Education
Grammar schools and social mobility: a Northern Ireland contribution to the debate
Here’s something that won’t make relations between the Education and Finance ministers any easier.. An approving poll for a UK wide campaign to revive grammar schools has received a gushing review from Independent columnist Mary Anne Sieghart. It’s pegged to the general angst about stalled – even reversed – social mobility which all UK political [...] more »
Education Minister refuses to provide colleagues with a breakdown of £2 Billion of funding for schools…
So there’s been a little addendum to the sudden, and last minute, reappearance of £72 million in funding in the Department of Education just before the minister was expected to explain his spending patterns to the Finance Minister. It seems the Finance Minister is not best pleased [Ahem, well we did suggest he mightn't be [...] more »
Looks like the Minister really did find that extra £72 million down the back of a departmental sofa…
Interesting that with just over a month to go before Sammy Wilson puts all departmental budgets under scrutiny to see what he can claw back for DFP, the Education Minister managed to locate £72 million of ‘savings’ over the next three years. According to the Minister’s party political presser, this figure was as a result [...] more »
Without a new approach to Education, the Minister is condemned to micromanaging micro outcomes…
Well, I didn’t hear it, but apparently the Education minister John O’Dowd let rip this morning on the Nolan Show (42 minutes). But some time earlier, his party colleague Daithi McKay gave a fairly calm account of the Department’s request to school inspectors to report primary schools found to be giving special tuition to pupils [...] more »
Cross border education: lay out all the facts please
Is this form of cross border cooperation actually divisive? Contrast two stories about the SF led Education department’s plan for a survey of 50,000 “border families “ (i.e. families on both sides of the border) on the takeup of school places by children from the other side. Liam Clarke’s story records the objections of DUP’s Mervyn [...] more »
Political Progress and Educational Sectarianism
Northern Ireland’s past echoes with the haunted politics of division, its communities littered with the graves of over 3,000 victims of shameful brutality. When Peter Robinson spat that, ‘the only input that Unionists want into the Anglo-Irish Conference is a stick of gelignite’, not even the most ardent optimist would have predicted that he would [...] more »
“I believe that schools are best placed to make decisions in light of what they believe is in the best interests of their pupils.”
So sayeth the Northern Ireland Education Minister, Sinn Féin’s John O’Dowd. He’s not, however, speaking about academic selection… Following a 12-week public consultation on GCSE reform, which ended on 30 December 2011, the NI Education Minister has decided to give no direction on whether schools should use unitised or linear GCSEs. [Let the market decide! - Ed] Indeed. From [...] more »
#CATJRF: Scoil an Droichid and the downside of asset transfer?
In case anyone was under the impression that community asset transfer is being pushed here as a panacea for all ills and all occasions then what Scoil an Droichid are currently going through should serve as a dire warning of some of the risks involved. It’s not that the school is not in general terms [...] more »
Learn from the English experience in secondary schools
Interested parties would do well to examine battles over secondary school admission in England. The Northern Ireland debate, such as it is, is locked in parochialism and stand- off. Unwisely it seems to steer clear of the English experience – on political grounds?- even though we have broadly the same schools system. The major difference [...] more »
“all schools in the Catholic sector should move to an alternative form of transfer as soon as possible and by no later than 2012…”
Six years in the writing, the Northern Ireland Commission for Catholic Education (NICCE) has published its Post-Primary Review Strategic Regional Report. It’s a mixture of proposals of limited school closures, amalgamations… and wishful thinking. As the BBC reports, Catholic Church representatives have been focusing on one issue in particular. Cardinal Brady was speaking at St Mary’s [...] more »
Some secondary schools get better results than selective grammar schools
In days and weeks to come, there may be many ways to slice and dice the data that Kathryn Torney published in The Detail and the Sunday Times this morning. Chris has already alluded to the potential weakness in directly comparing the raw NI stats about numbers of pupils achieving 7 or more GCSEs at [...] more »
John O’Dowd: the education debate is “continuing in a better atmosphere” but it’s not yet time for all-party talks
I grabbed a very quick interview with Education Minister John O’Dowd as he headed down the corridor in Ashfield Boys School to go home after last night’s East Belfast Speaks Out community hustings. In the past few months he’s announced reductions in school budgets, given a partial reprieve after finding extra money for his department, [...] more »
“A working democracy must have in place effective mechanisms for holding the Executive to account…”
As the BBC reports, the Northern Ireland Appeal Court has delivered, “with regret”, its judgement on the NI Department of Education’s appeal of the “abuse of power” ruling that followed a judicial review of the then-minister Sinn Féin’s Caitríona Ruane’s refusal to provide funding for Loreto Grammar School’s planned new-build on its existing site in Omagh. As the BBC report notes [...] more »
Is my education system better than your education system? Finland vs the world.
Depending on who you ask, Scotland has a world class education system, a Northern Ireland grammar school education is the envy of the UK, and pupils from Anahilt primary school go on to dominate the head girl and head boy posts in local post-primary schools (according to a leaflet in Lisburn Library). Idly browsing through [...] more »
GCSE results … and 9,000 sixteen year olds
(Blog posts are better when they cover one idea at a time. This follows on from the previous post about the Belfast Telegraph’s coverage of Laurelhill Community College’s inspection report.) The front page of the Laurellhill Community College website links to a news item from August which – while omitting any figures – explains: the [...] more »
Which hat is a politician wearing when they speak? Readers need context.
An article in Wednesday’s Belfast Telegraph [not online] (that made it onto the front page by the evening edition) drew attention to the latest Education and Training Inspectorate report on Laurelhill Community College in Lisburn. Lindsay Fergus reported that: A sixth secondary school in greater Belfast has been placed under special measures after being found [...] more »
Peter Robinson tactics, strategy and Stranmillis
Mick has a blog on Alex Kane’s latest column looking at Peter Robinson’s conference speech below as has Chris Donnelly. One line in it struck me that Robinson was a master strategist. I have in the past described Robinson as a good tactician but a poor strategist. However, more recently I have begun to think [...] more »
Northern Ireland youth and the critical importance of mobility…
There’s an interesting longitudinal research just published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on the problems faced by 18 young people growing up in Northern Ireland. Each were interviewed up to seven times since the research began back in 1997. They’re all now aged 25 to 33. It tells a series of stories (without pretending it [...] more »
The not-so-elitist grammar school education (with the exception of Lumen Christi and Rathmore)
An article in today’s Belfast Telegraph [some detail now online] contains the results of this year’s Freedom of Information trawl around NI grammar schools to find out about their Year 8 entrance policies for the 2011 intake. With two different exam systems (AQE and GL assessment), varying degrees of using the overall scores or grades/quintiles, [...] more »
“Nonsense, Minister.” – Redux
Sinn Féin’s ideologically driven campaign against grammar schools continues, and it’s the Northern Ireland Education Minister, SF’s John O’Dowd, who’s making the strange claims. When the Association of Quality Education (AQE) tests were being sat this year the Minister labelled them ”a clever marketing device”. For the Post-Primary Transfer Consortium (PPTC) of schools, who will use a separate [...] more »
Advertise
-
Books
-
Total Politics: Top 20 NI Blogs…
Fair play to Iain, he managed to get over 2,200 people voting in his poll for the top Northern Irish blogs this year… We (just, I imagine) retained our top spot, with Splintered coming straight in at number 2, no doubt his pet subject du jour will have garnered him a lot of fans… I’ve [...] read our review »
-
Debating the Churches’ Role in the Peace in Northern Ireland
This morning’s Sunday Sequence featured a substantial debate (about 35 minutes into the recorded programme) on a new book,Religion, Civil Society and Peace in Northern Ireland (Oxford University Press 2011), written by sociologists John Brewer, Gareth Higgins and Francis Teeney. The debate was framed in an opening vignette by presenter William Crawley in uncompromising terms, [...] read our review » -
“It was a trivial problem that… occurs every year”
Just your average family gathering at Christmas, with a bit of an argument about the seating cleaning arrangements… Scuffles have broken out between rival groups of Greek Orthodox and Armenian clerics over a turf war in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. Bemused tourists looked on as about 100 priests fought with brooms while cleaning the [...] read our review »
-
