Ulster Unionist Party education spokesperson Sandra Overend has said that the draft statement on key inequalities published by the Equality Commission is an indictment of years of Sinn Fein occupancy at the Department of Education.

Mrs Overend said:

“The Equality Commission Report repeats and reiterates several recent academic reports and touches on a range of issues which relate to categories identified in Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act for equality monitoring purposes.

“The headline is that inequality in educational outcomes have become worse in Northern Ireland in general, and that boys from a working class Protestant background remain a particular problem with regards to underachievement.

“It is therefore remarkable that the statement issued by the Minister in response to the report does not mention this issue at all.  Instead he has cherry picked two measures where numerically more Catholics on free school meals and from lower income backgrounds than Protestants are underachieving. 

“The repeatedly identified problem of comparative working class Protestant under achievement is not going to be tackled if it is not  recognised by the Minister of Education in the first place.

“Simply blaming the continued existence of academic selection is also a superficial and inadequate response from the Minister.  The fact is that under Sinn Fein, educational inequality has increased.  This has happened at the same time as the transfer test has been effectively privatised, after the old 11+ was scrapped with nothing to replace it.  The problem was the exam, not the principle of academic selection.

“The Ulster Unionist Party position on the unofficial tests is that they are the inevitable consequence of the arbitrary removal of the official 11+ without a replacement system in place. The current situation is not what we want to see in the longer term. We want a single transfer test to continue for a two year period, to give a breathing space for politicians and educationalists to hammer out an agreed and fair method of post primary transfer.

“We have had reports in the past, but they have either not been acted upon, or initiatives that had the potential to be transformational have been discontinued.  An example is the literacy and numeracy signature programme which provided extra teaching help to struggling schools.  This was working, and it is an absolute disgrace that the Minister cut the programme citing lack of funds, at the same time as he has been willing and able to finance Irish Medium vanity projects.”