O’Conall Street

Carmel Hanna MLA has asked me to chair a public debate on the future of selection in education here in Northern Ireland tonight. It’s all happening  at the Wellington Park Hotel in Belfast at 7.30pm. All are welcome.

All the four major parties will be represented and I am looking forward to what I know will be a constructive debate as there can be no doubt that parents and teachers across the North want some urgent indication from the Minister, Caitriona Ruane, as to how best to proceed.  To my knowledge this will be the first debate between the ‘big four’ since the Minister tabled her recent proposals to the Executive. It could not come a day too soon. As it is tens of thousands of children are facing into educational limbo, learning through a revised curriculum which is not designed to prepare them for the eleven plus and wondering whether they might have to sit independent exams set arbitrarily by their second level school of choice.

Meantime the gap between the high achievers and the rest continues to grow here and the demographic realities are casting a shadow over many schools futures.

Nelson McCausland (DUP), John O’Dowd (SF), Basil McCrea (UUP) and Dolores Kelly (SDLP) will be guaranteed an attentive audience. I hope they come with solutions for the parents of Belfast.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 10:22 am and is filed under Business, Current Affairs, Good Friday Agreement 10 years on, Politics, Public Affairs, Public Relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.