Professor John FitzGerald:

On that, I am very much guided by the work of Northern Ireland's leading academic economist, Vani Borooah, and a book by him and a colleague, C. Knox. He would be the highest ranked in the past decade in terms of academic rankings. His work has guided us in our work. Grammar schools are very successful. The bulk of the children who attend such schools go on to university, albeit many of them in Great Britain, but the problem is that the children who are selected into the secondary schools have very poor prospects, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Vani Borooah's research in that regard is very convincing. There has been much debate on integrating Catholic and Protestant schools but he argues strongly that until we have a system where children from disadvantaged Protestant or Catholic backgrounds have equal access to education, we will have this continuing major problem of early school leavers in Northern Ireland. It is striking that Northern Ireland stands out in that regard against any other British region. We can forget London because of the immigration. The other very good British region is Scotland, which has the lowest proportion of early school leavers and the highest proportion of graduates after London. It is about looking at models elsewhere to improve the educational system. The eleven-plus was got rid of but the problem was that there was no follow through on that so there is still selection into schools and that determines the outcome for children.