SINN Féin Foyle MLA Karen Mullan has said academic selection should be abandoned altogether as it perpetuates inequality and damages our education system
The party’s Education Spokesperson was commenting after bodies running unregulated transfer tests announce proposals to agree a common exam.
Former Education Minister John O’Dowd had previously scrapped selection tests in all schools but two bodies representing voluntary and maintained schools decided to introduce their own transfer tests to select students into year eight of grammar schools.
Karen Mullan said: “School transfer tests continue to have a hugely negative impact on our children and are a barrier to parental choice.
“Proponents of transfers tests are ignoring the overwhelming international and domestic evidence that academic selection perpetuates inequality and damages the education system.
“The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Equality Commission, Human Rights Commission, Children’s Commissioner, OECD, the trade union movement and the Catholic hierarchy have all called for an end to academic selection and these calls should be heeded.
“Rather than looking at ways of combining transfer tests, we should be encouraging those schools that have not yet moved away from academic selection to show leadership and end these damaging tests,” she added.
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