Ulster Unionist MLA Danny Kinahan, vice chair of the Stormont education committee, has called on the Education Minister to stop promoting the flawed information that Grammar schools are to blame for all the failings of our education system and to sit down with all interested parties to agree a long term way forward for the local education system.

 Mr Kinahan said:

 “In the past two weeks we have seen repeated evidence that the Education Minister John O’Dowd is driven by an illogical loathing of the success of Grammar schools, rather than by any properly thought out plan or policy. In last week’s late night Stormont adjournment debate on the Le Chiele project in Londonderry, he resolutely ignored my calls for a joint project to work out how we deal with selection and the future of grammar schools.

 ‘In response to a question on as to what needed to be done to persuade him to create a sectoral body for Grammar schools, he merely replied he has no plans for such a body. This is the clearest possible indication that John O’Dowd has no intention whatsoever of doing anything to assist the Grammar sector. His mind is closed and we cannot let this education bill go ahead. The Minister himself really does seem to be on a one man mission to destroy our Grammar schools.

 ‘The Ulster Unionist Party believes that change must occur and that we must find a way of retaining the best aspects of the Grammar schools with the best of our secondary schools and ensure that the entire system works in concert to deliver for everybody. Change must happen but not in the kamikaze way that this minister wants to proceed and certainly not as the result of an ideological purge of the Grammar system.”