Ulster Unionist Party reject Burns Report

The Ulster Unionist Party has flatly rejected the reforms contained within the Burns Report on post primary education in Northern Ireland.

The party’s education team launched their official response to the Burns Report at Ulster Unionist Headquarters in Belfast today.

The 300-page report by the Post Primary Review body, chaired by Gerry Burns, was published last October suggested the 11-plus test be scrapped within two years and replaced with a collegiate system.

The 11-plus test is taken in primary seven and is used to determine the type of education establishment pupils can attend at post-primary level.

UUP Danny Kennedy Chairman of the Education Committee said the party was concerned that the Burns proposals would “compromise existing standards of excellence in local grammar schools”.

He said his party would be “vigorously opposing” any manoeuvres to push the existing proposals through.

The party agreed the transfer test in its present form was “unsustainable” and that a replacement selection process should be developed.

In the long run the party said they would favour a transfer system based on pupil profile developed in the primary system, accommodating parental input, but with final decision resting with the school on the basis of approved criteria.

“Our view is that types of schools which are persistently over-subscribed should be quickly expanded to allow disappointed families to take up places in their preferred type of school,” Mr Kennedy said today.

“Our goal is that all schools should come to be viewed as equivalent in the value of education they provide.

"This must be done without damaging the ethos of successful existing schools, including the grammar schools,” he added.

In February the Governing Bodies Association (GBA), which represents 54 grammar schools across the province also rejected the Burns report. They admitted the current system was not perfect but that as a reforming model, the Burns Report needed "massive revamping".

Consultation on the report ends on June 28.

(AMcE)