Northern Ireland

Catholic principals urge grammar schools to end entrance exams

Grammar school entrance exams are due to take place in November and December
Grammar school entrance exams are due to take place in November and December Grammar school entrance exams are due to take place in November and December

GRAMMAR schools are coming under increased pressure to call off this winter's 11-plus series.

A group representing more than 200 head teachers said the lockdown had caused great emotional distress for children.

It claimed moral, ethical, educational and social justice imperatives should compel trustees, governors and principals "to act now".

Unregulated entrance tests are due to take place in November and December.

Education minister Peter Weir has been asked to intervene, although the exams are run by private companies.

If the assessments cannot take place, individual grammar schools would be forced to use different criteria to select pupils.

The tests are run by two private organisations, the Association for Quality Education (AQE) and Post Primary Transfer Consortium (PPTC).

So far, a dozen schools have cancelled their entrance exams. All but one are Catholic schools that are PPTC members.

Schools in Newry, Enniskillen, Omagh and Derry will all use non-academic criteria only this year.

In a full-page advertisement in The Irish News today, the Catholic Principals' Association (CPA) urged all grammars to follow suit.

The CPA outlined several reasons why tests should not go ahead.

It said there was "the inevitable emotional distress of primary school children during this pandemic and the exacerbating impact of prolonged school disruption".

"These tensions and anxieties will be very significantly compounded by the well-attested stresses and strains of transfer tests.

"By the end of June 2020, the current Year 6 children will have missed out on almost four months of school and face-to-face teaching.

"Uncertainty surrounds the reopening of schools in September 2020 and, if children are to return on a phased or part-time basis, Year 7 children will have significantly less face-to-face teaching."

The two-week delay in the tests taking place, the CPA added, would not make up for almost nine months of disruption to children's education.

"The onset of the pandemic and school closure/disruption have led to uneven and imbalanced access to teaching and learning in the primary sector. The present context fuels already complex forms of multi-disadvantage and creates new forms across all socio-economic groups.

"The interests of any one school or any group of schools must not override the common good; potential threat to the emotional well-being of our 10-11-year-olds is too costly a price for self-interest.

"The transfer test is unnecessary since transition to post-primary schools by criteria other than academic selection has been seamlessly enacted by most post-primary schools including a very significant number of former grammar schools. Indeed, some grammar schools did not fill their places for September whilst still using the transfer test system."

The CPA re-iterated the view that "systemic injustice and the tired apparatus of academic selection cannot and must not supersede the collective interests of all children at any time.

"In this highly problematic context its use would be reprehensible."