CATHOLIC SECOND-level schools in the North may use an entrance examination to select pupils in the short term pending the abolition of academic selection, a special commission has recommended.
The Commission for Catholic Education, which represents all 550 Catholic schools in Northern Ireland, said some over-subscribed grammar schools should be permitted to use an agreed and trusted entrance exam to replace the abolished 11-plus which allocated primary schoolchildren to second-level places – but only until 2012.
The recommendation is contrary to current ministerial policy on schools transfer procedures.
Cardinal Seán Brady said the current transfer arrangements, which many parents and some teachers regard as unclear, should be addressed by the Stormont Executive as quickly as possible.
Minister for Education Caitríona Ruane has scrapped the 11-plus, arguing it was socially unjust and unfit for purpose. But she can only draw up a list of recommended guidelines for allocating second-level school places in the absence of support from the Stormont Executive for legislation. Unionists are vehemently opposed to the Minister’s plan to abolish academic selection and to replace it with a set of non-academic criteria.
Addressing the political impasse on the issue, Cardinal Brady appealed to legislators at Stormont to work together to end what he called “this uncertain and disruptive situation”.
“Such agreement would send a strong signal to the whole community that local politicians can bring principled and constructive solutions to fundamental issues of concern to our society,” he said.
“Agreement on this issue is urgent and would signal that politics in Northern Ireland has come of age and is hard at work.” He appealed to parents “not to buy into the idea that only one type of school provides quality education” and he suggested that some parents “may need to look again at their attitudes” and reconsider their assumptions.
Dr Brady was speaking at St Patrick’s High School in Keady, Co Armagh which is an all-ability school and does not employ academic selection when choosing its intake.
Pat McAleavey, the school’s principal, suggested to The Irish Times that the school’s ability to cater for all pupils while retaining academic excellence for the most gifted, and its refusal to rely on entrance exams, meant it could act as a model for the reformed second-level sector.
Commission chairman Bishop Donal McKeown stressed the Catholic sector’s belief that academic selection at age 11 was inappropriate, claiming it led to what were seen as “pass schools and fail schools”. Addressing the new, unregulated transfer system, the commission recommends “access for all young people to an 11-19 education through reorganisation, federation or collaboration between schools and between schools and further education colleges”.
Some 30 Catholic grammar schools have said they will set their own independent entrance examinations beginning this autumn. Senior Catholic education sources said yesterday they were keen to maintain both the unity of Catholic schools and the likelihood that Catholic parents would continue to send their children to them.
Responding to the statement from the Catholic sector, Ms Ruane, who opposes any entrance tests, welcomed its call for her department’s guidelines to be followed by all Catholic schools. “If this policy is followed by schools then there is no need for any breakaway entrance tests in any schools,” she said. The SDLP said that a protracted lack of legislation surrounding schools transfer could prove damaging.
The DUP said the statement by the Catholic sector proved Ms Ruane was becoming “further isolated”.