SDLP Education Debate

Thanks to Mr Ulster for recording the Education Debate at the SDLP Conference on Friday Evening. Here is my contribution.

20100205 SDLP 2 Conall McDevitt MLA from Mr Ulster on Vimeo.

The Witch Doctor and I

I met the local Witch Doctor yeaterday. About my own age and sporting a goatie beard and a hooked nose, he looked the part in his hide sash and sea shell crown. He was also the man with the best house in the ‘village’ – more like a townland of subsistance farms.

He was our last visit on a long walk over three or four miles with two of the school’s teachers, John Baptiste and Rabin. Both in their early twenties, they are desperate to learn from us as we are from them. Our conversations have covered everything from subsistance farming to arranged marriages. The texture of snow has come up, as has the abundance of herbs on our emerald isle. I think I might ask them later if they have ever seen the sea.

The first farmer we met was an imposing man in his early fifties who ground out a living on his two acres to support his seven children and now supports several of his grand children. He considers himself an old man with only the hope of a better life for his offspring to keep him working. His house is a mud and waddle shack with three tiny rooms and a mud floor. Home to twelve people.

Then there was the lady in her fifties who has seven children to care for. All grandchildren born out of wedlock and now her responsibility. Her son’s are now all married but the illegitimate children do not become part of their households. So this widow has to toil hard day in day out to try and give these ‘accidental’ kids some sort of schooling.

This is a man’s country. Women are always some man’s ‘property’ to be married off or to breed heirs. They work harder then the men and rarely get educated beyond primary. Bottom line is a woman is worth more at home then she is in school or so the men believe.

Tinted windows, a proper roof and a good motorbike greet you at the Witch Doctors. This man is doing very nicely indeed. Better then anyone else I met. Better then the barber, the school teachers or the brick-makers with their open air kiln. He is the top dog in this dirt poor place.

I did not come here to prothletise, but there is something not right about a culture of community control based on fear and superstition. In recent years hundreds of children have been dissapeared because local Witch Doctors decreed they were harbouring evil spirits. I have no evidence the man I met yesterday is involved in such criminal activity but in his own way he is certainly creaming the community of cash they can ill afford to part with. Education at least teaches the children that is they and not the spirits who are masters of their own destiny. It will take generations to shake this society of its superstitions and empower its people to take control of their futures.

Education got Ireland off her knees after the famine. The only thing that makes you hopeful for our little community is that its boys and girls will seize the opportunity of enlightenment and take control. Change comes one person at a time and although our little school is but a pebble dropped in a vast ocean of need, maybe as Robert Kennedy once said each pebble dropped in the water starts a ripple which travelling across the great sea of opportunity becomes a huge tidal wave of change.

As for the local Witch Doctor, his big house and pipe full of quality dope, I’d enjoy the good times while they last.

Education, again

The teachers unions are convening a meeting of primary school heads today to discuss the ongoing crisis in education. The unions like the SDLP and Sinn Fein are opposed to selection. Many hope they will use their influence to try and find a compromise which is capable of commanding cross community support.

Yesterday the SDLP accused the DUP and Sinn Fein of playing politics with selection rather then seeking a solution based on best international practice and some political compromise. In fact the party has taken out an ad in today’s Irish News highlighting its position.

The true impact of the deregulated system which the Minister has plunged this region into will not be known for several months but many teachers fear chaos in the autumn.

As a parent and someone who has an interest in effective government I simply cannot understand why more efforts are not being made to try and break this deadlock.

Some moths ago a debate started over a series of principles which might form the basis of a way forward. I have reproduced them below. What is striking about this conversation is how little desire there has been from within political unionism or SF to debate these in a serious way.

• Agreement that 14 is a better age at which to exercise pupil and parental choice about possible transfer for the final four years of education;
• Agreement to further develop thinking about a collegiate based system;
• Agreement to guarantee parents and pupils access faith based education;
  Agreement that an early intervention strategy should be developed to support children from deprived socio economic backgrounds during primary and early second level education;
• Agreement to consider and draw on international best practice when developing these proposals;
• Agreement that the system must be based on a commitment to social equity and educational excellence at every level;
• Agreement that the change programme would be rolled out over at least a five year period, allowing up to ten years for any institutional realignments to take place;
• Agreement that an interim regulated system should be introduced immediately.

Education, again

Groannnnnnn. He’s not going to write about education again. What with all the job losses, the fact that the PM is about to pull the rug from under the DUP-SF coalition’s budget and the Garda refusing to leave the vaults of the Anglo Irish Bank surely there are more important things to write about then education.

Maybe so, but on O’Conall street there is a sense that this issue above all is casting a dark shadow over power sharing and if not tackled will create a more long term and serious crisis then the recession.

It is well accepted that the Minister for Education , Caitriona Ruane, is presiding over a very serious crisis. There is also little debate about the fact that she and her party must bear the lion’s share of responsibility for this situation.

Every day the papers bring us more news of trade union rebellions, ministerial retrenchment and DUP intransigence.

Over on Education for All, a blog I am involved with, people from both sides of the divide have been debating a series of principles which could break the deadlock and map a way forward.  I posted them about two weeks ago wondering if they could form the basis of an informed discussion between the UUP and the SDLP on the way forward.

If the middle ground does want to show some leadership on this issue, now is the time to act.

Education, education, education

Over on Education for All there is good debate about the way forward following Minister Ruane’s decision to deregulate the transfer system.

Professor Tony Gallagher of QUB posted yesterday on the pros and cons of selection at 14. C Martin has also written about her experience as teacher in an all ability school in England. There is a really good piece about IQ also as well as a summary of recent OECD research on equity in education by Dr Simon Field who is from Belfast originally.

Last week I suggested a series of principles which could form the basis of a discussion between the UUP and the SDLP on the way forward. They are:

• Agreement that 14 is a better age at which to exercise pupil and parental choice about possible transfer for the final four years of education;
• Agreement to further develop thinking about a collegiate based system;
• Agreement to guarantee parents and pupils access faith based education;
• Agreement that an early intervention strategy should be developed to support children from deprived socio economic backgrounds during primary and early second level education;
• Agreement to consider and draw on international best practice when developing these proposals;
• Agreement that the system must be based on a commitment to social equity and educational excellence at every level;
• Agreement that the change programme would be rolled out over at least a five year period, allowing up to ten years for any institutional realignments to take place;
• Agreement that an interim regulated system should be introduced immediately.

We urgently need some political leadership on this issue. As it stands we are in the worst possible situation where money really will talk with the grammar sector catering for the aflunet classes and the secondary schools for the rest.

Talk about a race to the bottom.

Sinn Fein gun to 60,000 heads

Sinn Fein has indicated that there are ten days to break the deadlock around the replacement of the 11 plus. 60,000 P5 and P6 parents now have a metaphorical gun pointing at their heads yet nobody is any clearer about what the basis for agreement might be and how it can be achieved before the Christmas recess when it has not be possible in eighteen months.

Mervyn Storey (DUP) and John O’Dowd (SF) talked politics at each other for ten minutes on today’s BBC NI Politics Show. There was not a single exchange on policy nor any discussion on the Church Leaders Initiative for example. John O’Dowd’s suggested finding a resolution on this issue was primarily a matter for political negotiation between the DUP and SF.  

There is a lingering question in my mind however. How many people would trust these two parties with their children’s future?

Parents, teachers, trade unions, the business community and the churches are looking for real political leadership and an honest discussion on this issue. Surely presents an opportunity for the UUP, SDLP  and Alliance to agree a common position on this issue and show us all that consensus can be reached when the interests of children are put first.

As it stands it looks awfully like we are heading for a race to the bottom.