education could damage your health

Week #2, school #2; and I have an admission to make. This subbing lark should come with a health warning: May seriously damage your moral high ground.

Anyone who knows me would be able to tell you my views of the Grammar school system and academic selection. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that still holds onto academic selection for entry into secondary schools and it is holding onto it fiercely. I, just in case you don’t already know, am fiercely opposed to a two tier education system (or indeed the three or four tier system we actually have)
It is an opinion that has brought me into verbal conflict with several members of my family and my closest friends, all of whom benefited from a Grammar school education. I, myself, benefited from a Grammar school education – the difference being that I have worked most of my adult life with children who didn’t pass the test at eleven and are thus not benefiting from a Grammar school education. I see what the great divide does to them. I have witnessed the sense of resignation they have that they aren’t ‘meant’ to be academic so they’ll not bother. I’ve worked on breaking down barriers that a sense of failure (aged eleven) builds. And it’s just not right.

The Grammars in Northern Ireland wield a lot of power. The Government love them because they allow us to produce the best exam results in the UK year after year. And how do they achieve such fantastic results? Well, using academic selection they pick out the pupils with the highest IQs; the academic cream if you like. Unsurprisingly these pupils perform well in national tests (relatively speaking) which gain the schools good reputations. These good reputations make them extremely attractive for business and community support (everyone loves a winner) so they see all kinds of funding opportunities opening up. They can plough this money into improving the infrastructure and resources of the school, which in turn improves their standing in exam league tables and leads to a higher percentage of post 16 students, who attract the largest amount of governmental and commercial funding. And so the cycle continues.

I’m not suggesting that Grammar schools are wallowing in cash. The way state education funding is at present no schools are finding it easy to balance books. It just seems to me that Grammar schools are better equipped for this hardship and seem to find it easier to produce money than non selective schools when push comes to shove. Just look at the beautiful gardens and perfectly manicured playing fields on which Grammar schools play their Rugger and Cricket. Compare those to the council owned dog walking parks that the high school next door use.

Grammar schools produce results; of that there is no doubt. If I hadn’t gone to a Grammar I doubt very much that I would have gone to university – I have no idea what I would’ve done but I wasn’t the kind of pupil who could motivate themselves against the odds. I would have blended in and faded out of education. I certainly wouldn’t be a teacher.
Back when I was eleven I did the test that was to determine whether at thirty one I would be sitting typing up a blog in a classroom after teaching a year 12 poetry lesson or… well I just don’t know.

I’ll be honest. The reason I fixate on this issue is because in my mind I shouldn’t have passed that test. I failed every one of the practices in the build up . Somehow I squeezed through and onto the road to Grammar school. To this day I don’t know how. In quiet moments I find my mind wander into ‘Sliding Doors’ territory and I find myself imaging what my life would be like had I dropped a couple more points in that test. I know it’s pointless; I believe that things happen for a reason, that I was guided up the path I was meant to take – but I can’t help wondering. And then I start wondering about the pupils I teach. What would happen to them if they’d done just a little better or worse when they were eleven.

I believe that schools selecting their pupils on the basis of IQ is wrong; I believe that eleven is far too young to map out someone’s educational career; and I believe labelling pupils as either academic or non-academic is just plain immoral.

After all of that please don’t think less of me because I am writing this entry from a classroom of a Grammar school. Just because I am in a position where I have to take what work is offered doesn’t dilute my opinions. I’ll teach their pupils, I’ll take the pay cheque but they can’t make me like it.