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Minister with a mission
As the time for key Executive decisions on education runs out, Chris Moffat interviews Caitriona Ruane on her policies on selction, school transport, joint ‘learning communities’ and the religious ethos of schools.
Whatever your point of view, you have to acknowledge that with her record as a human rights campaigner, equality and fairness have to be the priority for Caitriona Ruane. After a career of human rights activism in Nicaragua, Dublin and West Belfast, how could she not conclude that academic selection is ‘wrong, unfair and unjust’? That Sinn Fein plumped for the Education Ministry again, was due, Caitriona says, ‘to a big debate in the party about human rights and equality legislation. We knew DUP were going to choose finance because they were public about that. I was very happy that we chose education. What we found as a party was that you can have the ideals of human rights but sometimes people find it very hard to understand how you put the ideas into practice.’
Ruane’s enthusiasm and determinism and obvious relish in her job as Minister of Education, have added a whole new dimension to Northern Ireland’s gloomy political climate. She has galvanised 11 plus abolitionists. Grammar school lobbyists seem to be in disarray. Association for Quality Education (AQE) president, Sir Ken Bloomfield claims that 31 grammar schools have signed up for an ‘unregulated’ common entrance exam. But as Caitriona points out, entrance tests are nonsense when so many grammars are already failing to fill their quotas - or soon will be.
The Minister’s vision is not just about human rights and equality. ‘It is about an education system where the child is at the centre, not the institutions. It is created round children and children’s needs…whether it is your special needs policy or your preschool policy, your sports, your language policy. It is also about making education as stimulating, as interactive and as interesting as possible.’
When it comes to getting her way, Ruane has a strong sense of where she is going. You can positively sense the bristling indignation and frustration of her Unionist opponents in Hansard transcriptions of the Stormont Education Committee meetings. She can be as inflexible or as flexible – or imprecise - as the occasion requires. ‘I don’t agree with selection and I want an end of selection… but choosing different academic pathways, that’s different, it’s based on informed choice of parents, children and teachers, not selecting on ability and saying you are not good enough to do this so you can’t go there.’
So, in other words, does she support some kind of differentiation - bi-laterals, perhaps? ‘There is no one size fits all. But if there is a bi-lateral, such as the new school in Strabane, Holy Cross (an amalgamation of three schools) and if every child is going to get into that school, tell me why you need a bi-lateral after selection is ended?’
To get rid of selection Ruane needs a cross-community vote in the Assembly. After ‘long months of listening to all the stakeholders’ and in the ‘interests of consensus’ she has proposed an interim compromise based on the phased ending of selection. The Department would provide a test that will be sat in the preferred post primary school. ‘This would allow selection of 50% on the basis of academic criteria the first year, 30% the second year, and 20 % the third year and then selection would end from 2013 for good.’
But doesn’t this give credence to a failed concept and hopes of further compromises down the line? No, because if there is legislative agreement for this compromise, it will be illegal to do any other tests. If ourselves and the DUP and the UUP don’t reach agreement, the other option will be to issue guidance on a menu of non-selective admissions criteria. I am prepared to do this.’
Will these criteria have the status of law? ‘No, but schools would have to have ‘due regard to them’ and the department will not be providing the tests, nor funding them, nor funding any appeals or challenges because of equality or discrimination legislation we have here in the North of Ireland.’ So, is she going to be quite tough? ‘Well, I believe firmly in the system I am putting in place and I want to put in place a fair system’.
The system which the Minister is putting in place is not easy for parents to comprehend. She wants to ‘encourage schools to be able to provide young people with the range of choices at ages 14 and 16 that they need and deserve. We want a system that brings schools together in learning communities defined by their ability to offer all young people in their area access to the entitlement framework of 24 subjects at 14+ and 27 at post-sixteen. In support of this, planning of the estate and provision will be done on an area basis.’
Some necessarily sceptical questions seem to be in order. The Entitlement Framework might not be deliverable on a single school basis, but only on an area basis. How, from point of view of parents and pupils, is that going to happen fairly? How is equality going to be delivered at this point?
‘Well, but if you go to many of the post-primary schools in the North you will see that many of them are already collaborating to provide their statutory number of subjects. We are incentivising this collaboration. We’ve got thirty-one learning partnerships throughout the Northern Ireland. I am going about meeting the principals in those learning partnerships. In Limavady some children are doing subjects in the Catholic secondary, some are doing some in the Protestant grammar (the voluntary grammar) and some in the controlled high school.’
How many students will end up learning in multi-site campuses or ‘learning communities’? Is it just about students, or will it affect teachers, too? ‘Well, yes. For instance, in a subject like French, schools can go into joint timetabling. You might say, instead of us having four French teachers in this area, let’s do joint timetables. There’s huge interest in the Spanish language but often we don’t have the teachers. So let’s have a couple of French and a couple of Spanish teachers. And instead of the children moving let’s have the teachers moving. This is already starting to happen. Schools in Belfast (without naming them, grammar and secondary) are doing joint timetables...’
Has Ruane I wonder, run this by the union reps? It seems odd that no one anticipates any Fair Employment issues, perhaps for part time teachers with family responsibilities. But Caitriona rushes on.
‘…In the Newry area, there’s a very good initiative developed between the boys and the girls post-primary. They are doing engineering together at 14 in the further education college. What you are doing is introducing young people into a different environment, a different type of teaching, and it is ‘hands on’, practical engineering. The other interesting thing about it: no homework. Everything is done within the classroom at college. So you can see how that advantages the disadvantaged, because they are not going home saying they’re not doing the homework. It's all done in the classroom.’
OK, so ‘tech link’ courses have been around for some while. What makes a ‘learning community’ different? ‘What I don’t want and what I don’t think is right, is that our children and young people are passing each other morning and night and by-passing local talent and villages. I want, by and large, for young people to go to their nearest community school, that you keep families together, and you keep communities together.’
An upfront question seems called for. Are you going to cut funding for school transport to pay for these learning partnerships?
‘Well, we are in the middle of changing a lot of our different policies. School transport currently is costing £80m. Now, you think about what you could do with half of that money! I joke sometimes in the Assembly, but I say I could do more for congestion and climate change by altering my transport policies than Sammy Wilson and Conor Murphy could do together! (Conor’s the RD and Sammy’s the Environment.) It is not a one size fits all, but it will facilitate the learning communities.
This sounds a bit like the dreaded postcode lottery. Are you sure everyone wants to stay together in learning communities this way? ‘Over a period of time they will. In Strabane yesterday someone came up to me yesterday and said, “My children were going to school in Omagh; but from now on they are going to school is Strabane”.’
Some massive administrative changes are going to be needed to facilitate these policies. Two complex reform bills are waiting in the wings. The first is to establish the Education and Skills Authority (ESA) and rationalize educational administration by bringing the nine different bodies (ELBs, CCMS, NICIE, CCEA, CnaG and RTU) under one roof. The second is to reform and streamline school management and embed ‘area planning’. It will release £20m from frontline services, but the change itself will need an extra £50m. Is the Minister sure the parties and other stakeholders will co-operate to get these bills through Stormont?
Ruane says: ‘The Educational Skills Authority is one of the most fundamental pieces of legislation on education. The first stage last week, it went to the executive and it got support. There were enough people in the executive to block it if they wanted to, but they didn’t. The second stage of the bill I am introducing next week.’
But there have been rumours that the churches fear their ethos will be diluted. The Transferor’s Representative Council has expressed worries about their historic relationship with controlled schools. And at one point CCMS, which has done so much to raise standards in maintained schools, was calling for parishioners to write letters of protest. Initially DENI did not think the plan warranted Section 75 Equality screening. But Ruane is now master of her brief and has met with all the churches. ‘The churches are supporting these changes. The Catholic Church, the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterian church and the Methodist church are very happy with the way we have engaged with them. In relation to transferors’ reps, they would have nomination rights on boards of governors along with other sectors.’
But some people might still wonder if this would protext the interests of controlled schools and safeguard them against transformation by default into integrated or other types of school, or from being amalgamated or downsized, particularly in country areas. Mightn’t the secondary controlled sector feel a bit unloved?
Ruane’s position is that ‘in relation to ownership of schools, ESA won’t own any schools. The ESA bill will be in two stages. But we are going to make sure that there is equality in relation to the ownership of schools.’
There wasn’t time to ask about other vital issues, like the controversial Pupil Profile or the draconian powers proposed for the Educational Skills Authority to raise standards. But before the end of the interview I want to ask the Minister about her own area of interest, Irish language education. How does Caitriona think learning Irish can contribute to modernising Northern Ireland?
Well, Irish is a very important language and you know it is very important that we protect our indigenous languages. Bi-lingual education…
But does using it in education protect it?
It’s not using it. Some parents want their entire education to be through the medium of Irish. I am one of those parents. I think it is fantastic to learn a language from a very young age. I am trilingual - Irish, English and Spanish. In fact, the two languages options I plan to introduce into primary schools are Irish and Spanish, because it is important to learn immersion skills, to learn by learning to understand language and culture in a different way. You know the Irish language is for everyone. And I love the fact that children learn bi-lingually…well in many cases they just learn through the medium of Irish.
Thank you very much, or should that be, Go raibh maith agat, Minister?
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