RESULTS…Hundreds of primary school student received their results at the weekend
HUNDREDS of primary school pupils in the county received results of transfer tests for grammar schools on Saturday.
However, the father of a local child who received a ‘good’ set of results on Saturday has described the system of academic selection as, ‘not fair’ on pupils. He believes that pupils felt pressure to sit the exams for fear of ‘missing out’.
Each grammar school was expected to have in excess of 100 pupils sitting the transfer test for their schools, with invariably a percentage of these pupils not being accepted into the schools.
This particular Enniskillen parent explained: “We approached the year knowing that it would be a different focus for our son. The transfer test was very much in the forefront of our thoughts for Primary 7.”
“The school were very good in the preparation for the exam, with extra classes after school two evenings a week for any child wishing to take them. There was no pressure to take part, but they provided that.”
Although the results’ day as ‘good’, he feels the current system is wrong for pupils.
“The transfer system is not fair on pupils. There is no basis for academic selection in the current age, but the children did not want to not sit it as they would feel that they were missing out.
“We were fortunate as the result for our child was a good one, but I know of some parents who were heartbroken as their child did not get the result they wanted.”
A second parent added that his son ‘felt he had no choice but to do it as he wanted to have options and he wanted to be able to go to the same school as his close friends’.
“We had tried to play down over-congratulating him because we felt this undermined our statements that it didn’t matter how he did, but we made it clear we were very proud of him and happy for him.”
The parent was also critical of the academic selection process as a whole.
“The test says nothing about who the child is, nothing about what will become of them in the future, nothing about what sort of child they are or learner they are, yet it has the potential to end up giving them a real and long lasting sense of failure.
“Performance at that age should be monitored on an ongoing basis, not in a test situation. The system is not only unfair, it is inaccurate and potentially ultimately damaging to a child’s self esteem.”
However, the principal of a local grammar school described community support for academic selection as, ‘strong’.
Collegiate Grammar School principal, Elizabeth Armstrong, pictured, stated: “The continued strong community support for academic selection in the face of Ministerial and Department of Education intransigence is evident in the fact that, in this the fifth year of so called unregulated tests, we saw another very strong cohort of pupils (well over 100) choosing to sit the AQE tests in the Collegiate.”
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