CHRISTMAS is a time of year where 10 and 11-year-olds should be at home spending the festive period with their families, enjoying new toys or gifts and looking forward to the opportunities of a bright brand new year.
However, this year will represent something very different to these children and their families as the transfer test looms on the horizon.
The post primary transfer test is a polarising issue in the north when it comes to our politics, but really should not be. On one hand we have those who wish to maintain a system whereby children are selected or rejected based on how they perform in an unfair and unregulated test presided over by a private company; on the other hand there are those of us who wish to consign the transfer test to the dust-bin of history.
Sinn Féin's position is shared by trade unions, children's rights groups, Amnesty International and indeed the United Nations, among others. In fact, there is no other area of public policy on these islands where there is so much academic evidence stacked against it where it would be possible for an executive minister, or others with responsibility, to defend it.
At no time is it acceptable for our education system to label children as failures but in the midst of the Covid-19 global health pandemic it is particularly cruel to proceed with transfer tests. Time and time again the education minister fails to acknowledge the levels of disruption and hardship experienced by our children during this pandemic.
The onset of Covid-19 forces us to think differently on how we do things. Given the disruption during the first wave it was necessary to cancel the 2020 public exam series. It is perplexing that while alternative arrangements to deliver official qualifications during these unprecedented times can be made - and young adults moving into further and higher education can be facilitated - when it comes to post-primary transfer tests for very young pupils, flexibility is resisted.
Correspondence issued by the minister to schools on the last Friday of term left many angry, disappointed and astonished - myself included. The minister left us under no illusion as to where his priorities lay when it comes to our education system here. His ideological defence of the transfer test – no matter the cost - will no doubt cause significant harm to our education system in the years to come, and to the mental health and well-being of countless 10 and 11-year-olds who have already endured a year of disruption during this unprecedented pandemic.
Many schools have already shown leadership and taken the decision to protect their pupils and suspend transfer tests. I commend them for that. It's not too late for the education minister, and those other selective schools, to do the right thing and suspend the transfer test. I would appeal to them to do so.
:: Karen Mullan is Sinn Féin education spokesperson and deputy chair of the assembly education committee.
