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7.45 pm
The issues involved are too complicated to be reduced to yes/no answers. The Assembly Education Committee acknowledged that when it advised the then Minister on consultation methods. This is sound advice. The reality is that there remains a wide diversity of views on this issue, and it is the Government’s duty to reach a decision in the best interests of all. That is what we have done. The Government should also give local politicians the opportunity finally to decide the matter if they are back at work by 24 November. It is in their hands. If it is the most important thing for the future of Northern Ireland, they will get the Assembly working, which is what they should be doing in the first place. There will be no excuse for buck-passing then.
Finally, I referred to suspensions and expulsions. From time to time, the normal sanctions for poor behaviour are not sufficient and it is necessary to suspend or, in some extreme cases, expel a pupil. Following consideration of responses to the consultation, the Government have decided to put on hold their plans for a common expelling authority. However, to secure greater consistency and fairness, all schools will be required to act in accordance with a common scheme for suspension and expulsion.
The
draft order also contains a number of minor amendments to the education
law, including amendments on behalf of the Department for Employment
and Learning and the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. I
have set out what the education
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The review has already gone on for over six years. I have lost count of the number of direct-rule Ministers who have been involved in this. Tony Worthington, my honourable friend in the other place, was one of the first Education Ministers after the Labour Government came to power in 1997. We cannot allow the uncertainty about the future to continue. Given what I have said, this is about much more than the narrow issue of academic selection. There is a knock-on effect when pupils change courses at 13 to 14, which sets the pattern for the rest of their courses, and there is the effect on primary schools. This is a package that includes the curriculum changes, the entitlement framework, and knocking off the narrow academic selection of the 11-plus.
To approve the amendment would be a retrograde step, so I hope that in due course the House will approve the Motion. I beg to move.
Moved, that the draft order laid before the House on 12 June be approved.—(Lord Rooker.)
Lord Rogan rose to move, as an amendment to the Motion, to leave out all the words after “That” and insert “this House declines to approve the Education (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 until the people of Northern Ireland have been given the opportunity to approve the proposals contained therein in a manner analogous to the procedures followed in regard to similar proposed changes in England”.
The
noble Lord said: My Lords, I am very proud to address your
Lordships’ House tonight as the product of a grammar school
education. I went to the Wallace High School, which is very much part
of the community in Lisburn, County Antrim. That school takes boys and
girls from every walk of life, and gives them a huge range of
opportunities. It is certainly not a case of money or resources. It is
about an educational
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In Northern Ireland, grammar schools represent an enduring excellence in our state education system. By every measure, Northern Ireland grammar schools out perform all other schools in the Kingdom—maintained, specialist, fee-paying or academy. Pupils at grammar schools achieve better GCSE and A-level results, and provide more added value, to use current education jargon. Northern Ireland’s grammar schools are truly vehicles for social mobility. The fact that I am standing here tonight and addressing this House is proof of that.
When Labour—hardly traditionally supportive of grammar schools—were elected in 1997, they chose in England a totally different approach from that which they are now pursuing in Northern Ireland. They put in place legislation that would allow parents to hold ballots on the future of grammar schools in their area. A few campaigns were started. None has succeeded. Some would argue that the cost of such campaigns could have been used to better educational purposes. But it seems intuitively correct that regions or communities should decide what is best for their children. That is truly local democracy.
Grammar schools in Northern Ireland, unlike in England, educate almost half of the children in the Province, yet the Government are committed to making it unlawful to select pupils on the grounds of academic ability. No matter that the public in Northern Ireland want to keep their grammar schools or that standards will fall. What is their crime? It is to be delivering the excellence in education and the sort of superb schooling that every parent wants for their children.
I believe that the future of our education system lies in the need to remove as far as humanly possible the baleful influence of politicians. Politicians, driven by ideology alone, should not be allowed to wipe away an entire school structure. Schools should succeed or fail on one basis alone—the quality of the education that they provide to our children.
Following the publication of the Burns report into post-primary education in Northern Ireland in October 2001, the then Minister of Education in the devolved Administration at Stormont, Martin McGuinness, set in train a very involved consultation process on its recommendations. When just over half the responses had been returned to the department, he declared:
The results were published in October 2002. The responses from some quarter of a million Northern Ireland households—which equate, proportionately speaking, to responses from some 5 million households in England—included those from 162,000 parents and 21,000 teachers. It showed that 57 per cent of households,10 July 2006 : Column 549
In December 2005, Ms Angela Smith, the then Minister with responsibility for education, published the draft order and simultaneously released the results of a consultation on admissions arrangements which was completed six months ago. While the figures do not appear in the document, the Minister admitted that at least 90 per cent of the responses to the consultation supported academic selection. The Government therefore have deliberately chosen to ignore the outcome of every public consultation and test of opinion on the issue over a period of more than three years and instead seeks to impose a policy against the will of the people.
At no time have the people of Northern Ireland had an opportunity to influence the pattern of education reform through their elected representatives. A majority of locally elected politicians oppose this order, which would not pass if our local Assembly were functioning. There are obviously different perspectives on why the Northern Ireland Assembly is not functioning, but it is safe to say that it would be inconceivable for a Government, having promised the people their say, to impose such huge changes in any other part of the United Kingdom against the will of the people and a majority of elected representatives in that area.
In England, the issue is handled with great sensitivity, as highlighted by a statement by the Department for Education and Skills. It states:
- “Where selection
exists, the government believes in local decision-making as to whether
it should continue and has put in place mechanisms to allow this to
happen”.
Moved, as an amendment to the Motion, to leave out all the words after “That” and insert “this House declines to approve the Education (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 until the people of Northern Ireland have been given the opportunity to approve the proposals contained therein in a manner analogous to the procedures followed in regard to similar proposed changes in England”.—(Lord Rogan.)
Lord
Glentoran: My Lords, I support
the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Rogan. First, I thank the
Minister for laying the Government’s case before us in his
customary manner—very clear and very precise. For once, on
Northern Ireland business, there are many things in the
Minister’s opening statement with which I do not agree. It is
rare that the noble
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During the progress of the Education and Inspections Bill, the Government have rightly declared and defended a commitment to supporting high standards in schools. We fully support them in this and hope that they will see it through to the end. They have already seen off an attempt from their Back Benches to abolish all academic selection by 2009, and instead, as has already been said, are giving parents the choice, through a ballot, over whether their school remains selective or not.
That is the right way to do it: to focus on the achievements of each individual school and its relationship with the community it serves. Why then are they not pursuing the same well-judged policy in Northern Ireland? This order will abolish academic selection forcibly, and yet it is being promoted by the same Government who voted against the Back Bench amendment—their own Back Bench amendment—I mentioned earlier in the Education and Inspections Bill. Although it has been heartening to see the Government rise above old political knee-jerk ideology in the education Bill, it is the more discouraging to see them return to the same discredited theories when they legislate for Northern Ireland.
Why is this the case? The same arguments work equally well, if not better, when related to Northern Ireland. The schools system in Northern Ireland has shown itself more than capable of producing not just equal results to England and Wales, but better. In 2003-04 some 60 per cent of all pupils in Northern Ireland achieved five or more GCSEs at grade C or above. The system is clearly capable of maintaining those educational high standards. In another place, the Government explained that they are worried not only about allowing capable students to excel themselves, but are also concerned to ensure that no child is allowed to drop out of the system in the pursuit of higher grades for others. This is something that must always be guarded against, and yet the figures show that here again the Northern Irish system is better at doing this than that of England and Wales. Some 3 per cent of Northern Irish children fail to get any GCSEs above grade C, and while that is of course still too high, it is better than the 4 per cent in England and the worrying 7 per cent in Wales.
The
existing system in Northern Ireland does not fail children, either in
providing a good education for as many as possible or in allowing
students to achieve a high standard. Why are we risking the system with
summary execution? If the Government are really concerned about the 3
per cent of children who fail to get any GCSEs above grade C, would
they not be
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We know that for years children in many families in Northern Ireland have been deprived of a proper and fair education, and those standards have been poor with a high rate of illiteracy, especially in the Shankill Road. But those of us who have been there—and I have accompanied the noble Baroness, Lady Blood, and others in the past to see the schools on the so-called Peace Line—have seen the appalling challenge parents face in trying to get their children to school at all, let alone that of teachers trying to teach the children. For more than 20 to 30 years they did not know whether a bomb was going to come through the window. That is why there is a divide in the standard of education in Northern Ireland. That is why so many children in the poorer areas have not had a chance to receive a fine education. We tried very hard to put a part of the University of Ulster in Springvale at the back of the Shankill, and I backed that proposal hard with the millennium group and others. The Government refused it: not enough money.
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