THOUSANDS of parents are appealing to the Government to reverse plans to end academic selection, which will in effect abolish 70 grammar schools at one stroke.

Northern Ireland’s grammar schools are among the highest achieving in the country but despite overwhelming opposition the Government has declared that they must stop selecting pupils on academic ability within three years.

Last month 7,000 parents delivered a petition to the Department of Education in Northern Ireland demanding the right to retain selection and prevent one of the biggest closures of grammar school in the UK in 30 years.

Tomorrow a teachers’ union meeting in Derbyshire will hear calls for the Government to bring back grammar schools to England — they are in only a few areas now — in an attempt to halt falling standards and help the most able to succeed.

At Belfast Royal Academy, Marcus Paterson, an economics teacher and father of two, is livid. “We are being treated like a colonised people,” he said. “We have won the educational and political argument but Tony Blair is using his majority to cast us aside.”

Almost a third of the school’s intake is Roman Catholic, in the heart of a working-class Protestant community. It accepts academically able children from all walks of life, is non-denominational and sends pupils to Oxbridge annually.

Northern Ireland is proud of its academic record. Last year 69.4 per cent of GCSEs taken were awarded A*-C, compared to 59.2 per cent across Britain. At A level, 30 per cent of Northern Irish students gained A grades compared to 22.4 per cent of students in Britain.

However, in October 2002, Martin McGuinness, then Sinn Fein Education Minister, chose to scrap academic selection and the 11-plus from 2008, the day before the Stormont Assembly was suspended. Months earlier a household survey had revealed that two thirds of parents wanted to retain selection.

The Province has since been ruled by Westminster. Labour has opposed selection since the 1960s, when it first proposed comprehensive schools. In January 2004 the governmentappointed Costello group recommended the end of selection with parents instead choosing a secondary school to send children to based on a “pupil profile” built up over years. The Governing Bodies Association, which represents grammar schools, condemned the proposals as “not fit for purpose”. Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, an executive member of the association, said: “The grammar school has been a wonderful escalator for children from backgrounds where in England they find it difficult to succeed. It’s not perfect but I can’t believe that by removing the most successful bit, that we are improving it.”

Critics fear the rise of a “postcode lottery” which reinforces social divisions as bright children from less well-off areas can no longer attend the best schools because the children’s address, not their ability, will determine who enrols.

In Derbyshire Peter Morris will appeal to the Professional Association of Teachers at its annual conference in Buxton to vote to bring back “the most successful type of school that Britain has ever had”.

England’s existing 164 grammar schools represent 5 per cent of secondaries but account for more than 40 per cent of the best 100 schools in the progress made by pupils aged 11 to 16. However, despite rising grades and studies showing that social mobility has worsened since grammar schools were abolished, the Government has vowed not to increase academic selection.

PAST FORM

One ballot has been held — in 2000, to abolish Ripon grammar — but parents voted by two to one to keep it

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