Examination of Witnesses (Questions 42
- 59)
MONDAY 28 NOVEMBER 2005
MR DONAL
FLANAGAN, MR
JIM CLARKE
AND MS
MARGARET MARTIN
Q42 Chairman: Could I welcome you,
Mr Flanagan, and your colleagues? As you will know, this series
of sessions comes about as a result of approaches which were made
to the committee initially by those who were very concerned about
the impact on the grammar schools of the Costello Report implementation.
They put forward a series of submissions which we felt we should
give them chance to expand upon in public session, but we also
felt that if we were going to that we would have a more wide-ranging
series of evidence-taking sessions, which is why you are here,
and we are seeing others this afternoon and others in Londonderry
tomorrow. We are very grateful to you for coming. Could I first
of all ask if you would like to introduce your two colleagues
and tell us what you all do, and then if you would like to make
an opening submission before we ask you questions you are most
welcome to do so.
Mr Flanagan: Thank you, Sir Patrick,
and thank you for the invitation for myself and my colleagues
to present ourselves this morning. My name is Donal Flanagan.
I am the Chief Executive of the Council for Catholic Maintained
Schools. On my right hand is Mr Jim Clarke, who is my Deputy Chief
Executive and has primary responsibility for standards within
our organisation, and on my left hand side is Ms Margaret Martin,
who is the Principal of St Catherine's College in Armagh. There
is a very interesting background to that particular college which
is perhaps, pound for pound, our highest achieving school in Northern
Ireland at this particular point in time.
Q43 Chairman: Is there anything you
would like to say by way of opening submission?
Mr Flanagan: Mr Clarke was the
person who was our representative on the Costello Report so I
will ask him to make an initial address and then we will pick
up the issues thereafter.
Mr Clarke: Good morning, Chairman.
I think it is important that if we are going to have this debate
that we see education where it sits within a whole range of public
services in Northern Ireland and beyond. If I could quote the
Secretary of State in his comments last week in relation to the
Review of Public Administration, he mirrored to some extent Tony
Blair's "Education, education, education". His opening
remarks were, "Education provides the cornerstone for the
future prosperity of the Northern Ireland economy and is the key
platform upon which to build long-term peace based on mutual respect."
I think that is a key issue when we come to look at education.
The Burns Report was entitled Education for the 21st Century
and I think it is very important that we take a look at what education
is about. It is not about defending schools, any particular institution,
nor any particular type of institution. It is about meeting the
needs of children, but children who are growing up in the 21st
century and whose needs are 21st century needs, not 20th century
needs. It needs to be a recognition that we are all individuals.
We learn differentially, we are motivated by different things,
we have different interests. We are also people who live in a
society which is changing and which requires us to have a whole
new range of skills for living and, particularly in Northern Ireland,
skills which allow us to live together. Thirdly, we can only live
prosperously in any community if we have an economic background
which is going to support that. Indeed, I suppose underpinning
much of what the Secretary of State and the ministers have said
of late is about Northern Ireland paying its way. In many respects
Northern Ireland pays its way more than people recognise in terms
of its educational contribution, not just to Northern Ireland
but specifically to GB, Europe and the rest of Ireland. The key
issue here is that we need a relationship between the economy,
our society and our education system and to date that is absent
from what we have. The purpose of the proposals for the 24 and
27 subjects which have come up was to provide for that motivating
interest in education so that we had an inclusive system which
allowed every child to find something in the education system
which would benefit them, not just as they moved through the education
system but as they moved into a social and economic life beyond.
We also felt it important that we looked to the economy which
exists in Northern Ireland. It is a fact that we produce very
high levels of students with very good A-level results but it
is also a fact that we do not have an economy to employ them.
We export 30% of our A-level plus students at the age of 18. Of
the 30% who go away only 28% ever return but we lose a further
13% of graduates.
Q44 Chairman: Is that the fault of
the education system?
Mr Clarke: It is the fault of
the economy. My point, Sir Patrick, is that we need to have a
mechanism to link our education system to our economy and we have
failed to do that. We have also a cultural issue in Northern Ireland,
which is the aspiration not just of the middle classes, that there
is safety in public services, and there is safety in the professions.
There is no groundswell for people to take risks in our economy
and indeed there may well be aspects of the economy which discourage
risk. The simple fact of life is that in a global economy we have
to find our niche. We have not found that niche yet, evidenced
by the fact that 67% of employees in Northern Ireland are linked
one way or another to the public service and we also have levels
of salary in the public service here which on average are better
than in the private sector. We have to redress the balance. We
have to have an education system which works for Northern Ireland
and for all the young people of Northern Ireland as they move
towards the future. The proposals in the Costello Report aimed
to do that. They were not defending any philosophical base to
education. They were about including everyone in order to get
the best possible advantage for education. Our beliefs are that
what we should be looking at here are the interests of the children
and the interests of Northern Ireland and our education system
should be part of the process of meeting those needs.
Q45 Chairman: Is that something that
you associate yourselves with? You are full supporters of the
Costello Report, are you?
Ms Martin: I also served on the
Post-Primary Review, known as the Costello Report. I would like
to come at it from a slightly different angle because I am the
practitioner here. It is very important that we hear not statistics
but the reality as it is on the ground. I would like to preface
all of that by saying that I am dismayed that we are not really
focusing on the young person. That is central to all of this.
Education is about young people and about systems that support
them. The Post-Primary Review, ie, the Costello Report, has done
something very significant and that is put the young person at
the centre of the system and allow the structures to work round
them. I come at it with the belief that the best way of proving
that you are right is to do it, and that has been our reality
in Armagh in St Catherine's College. We amalgamated a grammar
school and a secondary school in 1973. Just to give you a little
bit of information about that amalgamation, the students in the
secondary school which was amalgamated with the grammar school
never took any examinations, so we were coming at it from one
section of the school-going population who had never access to
any examinations. We have built a very successful school predicated
on the idea of high expectations for absolutely everyone. Our
agenda is one of equality, it is one of access and it is one of
inclusivity. Earlier this morning I listened to the debate about
social disadvantage, about young people who were deemed at 11
perhaps not to be academically able. That is not our reality.
We welcome everyone. We have a complete social, economic and ability
range in St Catherine's College.
Q46 Chairman: How many pupils do
you have?
Ms Martin: We have 1,050, so we
are a reasonably large school. We believe in equality, we believe
in access, and we believe in ensuring that the potential that
is in every single student is realised. I can give you examples
of statistical information as to how our level of achievement
has risen over the years, and earlier this morning I listened
to one of our colleagues here speak about the amalgamation of
two other schools in Armagh in the grammar sector. We out-perform
them every single year and yet we have students coming through
to us with varying levels of ability but they are all treated
equally and given a chance to perform. There is no sense of failure.
Our agenda is one of high expectation. It is of redressing any
sense of disadvantage that those young people have and ensuring
not only that they will achieve their potential but also that
they will go out and make a contribution to society, the contribution
that Jim has talked about. We will have 80-90% of our leavers
going into higher and further education and the remainder going
straight into employment. We are doing a significant job of work
for the 21st century, for the young people who come to us, and
they come to us from varying backgrounds. I will leave for your
perusal an article on St Catherine's College published in The
Guardian newspaper last year which commented on the ethos
of the school and on the fact that there is no religious or racial
prejudice even though our mix is right across the board.
Q47 Chairman: What is your mix?
Ms Martin: Basically we are in
the Catholic tradition but that does not prevent us accepting
people from other traditions, from other backgrounds, and in a
climate I suppose which has seen a very difficult 30 years in
Northern Ireland. We have to pay tribute to the work that our
schools have done as being the only safe haven for many of our
young people.
Q48 Chairman: But what is your mix?
Ms Martin: In terms of?
Q49 Chairman: In terms of percentages.
Mr Young said that although his was a non-denominational school
there were 400 Catholics there. Yours is a Catholic school and
we accept that but how many Protestants and others are there?
Ms Martin: We are in the Catholic
tradition so they would be in a significant minority.[1]
Q50 Chairman: 10%?
Ms Martin: Yes, possibly at 10%,
no more than that. We are multi-ethnic as well, so we have that
mix also. In addition to that we have an Irish-medium sector,
so we have students in our school who are educated through the
medium of Irish. That is another mix and that is very unusual
in the north of Ireland.
Q51 Lady Hermon: How about your staff?
How mixed are your staff?
Ms Martin: Our staff are very
mixed.
Q52 Chairman: What sort of mix?
Ms Martin: We have probably 75/25,
and in the north of Ireland that would be quite high.
Q53 Chairman: And you have been Principal
for how long?
Ms Martin: This is my 15th year
as Principal.
Q54 Chairman: So what you have been
describing to us is very much what you have created?
Ms Martin: And what I helped to
create. I have been Principal since 1991 but the school was established
in 1973 and I have been on staff for all of that time.
Q55 Chairman: For the whole period?
Ms Martin: As a young member of
staff, then as Deputy Principal and then as Principal, so I have
seen it grow from its infancy to the success that it enjoys today.
That bears testimony to something that lives.
Q56 Chairman: It bears testimony
to your leadership, if I may say so.
Ms Martin: In all of this, and
I think it needs to be said, leadership is vital. In whatever
way the education system goes here we are going to need good leaders
and we are going to have to face the challenges which have also
been mentioned this morning but which I think need to be spoken
of, and my colleagues will speak about those. That is a demographic
downturn and also a changing world for which we need a changing
curriculum.
Q57 Chairman: I want to get my colleagues
in but I know Mr Flanagan now wants to say something briefly.
Mr Flanagan: You have heard from
Jim who gave a global perspective and from Margaret a micro-perspective.
Can I briefly give a strategic perspective? When my organisation
was set up it was because of human rights concerns about the standards
within the Catholic-maintained sector and there were significant
differentials in terms of outcomes in the mid eighties to early
nineties. Early in 1990 my organisation set up a working party
to look at raising standards in education and from that working
party we clearly set out a strategy which we have followed over
the last 10 to 12 years. There were four elements to the strategy.
One was to make sure that the focus for all schools was primarily
on the raising of standards. We exercised that focus by beginning
to challenge weak management and poor leadership and it is a role
that we have managed fairly effectively. Secondly, it was to make
sure we got the very best leaders and teachers within our schools,
and we have a very rigorous and robust process to achieve that.
Thirdly, we wanted to ensure that our young people were educated
in an environment which was conducive to learning outcomes and,
fourthly, we identified in our working party report that selection
was a structural impediment to raising standards overall in Northern
Ireland, that it, if you like, condemned many children to a wasteland
in education. The impact of that is still resonant in many people
in Northern Ireland. For example, it would be referred to in some
quarters as a mortal sin of education. Almost within any few minutes
of talking to anybody in Northern Ireland we get round to the
business, "Did you pass or fail?", and that is a legacy
that runs right through our a system and a legacy which creates
differences and separates people in many ways. We have been working
on a process to remove selection over that period of time. We
have called upon the research; we have got the research. We have
called upon the Government to set up particular bodies to manage
this. We have got that and we have got the responses and we are
moving forward today to try to find solutions. In all of the conversation
this morning I heard a very gallant defence of grammar schools.
We are not here to diminish grammar schools in any way. What we
are trying to do is find a better way forward for all our young
people.
Q58 Chairman: Did you all hear this
morning's evidence?
Ms Martin: Yes.
Mr Flanagan: Yes.
Mr Clarke: Most of it, not all.
Chairman: Thank you. That is helpful
for my colleagues in asking questions because you know the base
from which we are coming, having heard Mr Young and his colleagues.
Q59 Meg Hillier: Would it be fair
to say that one of your missions is to improve rigour—you
mentioned leadership as well—in secondary schools? When
you talk about the important programme it is to invest special
rigour in the system? It is a yes or no answer.
Mr Flanagan: We have developed
a number of strategies and the first one was to challenge weak
management and poor leadership. It was evident in our sector and
over a period of 10 years there has been significant leadership
change in a number of schools. The outcome of that has been quite
significant in terms of standards overall. We have developed rigour
in terms of persuading the Department of Education to set up a
range of initiatives to support those schools that were having
difficulties and those initiatives have proved to be extremely
useful, but we have bought into it as well. The evidence would
be, particularly in our sector, that the level of improvement
within Catholic maintained schools is sustained for a much longer
time than other schools who have been involved in the programme
because we have clearly set ourselves up as a standards body.
Equally, in terms of our school plant there has been very significant
change. Some of our schools have been operating in mobile classrooms
for a long period of time and that change has enhanced and improved
the performance overall, not only for the children but also for
many of our teachers, incidentally, whose levels of attendance
overall have increased on the basis of a new school being built.
There are lots of interesting statistics around that. Critically,
we did recognise that selection was a structural impediment and
that is where your committee comes to this equation: why do so
many of our young people continue to achieve such low standards
overall?
1 (See note from witness, page Ev 70) Back
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