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I meant to comment on this last month but travel kept me away from the PC:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article7026852.ece
This was a fascinating article on February’s Sutton Trust Report and I was actually genuinely delighted to see an echo of a few of my suggestions made back in October 2009 in a article on the long running post Primary School selection process in Northern Ireland:
http://www.shanepcarmichael.com/2009/11/selection-its-only-natural/
(check under “some humble suggestions”)
More and more we are coming to understand that education is a sophisticated and much more social process than any narrow debate in NI about post primary education selection or means of selection would have us believe. Consistently on this blog I have maintained that while some form of streaming or selection is a must in any mature and inclusive education system, our real focus should be on primary education; on ensuring our administration of that education is innovative and inclusive enough to support pupils from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds and encouraging an ethos of and commitment to ”concerted cultivation” of our young children among parents and local communities. We are currently failing our young people during their most formative years.
NI has wasted over a year wrangling on the narrow issue of post primary selection. It’s time someone started to address the more formative, fundamental – and root cause – issues associated with Primary Education, otherwise the means of post Primary selection will be entirely a moot point. There are some easy ‘quick win’ fixes to this challenge as I and the Sutton Report suggest while we understand how to cultivate that wider community and parental ability to contribute to the life-long success of our most precious resources.
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