Mags Gargan
The North’s Minister of Education has praised Catholic school principals for their “vision and commitment to changing education” and their campaign against academic selection.
Education Minister, John O’Dowd, was speaking at the annual conference of the Catholic Principals Association (CPA) in the Waterfront Hall in Belfast on Friday. He told the over 300 people at the gathering that they should be “proud” of their work and for having the “courage of your convictions” in their campaign against academic selection.
“Collectively a lot of progress has been made to create a fairer and equal education system for all of our children and young people. And a lot of people at this conference today have created change to assist all young people to reach their full potential and many young people have benefitted as a result,” he said.
Addressing the continuing use of admissions tests in some schools, the minister said academic selection is the “single biggest factor holding back our education system with unregulated transfer tests in place now for seven years”, but that a momentum is “clearly building in favour of educating children of all abilities and backgrounds together”.
Affirming
CPA chairperson, Tony Devlin told The Irish Catholic the minister’s speech was “very affirming”.
“It is no secret that we are strongly opposed to academic selection and we welcomed the recent developments where some schools have started moving away from academic selection and we look forward to others joining us. We think it is a social justice issue and an important issue for the future of Catholic education,” he said.
