AS YOU read this on Saturday morning, the O’Kane household will be in a state of nervous anticipation. I’ll have dropped my 11-year-old son off to do the first of his AQE transfer tests. My wife will have stayed at the school, while I come home to drink tea, stare into the distance and maybe say a wee prayer.
To say I’m ambivalent about the whole process would be an understatement. I honestly believe he would do every bit as well in an all-ability school but he wants to go to a particular local school, which happens to be a grammar. If I thought for a second he didn’t have the ability to pass the test I wouldn’t let him do it but he’s a bright wee chap and I don’t think my principles trump his wishes.
My memory of doing the transfer test isn’t exactly pleasant. I’d been sent to live with relations in the country due to the Troubles. I was staying with my granny high up in the Sperrins, and remember doing what was then the ‘11-plus’ at the local primary school.
While every effort was made to prepare me I daydreamed through most of the paper, glad to be released back into the fresh air when it was finished. You’ll not be surprised to hear I failed, though that a society would stigmatise a child as a failure at 11 years old says more about that society than the child.
Sinn Féin’s attempt to do away with the 11-plus in 2008 shows how high-floating ideals fail if they’re not tethered to a bit of common sense. When the then education minister, Caitriona Ruane, stormed ahead with her abolition of the test she must have presumed schools operating academic selection would simply fall into line – how wrong that presumption turned out to be. Sinn Fein discovered too late you should never write a political cheque you don’t have the political power to cover.
Instead of abolishing the 11-plus they splintered it in two, with separate organisations (AQE and PPTC) now both running tests. Where once children took one test in their own primary school, they’re now forced to travel to a different school and can end up having to sit up to five separate papers.
Ten years after the disastrous intervention of Sinn Féin proposals from AQE & PPTC may mean the restoration of one test, though this will take three years to implement. The fact there were 8,700 registrations in 2018 for the AQE test alone proves the need for such a move.
The iniquities around the transfer test are clear. In our case, if we’d sent our son to the ‘private, feeder primary school’ associated with the grammar he wants to attend, he would have moved higher up the rankings simply by having done so. In short, we could have paid for him to have a better chance of getting in. That was a line I wasn’t willing to cross.
So while my heart may wish for the end of the transfer test, my head recognises that, as things stand, my son has no option other than to do it if he wants into the school of his choice.
Some will argue this is nothing but self-serving hypocrisy. Possibly, but I’ll sleep better as a hypocrite than a man who put his principles ahead of his child’s education.
I’ve always been suspicious of ideologues such as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn; he ended up divorcing his wife of 12 years after she insisted their son be sent to the local grammar school.
Most of us make such compromises on a daily basis. We’re continually balancing our principles with our family’s welfare. With issues such as the transfer test we swallow our principles and play the game, even though that game may be stacked against us.
And while the rest of us are judged on our actions, politicians are tied to a much lower standard, namely their intentions. How often have you heard the excuse from some politician after a disaster, ‘my intention was good’. To hell with that; they should be judged by their actions like the rest of us. Force them to take the same oath as doctors ‘Primum non nocere’, or ‘First, to do no harm’.
If Sinn Féin had operated by that axiom then my child, like thousands others, would have his test over him today. Instead, due to their political naivety he faces two more Saturdays sitting hour-long exams.
