Friends of Grammar Schools

Publication date: 31 March 2009

Source: Belfast News Letter

The chairman of RBAI and head of the AQE said the system should work to suit all abilities by sending those with academical attributes to grammar schools and those with vocational skills to secondary schools.”Although we are called the Association for Quality Education we don’t only think a quality education is a grammar education,” he said.”Secondary schools cater for different kinds of students which society needs as much as academic ones.”We want schools to draw out of people the best that’s in them – some have academic capabilities and some have more practical and vocational capabilities, and this will also lead to good careers, very useful to society.”He said to tell children, who are more vocationally inclined, at the age of 11 “if you fail a particular test you are a failure in life”, is “not right”.”I come from a higher education background, and we (Northern Ireland] have more success in getting kids to university than any other part of the UK,” he said, “And the routes to

higher education are quite different. A lot of people don’t get the 11-plus, but go to a good secondary school and then go on to a further education college and on to university. It’s not a system that slams doors in the faces of people.”He said the purpose of an entrance exam was to “identify schools in which children can feel comfortable and succeed”.”For a child not academically inclined to be at an academic school is not desirable. We want to make children feel successful in terms of the talents they have, and we don’t all have all the same talents.”He slammed suggestions of deferring academic selection until the age of 14 saying there is not “substantial support in the grammar sector for that”.”It would equate a very major reorganisation of the whole school system, and probably quite an expensive one at that,” he said.”I don’t think it (11-plus] has served us all that badly.”