December 2009
We’ve asked the SDLP’s Declan O’Loan MLA, who has taught mathematics at a senior level for many years, to tell us exactly how he thinks the province can best extricate itself from the current current education transfer debacle…
I taught maths for more than 30 years, mostly in leading Northern Ireland grammar schools and I would bow to no-one in my determination to maintain high academic standards. However, nothing can stay the same for ever. The education system that served society some decades ago does not serve it now. Just consider one issue. In a modern knowledge-based economy, we want to see 60 per cent or more of our young people going to university. How can we square that with the retention of the traditional grammar school system which selected only about 30 per cent for an academic education?
For reasons such as this, the SDLP is opposed to academic selection and has been since our inception. We do not believe that academic selection serves our society best. We believe that we can find an alternative that maintains academic excellence. We are committed to achieving social equity in education and we consider that academic selection is a barrier - and an unnecessary one - to that objective. We believe that a reassessment of patterns of investment in education is required to remove the high levels of inequality within the education system. Schools should be much more equally funded and the comparatively low levels of funding for primary education should be raised.
We are convinced that academic selection at age 11 is educationally unsound and socially unjust. That spurs us on to work out an alternative. We share much of the analysis of the education minister about the principles that underlie a sound education system that is fitted to contemporary society. We differ very much in the methods required to get such a system in place.
The minister has made the divisions in the political system much worse and has created a situation in which the grammar schools felt they had no alternative but to set up the system of unregulated tests that we have witnessed recently. I feel very sorry for the pupils, parents and teachers who have been put under severe pressure by these tests and the uncertainty around them. Who knows how these tests will work out as a selection mechanism or whether they will lead to a series of disappointments, disputes and challenges. In any case, they perpetuate a system that has outlived its true usefulness.
We have outlined a series of steps to try to break the stalemate. Firstly, there is a compelling need for a one-year interim measure including an official regulated test. At one stage, the minister herself proposed such an interim test but then withdrew the proposal. Such an interim arrangement will give a breathing space to enable a long-term compromise to be found. We would give the lead in this to the education experts. Those with greatest experience of the issue, the educators in the schools and the universities, must be empowered to lead the way in producing a solution.
In line with the new curriculum, we consider that 14 is a better age to exercise pupil and parental choice. At this age, pupils and parents will have much more information to select the appropriate educational path that suits the individual young person.
The SDLP is taking part in cross-party talks in order to try and resolve the current stalemate that is so damaging for our children. We have taken the lead in these talks, driving the discussion by presenting detailed ideas in a discussion paper, insisting on the establishment of an educator group to help resolve the crisis and gaining consensus on the need for an interim test.
We regret that so far, Sinn Féin has refused to attend these cross-party talks. Hopefully, as the talks progress and public anger around the problems of an unregulated system swells, Sinn Féin will come under increasing political pressure to become involved.
We recognise that the public are angry and frustrated by the unnecessary pressures placed on children and that they blame all politicians equally.
While Caitríona Ruane is singled out for particular blame in the eyes of the public, the failure to resolve this pressing issue is seen as a collective failure on behalf of all the parties.
We would ask parents and teachers in particular to recognise that we have put forward constructive proposals which other political parties that have traditionally supported academic selection have engaged with in a meaningful way. In this way, a consensus can be forged, but it would happen a lot more quickly if the education minister gave her support to this process and allowed her party to join the debate.
The goal of a superb educational system for all of our children is there if political will is committed to it. That is too important a goal for any responsible political party not to fully engage with others to resolve the issue.
Declan O’Loan is a member of the SDLP and an MLA for the North Antrim constituency in which he lives. He serves on Ballymena Borough Council and since 1974, he has taught mathematics in various parts of the world, including London, Kenya and Northern Ireland. Most recently, he was head of mathematics at St. Louis’ Grammar School in Ballymena. He has five sons.