Concern over 11-plus replacement

A primary school principal has expressed concern about the new common entrance exams to replace the 11-plus.

Primary schools across Northern Ireland are receiving details of the test to start from the autumn of next year.

The Association for Quality Education, which represents 30 grammar schools, has sent out information packs detailing how the exam would work.

Ernie Long principal of Orangefield Primary in Belfast said there could be tutoring implications.

"I can understand what AQE is trying to achieve but I think that there could be a downside to it - to the children," he said. "I'm just wondering the effect it will have on the materials that are going to be produced the effect it will have on tutoring in Year Seven, the effect it will have on children themselves."

Sinn Féin Education Spokesperson John O'Dowd said the plans offered "nothing to those who face educational disadvantage".

"This unelected, unrepresentative and unaccountable group should not be allowed to interfere with the teaching of the new curriculum in our primary schools in pursuit of their own elitist agenda," he said.

The DUP's Mervyn Storey said the publication of the plan was "proof-positive of the reality that academic selection is here to stay".

"The fact that they have done this and the corresponding inability of the Education Minister to prevent them from doing so, serves as a testimony to the fact that the DUP negotiated and ensured the preservation of academic selection in Northern Ireland," he said.

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