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.
The Parental Alliance for Choice in Education blog 