Examination of Witnesses (Questions 112
- 119)
MONDAY 28 NOVEMBER 2005
MS MAGGIE
ANDREWS, MR
SAMMY DOUGLAS,
MR JACKIE
REDPATH AND
MR JOHN
MCVICAR
Q112 Chairman: May I welcome you.
It is very good of you to come and give evidence which, as you
will appreciate, is being taken down because this is a public
session. You will receive the transcript and be able to make any
corrections, should there be any inaccuracies, and the evidence
will in due course be published. Just to set the background to
today's sessions, we received a joint letter about six weeks ago
from the Headmaster of the Belfast Royal Academy and a number
of his colleagues asking us if we would consider their submission
and be prepared to see them. We felt it was right, as they were
saying some important things, that they should indeed be seen
and listened to, but we equally felt it right that if we were
going to do that we should expand the session and invite other
potentially interested parties. This morning we saw the Council
for Catholic Maintained Schools, we are seeing you and the Heads
and a former Head of Belfast maintained schools this afternoon,
and we are seeing some people in Londonderry tomorrow. Ms Andrews,
would you introduce your colleagues and, if you wish to make an
opening statement before we begin asking questions, that would
be entirely in order?
Ms Andrews: It looks like I have
been nominated temporarily.
Q113 Chairman: I do not quarrel over
leadership. That is what we do in Parliament!
Mr Redpath: Sir Patrick, I have
spent most of my life deferring to Maggie, so I am happy to do
so again and ask her to introduce us.
Ms Andrews: This is Sammy Douglas
from East Belfast Partnership. I work as Partnership Manager with
East Belfast Partnership. Jackie Redpath is from Greater Shankill
Partnership and John McVicar from Greater Shankill Community Council.
Q114 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed. We are aware of the fact that you do very valuable work.
Do you wish to say anything by way of introduction before we ask
questions?
Mr Redpath: We would like to if
you would allow us the opportunity to do so. On this day it is
good to see somebody called Gordon Banks here, given the events
of the last weekend. We are here to put a very particular point
of view to this committee today because we know you are hearing
from the good and the great and from various lobbies. We are here
at your invite, and we thank you for that, to say to you that
while Northern Ireland has among the very best academic performance
in the whole of the United Kingdom it also has some of the worst
and it is that which we would like to address today. It has among
the worst performers in terms of the achievement of five GCSEs
at grade C or above and in other figures we have given you. We
are talking about a phenomenon that is common throughout the United
Kingdom, which is a working class phenomenon. We want to emphasise
that this is not coming from some sort of sectarian point of view
but we believe the figures we have submitted to you confirm that
not only have we the best figures in the UK and the worst figures
in the UK, but that the worst of the worst are amongst the Protestant
working class communities and our focus is particularly here on
Belfast. I believe it is wider but we are focusing on Belfast.
In terms of an analysis of why this has happened (and I do not
want to go into the statistics), our view would be that we have
an issue in terms of the value placed on education in working
class Protestant communities as distinct from working class Catholic
communities. That analysis we would say comes historically from
the communities that we come from in East Belfast and the Shankill,
that in the past people from those communities had access to skilled
trades in terms of the shipyard or engineering or wherever. That
is a number of generations ago and as a result you did not actually
need the qualifications to get into those trades. If we take it
as read that we have a particular and peculiar problem in the
Protestant working class communities, and our passion lies in
dealing with this in terms of education, and if we take it that
there is some analysis of why this has happened, what we need
to do is move on to the solutions. The big issues that your committee
is addressing in terms of the reorganisation of education post-Costello
and all of that are of vital importance. Issues around selection
at 11 are of vital importance. What we fear is that those issues
will bypass the particular and peculiar problem that we face in
Protestant working class communities. We also fear that submissions
that you may receive will be from a very professional educational
corner and it is quite right that the schools and school principals
and those that are in the whole educational arena will present
to you solutions to our overall problems from their point of view.
What we want to say is that, unless it is recognised that parents
are a child's first educator (and quite possibly a child's best
educator), in other words, unless more than lip service is paid
to that and our communities can rally round in terms of having
a campaign for education that will involve parents, grandparents
and the whole community in support of our children and our schools,
then the schools on their own will not be able to resolve the
problems that we face. It is for that partnership and resourcing
that partnership in a real way that we are here to argue. I will
finish by saying that this was recognised by a former Minister
of Education here three years ago, Jane Kennedy, who recognised
the peculiar problems that we have in Protestant working class
communities, when she established in an announcement the creation
of education action zones which, if you take out how they have
happened in Great Britain and look at what they might be, would
have put a line round certain areas that we are talking about,
enabling us to break the formula that has applied throughout Northern
Ireland to middle class areas as well as to working class areas,
and enabling us to do certain things within that. Those education
action zones we have heard no more about. They were government
policy, they were announced, they were to happen. We would like
to know where they have gone because the four of us sitting here
feel that they may have provided a context in which we could have
gone on to resolve the particular and (I repeat again) peculiar
problems that we have in Protestant working class communities.
We need to address this for the health of society here. The health
of one community is the health of all communities and that is
why we are challenged about this.
Q115 Chairman: Thank you for that.
Thank you also for what you do. I appreciate that the work you
do is both difficult and important. It is appreciated and I want
you all to know that. Do any of your colleagues wish to add anything
to that submission?
Mr Douglas: It is very hard to
be a parent, particularly in these areas where we are experiencing
these difficulties. Let me give you one example that would copper-fasten
what my colleague Jackie has said in terms of not valuing education.
I left school without any qualifications whatsoever. In 1990 I
decided to embark on an access degree course. My father, who worked
in a shipyard all his life, said to me, "What are you doing
going to university at your age?", because for him and his
generation people went into apprenticeships for skilled jobs so
they did not need those sorts of qualifications. The other thing
to emphasise is that we are not educationalists. We are people
who work in the community trying to do the best we can, but I
agree with Jackie that this has to be a partnership arrangement
between all the stakeholders.
Q116 Chairman: Did you go?
Mr Douglas: Yes, I did.
Q117 Chairman: And did you get your
degree?
Mr Douglas: I am actually doing
my Masters degree at the moment before I retire.
Q118 Chairman: Well done! That is
excellent. That is very heartening news. Before I call Meg Hillier
to start the questioning can I clarify one point? Jane Kennedy
promised you education action zones, speaking in her role as Minister
for Education here, and that was three years ago, 2002?
Mr Douglas: Three and a half years
ago.
Q119 Chairman: And nothing has happened
at all?
Mr Redpath: We suspect not. We
would like to know.
Chairman: We will certainly be asking
her successor, I promise you that, and the Clerk is making a note
even as I speak. That will be one of the very first questions
we will ask Angela Smith when she comes before us. You are welcome
to come and listen to the evidence if you want to but you will
be sent a copy of the transcript, I promise you.
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