Opinion

Uphill struggle for schools serving disadvantaged areas

Congratulations to all those schools who appeared in The Irish News Exam Performance List ( May 22) which ranks the top 30 grammar and top 50 non-grammar schools based on their examination results in 20015-16. Academic success is very much a partnership between parents, pupils and teachers, so well done to all.

There are now 24 secondary schools in Northern Ireland with 50 per cent or more of their pupils on the free school meals register, almost 20 per cent of all our secondary schools. None of these schools appear in the top 10 non-grammar schools list. Schools in Northern Ireland that serve disadvantaged areas do a tremendous job but it is an uphill struggle and those schools that succeed academically are the exception rather than the rule. High concentrations of poverty in too many of our secondary schools are doing untold damage. These concentrations of poverty are growing and will only succeed in marginalising more and more of our young people. A study by Tulane university professor Douglas Harris, found that schools that serve a middle- class population are 22 times more likely to be consistently high performing as high poverty schools. All students perform substantially worse in high poverty schools. Data from the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for 15 year olds in Science showed, ‘A clear advantage in attending a school whose students are on average from a more advantaged socio-economic background. Regardless of their own socio-economic background students attending schools in which the average socio-economic background is high tend to perform better than when they are enrolled in a school with a below average socio-economic intake’. 

According to the OECD schools in the UK are among the most socially segregated in western Europe and nowhere more so than here in Northern Ireland where social segregation is made even worse by


so-called academic selection. 

Finland, often held up as a remarkable education success story had the lowest degree of socio-economic segregation of the 57 countries participating in PISA.


Over 50 years ago educational reformers in Finland realised that equality of educational opportunity was going to be vital to economic success and that if a small nation were to succeed in a global economy they couldn’t afford inequality or segregation in schooling.


We have yet to learn that lesson in Northern Ireland.

JIM CURRAN


Downpatrick, Co Down

Will Brexit have impact on north’s human rights?

Recent public discussion about ‘Brexit’ and Britain leaving the European Union has been about the financial implications of this departure. All aspects of this change and its possible consequences have to be discussed privately and publicly but one aspect of it needs much more attention than has been give to it so far. That is, the question of human rights and human rights legislation and practice in Northern Ireland after Brexit.

In Northern Ireland there has been a long and extremely difficult struggle for the recognition of human rights for everyone. Almost every aspect of our lives such as employment, gender, reputation, justice, adequate democratic representation and much more else had to be examined, laws and practices adjusted and even the laws had to be carefully scrutinised, followed by more scrutiny of how the laws were fulfilled or not by those whose duty it was to fulfil them.

The recognition of legislation for and practice of human rights is uncertain in this newly developing political situation. Have we guarantees that no lessening of adequate law and practice will happen if N Ireland is depending on what the British government will do in the future? If there is government failure to protect human rights, what international redress have we in Northern Ireland? Have we adequate information about what will happen, or even about what the British government intends to do to recognise human rights either in Britain or Ireland? Outside the European Union framework it was very difficult to direct international attention to our human rights problems here in Ireland. Much of what was achieved was achieved in the light of European and other international standards and decisions. We cannot afford to allow these human rights achievements even to be in danger, let alone given away. 

This may well mean that the same persistence and determination to achieve human rights for all in our own place will be as important in the future as it was in the past.

Fr DES WILSON,


Fr JOE McVEIGH


Belfast BT12

Two wrongs don’t make a right

I ask one simple question of the British, French and American governments, their supporters and spokespersons –  do they accept any responsibility for the attacks on their respective countries by radicalised individuals or groups?  

I assume these killers did not stick a pin in the map and say “we will attack there”. No. The violent actions by these three world bullies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia etc (all Muslim majority countries) must have had a major effect on the minds of those who lost loved ones or fellow believers and they (wrongly) decided to lash out (with unbelievable consequences for the innocent of the respective countries including Manchester, London and Brussels.  

Britain and the US demand that other countries respect their borders yet neither have any respect for other countries’ borders. They just attack, invade, terrorise and torture at will. Their attitude is, we can do it so we will do it regardless. And of course some radicalised (by the bullying) will wrongly strike back, ignoring the fact that two wrongs do not make  a right.

PETER McEVOY


Banbridge, Co Down

GFA was the border poll

To Fra Hughes (May 29) I say “hear, hear”.

To the ever-thoughtful Bernard J Mulholland (May 12) I say, the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) referendum held in Northern Ireland in 1998 was supported by a majority of 71.1 per cent of the voting population who came out in force with a most significant and high turnout, at 81.1 per cent. On page 1 of that agreement it is stated, quote, “...it is accepted that all of the institutional and constitutional arrangements – an assembly in Northern Ireland, a North/South Ministerial Council, implementation bodies... are  interdependent.”

So why has this Interdependent Assembly which was agreed to by a massive vote of support by the people of Northern Ireland and an even stunning 94.4 per cent vote by the voting population of the Republic in favour of the same agreement, never been allowed to see the light of day?

Surely, the Good Friday Agreement was the border poll.

GERRY RICE


Ballynahinch, Co Down

Mr Feeney has a strange idea of democracy

I was amazed at the language used by Brian Feeney (May 31) when he described some candidates in Fermanagh South Tyrone and North Belfast Constituencies as “useful  idiots”. It is actually offensive to the people concerned. Is his idea of democracy that we should all be brow-beaten into a green or orange zone and then head counted?


I am sure this will solve the ‘hard border’ issue, the crisis in our health service, lack of funding  for education, zero hour contracts etc. Democracy should be about diversity and equality not sectarian head counts. I for one will be a ‘useful idiot’ voter and I am delighted some people are willing to stand up for real politics in our society and urge others to do likewise.

FRANCES DOWDS


Belfast BT15