilitator enables the group to explore a range of different
viewpoints without stating their own opinion.
*Devil’s advocate: The facilitator deliberately adopts an opposite stance to confront
people, irrespective of their own views. This method is slightly ‘tongue-in-cheek’.
*Declared interests: The facilitator declares their own position so that the group
knows their views.
Ally: The facilitator supports the views of a particular sub-group or individual
(usually a minority) within a group.
Offi cial view: The facilitator informs the group of the offi cial position on certain
issues e.g. offi cial organisations, the law etc.
Challenger: The facilitator, through questioning, challenges the views being
expressed and encourages the pupils to justify their position.
Provocateur: The facilitator brings up an argument, viewpoint and information
which they know will provoke the class, and which they do not necessarily believe,
but because they are authentic beliefs of other individuals or groups, they present
them convincingly.
In-role: The facilitator may “become” a particular person or caricature (for example
a church leader or a politician), putting across their arguments and position to the
class.

If you were looking for a definition of the word Teacher unfortunately that role has been removed from the classroom under the revised curriculum