Sandra Overend MLA, Ulster Unionist Party spokesperson on education, has proposed a motion in the Assembly calling for a resolution of the impasse surrounding post primary school transfer. She was commenting in the week where the first of the privatised transfer tests used by Grammar schools is being held.
Speaking in the debate, Mrs Overend said:
“Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. A vacuum in terms of the process to transfer children from primary schools to secondary schools was created when, following the last official 11+ exam in 2008, nothing was put in its place. The vacuum which was left when the 11+ was scrapped has been filled with 2 non state exam systems.
“It was inevitable that in the absence of an ordered and thought out method of transferring pupils, tests unregulated by the Department of Education would be devised.
“Whilst, the AQE and GL tests are professionally organised and are a response to the parental demand for the continuance of academically selective Grammar school education, what we have now, is not what we as legislators should want for our children. In the past the old 11+ exam received heavy criticism for putting 10 and 11 year olds under undue pressure, but just look at the situation we find ourselves in now.
“Today in 2015 a system much more akin to social selection is being entrenched whereby we have better off families paying for tuition and coaching for the AQE and or GL tests. A common complaint about the 11+ was that children with better off parents were coached for the test. If there was an element of truth in that 10 years ago, it is even more true today. It looks like private tuition is becoming become a major growth sector in the local economy.
“The pressure the ‘new’ transfer test system is putting primary schools under- especially Year 6 and Year 7 teachers is not fair. It is also not fair for the Minister to authorise warning letters to be sent to some primary schools accusing them of, horror of horrors, helping prepare their pupils for the tests.
“These primary schools and their Principals and teachers are under enough pressure from the expectations of parents at the school gate. Again, it is a situation not of their own making: It is a situation borne of political failure.
“In our motion, the Ulster Unionist Party is not being prescriptive about how the 11+ impasse should be ended. We believe that academic selection should be part of post primary transfer, but we also believe that the current situation is not what we want to see set in stone. We want a solution based on teacher guidance and continual assessment at primary level.
“The issue has not and will not go away. It must be revisited and resolved. The future of our children demands it.”