Dr. Seamus McGuinness:

Effectively, how academic selection works is that at the age of 11, some 30% of young people are segmented into the grammar school system and 70% into the non-grammar school system. The educational system works very well for that 30% of students, but perhaps not so well for a significant proportion of the other 70%. More filtering out happens at the age of 16. This occurs even in good schools because school rankings are also important and schools tend to retain those students who are most likely to perform at A-level. This means young people are filtered out at this point as well.

The process of academic selection then consists of this filtering process. It is the context of this filtering process, especially at a very young age, where the problems begin. Our international research has shown there are much better outcomes for everyone if students are taught in mixed-ability classes. This is pretty much the effect evident from the international literature on this issue. Obviously, a stigmatisation process also goes on for those children who do not pass the transfer test and there is also an issue with self-esteem. Equally, there is an issue with social equality, where children from working-class backgrounds are less able even to participate in that system. They are being excluded from the outset because of the initial upfront cost associated with private tuition. It is important to say that in our study looking at North-South educational differences, we spoke to educationalists, policymakers and people involved in both sections, in respect of the Catholic and non-maintained sectors. We found no one who was supportive of academic selection as a process.

We were told the parents themselves object. Those who can afford to participate in the system feel they have to do so in the best interests of their children. When we see significant rates of early school leaving, up to three times higher, in the North and when you break that statistic down, you will find it will encompass those in the social classes who have been excluded from the academic selection system in the first place. The drag of coming from a lower-income family is much higher in terms of subsequent educational attainment and therefore subsequent future income, and in the North this rate is again a multiple of that in the South.

Other factors are also in play in terms of policies to combat social inequalities in school, but it is hard to conclude that the maintenance of academic selection is anything but damaging, and particularly for children from lower socioeconomic groups. It is very difficult to find any argument in favour of maintaining this system. It has gone from the British system. It is quite an archaic approach and the North is one of the last areas that has this type of system in operation.