transfer test

We should not be surprised when some kids give up and achieve lower results than those children not damaged by the transfer test labelling system…

Arnold Carton on January 20, 2023, 10:10 am

| Readers 3629

Do you believe that intelligence is fixed, that you are born clever, or not clever? If so, you are in agreement with many 11-year-old boys. Some girls share this belief as well, but boys in particular are keen to find out where they rank in comparison with others. It helps them decide whether or not more effort is worthwhile. They believe that if you are intelligent then more effort might possibly mean higher achievement, but if you are not intelligent …

Academic selection: a system of failure…

Jay Burbank on January 6, 2021, 4:52 pm

| Readers 1498

As education minister Peter Weir bumbled his way through a ministerial statement on Wednesday afternoon one would be forgiven for confusing the ad hoc COVID 19 response committee with a debate on academic selection. The long-running debate has reared its head again as AQE subscribing grammar schools finally took the decision to delay testing in the face of a 1.8 reproductive rate in the virus here. Whatever your view on academic selection, it smacked of rank arrogance for these 32 …

How best to manage school transfers?

Noreen Campbell on May 18, 2020, 9:42 am

| Readers 1086

The coronavirus crisis upends society, changes the way we live and presents huge challenges to every sector, including the education sector. The crisis has both led to immediate and dramatic changes and prompted a deeper analysis of how we structure our system in the future. The initial response of closing schools led to the challenge of how examinations would be managed. In the unprecedented circumstances of school closures, DE rightly decided that GCSE and A level exams would not take …

Peter Weir – broaden the scope of your underachievement report…

Jay Burbank on January 24, 2020, 12:27 pm

| Readers 2187

The announcement by Peter Weir of a new report into the underachievement of working-class protestant boys will (as noted by Brian) stack up on a dusty old shelf in the Department of Education, the eighth since 2011 and these official reports are not isolated in the wider discussion on the issue. It got me thinking when Deirdre Heenan this week said about having a ‘philosophical debate’ about what we actually want from education in NI, as noted by many Slugger …