• About

Pace N.Ireland Education Weblog

~ Northern Ireland education analysis

Pace N.Ireland Education Weblog

Tag Archives: academic selection

The AQE and GL Assessment 11-plus results for 2014

31 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by paceni in Grammar Schools

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

11-plus, 11-plus and admission procedure, 11-plus tests, academic selection, academic selection at 11, AQE test results, BBC, BBC Northern Ireland Education Correspondent, Belfast Telegraph, CEA test, GL Assessment, GL Assessment test results, John O'Dowd, Lindsay Fergus, Martin mcGuinness, Michelle McIlveen, Mile Gilson, post primary transfer, PPTC

Transfer Test Papers)

The Parental Alliance for Choice in Education wish to pass on their congratulations to all pupils who received results today from their efforts in taking transfer  tests last November.

Today is a time for celebration, recognition and relaxation.

No doubt parents and family will be asked and may themselves be asking  a multitude of questions about the next phase –“ will my mark or grade be sufficient to gain a place at a grammar school. There can be no immediate answer to that course of enquiry, it will only end  when the admissions process is completed.

Unfortunately every year since the Department of Education withdrew the transfer test, the Minister of Education and his misinformation campaigners have sought to sow seeds of doubt about the popularity of the system which filled the vacuum.

Politicians and the media fan the flames by making unhelpful, ambiguous or ignorant statements and/or publishing opinion pieces about the tests. They also stray onto  the curriculum, coaching or teaching to the test, and most egregiously pretend to support parents and pupils, all the while pushing  the anti-selection, anti-grammar school line.

Take this example from the BBC in 2012 quoting  First Minister of Northern Ireland, Peter Robinson of the Democratic Unionist Party.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-18039897

SingleTest Robinson 2012

Another example is the mixed message editorial from the Belfast Telegraph in which Mike Gilson invites ridicule over the number of pupils taking the tests.

Belfast Tele

But this move by the department is a nonsense in any case. Last year some 10,000 pupils took the unregulated AQE and GL Assessment tests despite opposition from Education Minister John O’Dowd.

The shambles is that Belfast Telegraph readers are expected to believe a figure cited which is  4,500 lower than the combined record entry of 14,531. Where did Mike Gilson come up with this number? – The DENI? The BBC? The Detail? The Inspectorate? or is it simply a figment of his imagination?

Belfast Tele

How about the “analysis” of Lindsay Fergus? On November 17,2014 she wrote in The Belfast Telegraph

Parents and schools both appear to have confidence in the system.

….Yet Ms McIlveen (DUP MLA and Chair of Education Committee) is right- we need one test. No test would be better……Not only would one test spare those pupils who do opt to sit both assessments having to undertake five papers, it would create uniformity.

BT O'Dowd witchhunt

It is time for those opposed to parental choice and academic selection by attainment testing to admit defeat in their ideological campaign.

Like it or not, parental support has remained constant since Martin McGuinness’ Household Survey of 2002. There will be no acceptance of a comprehensive system in Northern Ireland and the wasted taxpayers’ money spend by anti-grammar school groups should be put back into traditional classrooms.

Well done to all those who received results today.

There are no failures in trying.

Rate this:

Desperate move at end of another failed long war

17 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by paceni in Grammar Schools

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

academic selection, Belfast Telegraph, DENI, Martin mcGuinness, Pro Vice Chancellor Tony Gallagher, Times Higher Education

a href=”https://paceni.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/bt-odowd-selectionnov16.jpg”>BT ODowd SelectionNov16

The Northern Ireland Education Minister has launched a desperate “Hail Mary” throw via the fourth estate, hoping that electoral pressure will end academic selection for grammar schools in Northern Ireland.

Preaching to the converted small crowd at the Catholic Principal’s Association annual get together he called on teachers, clergy, trade unionists, and even parents to campaign against selection in order to remove an equality of opportunity and parental choice for children’s education.

Perhaps he wishes to forget the result the last time the then Education Minister, Martin McGuinness tested public opinion.
The Household Survey, virtually a census, returned results which proved that almost two thirds of those sampled in Northern Ireland wished to retain academic selection. It is no surprise that the exercise was never repeated by the Department of Education.

While O’Dowd suggests that all political parties in the Assembly will vote for a change to the legislation, he may wish to bear in mind that the largest of the party in Northern Ireland, the DUP, represents only 30% of the 54.5% of the electorate who bothered to vote in 2011. If they want to end up with egg on their face they should include O’Dowd’s proposal in their next manifesto.

One only needs to examine the recent fortune of Queen’s University Belfast Pro Vice Chancellor Professor Tony Gallagher and his 28 year campaign to end academic selection to forecast the result.

THEGallagher<

Professor Gallagher has been found guilty of academic misconduct in relation to claims made in the DENI research The Effects of the Selective System of Secondary Education http://www.deni.gov.uk/index/85-schools/6-admission-and-choice/6-post-primary-transfer-and-wider-reform/6-ppa-research_and_reports_pg-3/6-ppa-rap-gas_pg-3.htm
The findings of the University and the punishment awarded remain secretive. Perhaps a thorough examination of the entire corpus of the research should be subject to further inquiry.
In the interim PACE suggest that the Belfast Telegraph should be treated with caution in their communications on matters of education given that Professor Tony Gallagher was their education expert and they have yet to report his reported misconduct.

Rate this:

The conceptual error of the Rasch model used by PISA

11 Thursday Apr 2013

Posted by paceni in Grammar Schools

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

academic selection, CCEA, Fred Naylor, Grammar Schools, Irish News, John O'Dowd, Michael Gove, OECD, PISA

Rasch

Rate this:

Fred Naylor 1919 – 2011 Co-Founder of The Parental Alliance for Choice in Education

11 Friday Nov 2011

Posted by paceni in Grammar Schools

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

11-plus, academic selection, Fred Naylor, Grammar Schools, NGSA, PACE, PACENI

1919 - 2011

 

Fred Naylor, the co-founder of the Parental Alliance for Choice in Education has died, aged 92.  Fred , who was in charge of the Bath Technical School, which later became Culverhay School, was actively involved in local and national education even after his retirement.

He was born in St Helen’s in Lancashire and after leaving school, went to study chemistry at Pembroke College, Cambridge.

It was while he was there that he met his future wife Marjorie, also a teacher, who died just a month before him, in September at the age of 86.

Fred Naylor taught at a number of schools around the country, including ones in Leeds and in Scotland, before joining the Bath Technical School in 1963.

While he was there he was seconded to work in London, on an educational think tank. It was during this time that the school system in Bath was reformed and went comprehensive, a change Mr Naylor was opposed to, so when his job was re-advertised he did not apply.

Instead, he went to work at Newton Park College, which later became Bath Spa University, and was involved with teacher training.

Mr Naylor and his family lived in Kingsdown, near Box, and throughout his retirement he continued to be interested in the local education system.

He set up the Parental Alliance for Choice in Education (PACE), which campaigned for parents to have more say over schooling, and was also active in the National Grammar Schools Association (NGSA).

His work with these organisations led him to meet many influential politicians, including Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron.

One of Fred Naylor’s many publications had a particular  emphasis on the Northern Ireland  education system. Education for the 21st Century: Report by the Post Primary Review Body was published in October 2001 at the behest of Martin  McGuinness,  Northern Ireland’s education  minister. Known colloquially as the Burns Report, it  advocates   abolishing Northern Ireland’s grammar and secondary (modern) schools and  setting up a  new ‘collegial system’ of  comprehensive schools without any concern for standards.

 

The pamphlet, Comprehensive  Ideology: Burns and the Betrayal of Two Communities  was  written in response, though it  is also  relevant to the rest of the UK.

 

The authors of the Burns  Report have failed to grasp that comprehensivisation has reduced educational  opportunities on the mainland.  Ever  since 1972, when research  by  the National Foundation for Educational  Research (NFER)   showed that  comprehensivisation  was a handicap to  raising  standards, the destruction of  selective schools has been pursued for ideological, not educational,  reasons.

The Burns Report  is riddled with incoherences and omissions,  not least the remarkable achievements of secondary (modern) schools.  Fred Naylor uses quotations from  supporters of comprehensivisation to show how  illiberal they are and how they are undermining the Human Rights of parents.  His analysis demonstrates that the ‘comprehensive principle’ is designed, not  to protect and preserve different cultures, but to destroy them.

It is timely that the warnings provided by Fred Naylor and PACE are available to counter the cynical efforts of Sinn Fein Education Ministers determined to remove parental rights in education.

 

Comprehensive Ideology costs £4.00 including postage  from 18 Westlands Grove, York YO31 1EF.

 

Rate this:

Peter Robinson signals personal willingness to concede academic selection

01 Monday Mar 2010

Posted by paceni in Grammar Schools

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

11-plus, academic selection, AQE, Cardinal Brady, CEA test, DUP, Peter Robinson., selection at 11, Sinn Fein

Peter Robinson this morning signaled his personal willingness to sacrifice the principle of academic selection in order to stay in power. In a statement conveniently timed with Cardinal Brady’s announcement for the future comprehensivisation of Catholic education, the DUP leader has signalled to Sinn Fein and other anti-selection that it is now safe for them to make academic selection and the 11-plus an issue over which they can threaten to bring down the Northern Ireland Executive. Peter Robinson has made the principle of selection negotiable.

“I am determined to ensure that an academic option is available to those from all backgrounds who wish to pursue this path.”

Peter Robinson First Minister

Unfortunately Mr Robinson has not insisted that during the interim period before any introduction of  Computer Adaptive Testing, the AQE CEA 11-plus must become  the only acceptable exams option not the GL Assessment one day and  inferior approach.

Leaving the decision on agreeing a single test to grammar school principals at a meeting in Methodist College this evening is akin to Peter Robinson and the DUP  insisting the the Ulster Unionists endorse the Hillsborough Agreement with Sinn Fein.

Rate this:

Why selection at 14 cannot work: Belfast Telegraph Opinion article

22 Tuesday Dec 2009

Posted by paceni in Grammar Schools

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

academic selection, Belfast Telegraph, Grammar Schools, National Grammar Schools Association, NGSA, Robert McCartney, Sit Down - Sort it Out

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.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/the-future-of-education-cannot-be-compromised-14603314.html#ixzz0aPAMN8SA 

 

Rate this:

11-plus statement misinterpreted by DUP Education Spokesperson

24 Friday Jul 2009

Posted by paceni in Grammar Schools

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

11-plus, academic selection, Catholic Bishops, ESA, Gavin Boyd, Ignatius McQuillan, Irish News, Mervyn Storey MLA, revised curriculum, Roman Catholic Church, Sammy Wilson MP

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?

Rate this:

Look back in anger on regulated 11-plus tests

29 Friday May 2009

Posted by paceni in Caitriona Ruane

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

11-plus, academic selection, Caitriona Ruane, DUP, regulated tests at 11, test

PACE had warned parents about the DUP’s failure to expose the Education Minister’s blackmail attempt over unregulated tests.

Read the warning again in full.

https://paceni.wordpress.com/2009/01/29/the-esa-loving-dup-stay-silent/

Rate this:

Primary principals attempt an end to parental choice

29 Friday May 2009

Posted by paceni in Grammar Schools

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

academic selection, BBC, Caitriona Ruane, INTO, Irish National Teachers Orgainsation, Minister of Education

In a desperate effort to achieve an end to academic selection primary school principals have called on grammar schools to abandon their unregulated entrance tests. Instead of pressuring the Minister, Caitriona Ruane, over her failure to provide regulated tests the teaching unions have picked upon their colleagues in the grammar sector. Of course a grammar school without academic selection is not a grammar school so the approach is doomed to failure.

Mr Harron of the INTO said the conference in Belfast was the beginning of a campaign to make sure voices of primary principals were heard.

The teaching unions practically live in Rathgael House at the Department of Education and parents are undoubtedly sick of hearing their anti selection views forced down the throats of parents via a compliant media.

School heads want tests abandoned

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/8072762.stm

Rate this:

More straight talking from parents about 11-plus

12 Tuesday May 2009

Posted by paceni in Grammar Schools

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

11-plus, academic selection, Irish News, selection at 11

http://www.irishnews.com/articles/540/576/2009/5/11/617278_381032128285The11plu.html

God's gift stolen by educationalists

God's gift stolen by educationalists

 

Letters like this must be difficult for the Minister of Education to read, given her failure to deliver a better solution to post-primary transfer.

Rate this:

← Older posts

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • May 2019
  • October 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • May 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • August 2015
  • May 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008

Categories

  • 11-plus
  • academic selection
  • Caitriona Ruane
  • General
  • Grammar Schools
  • Numeracy and Literacy
  • The Department of Education N.Ireland
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy