The assembly debated a Sinn Féin motion on Monday calling for the abolition of academic selection.
As is traditional, unionists then complained this would mean abolishing grammar schools.
Not so, countered Sinn Féin, the SDLP and Alliance: there is no requirement for grammars to practice selection. Such schools are defined in law merely by how their boards of governors are arranged. Northern Ireland already has a small number of non-selective grammars, mostly in the Catholic sector, which opted to retain a ‘grammar ethos’ when the CCMS ended selection a decade ago.
Many other grammars are approaching their second year without entrance tests due to Covid. Although most are determined to return to selection and in the meantime are attempting other forms of academic assessment, the epidemic has raised the issue of what truly makes a grammar school.
The concept of grammar ethos could be the key to resolving the endless debate about selection - an argument older than most assembly members, as education minister Peter Weir noted on Monday.
That could in turn unlock integration. Pat Sheehan, the Sinn Féin deputy chair of the education committee and the proposer of Monday’s motion, said there is no prospect of “proper integration of our whole education system” while children are still being segregated by socio-economic status, which is what academic selection delivers.
There may be a convenient element of deadlock in these positions: unionists demanding integration first; nationalists an end to selection first. That does not mean Sheehan is wrong.
Where the assembly fell down was in not asking what a grammar ethos means. In 90 minutes of debate the word ‘ethos’ was not mentioned, despite being the only thing left to mention when discussing grammars without selection.
Alliance suggested grammars could use different kinds of entrance test or postpone testing to age 14, which was actively avoiding the question. What sort of school is all this testing or non-testing meant to be for?
There was once a clear academic distinction between grammars and other secondaries. In theory that has been removed, with all schools required to make the full curriculum available to all pupils.
Much of the remaining distinction appears purely cultural: blazers, house teams, prefects and trophy cabinets. This may be more important to success than it is fashionable to acknowledge.
The Progressive Unionist Party - the only unionist party opposed to selection - has previously cited discipline as the overriding issue for working-class parents.
Discipline is also crucial for middle-class parents: they consider grammars to guarantee it.
If the grammar ethos is the attraction, there is no fundamental obstacle to making more of it available.
There is a limit to how much existing grammars can grow. Most are oversubscribed and have to beg the Department of Education annually to fund extra places. Becoming non-selective would increase this pressure.
Letting grammars expand until nearby secondaries collapse would be a brutal policy that would fail even on its own terms if it produced schools too big to manage.
The intriguing question is whether secondaries could become non-selective grammars.
Introducing stricter academic and discipline standards is a conventional route to school improvement with numerous successful examples in Northern Ireland, including in areas of multiple deprivation. However, secondaries adopting these grammar policies do not become grammars by the legal definition. Their boards of governors hardly see the point of reconstituting themselves to gain a status most people associate with academic selection. As a result, these schools miss out on any benefits of ‘grammar branding’.
A sympathetic minister might encourage secondaries to convert to non-selective grammars - the pathway is similar to becoming an integrated school. Or the conversion process could be simplified.
The objective would not be to create an entire education system of grammars - it would be to pin down what we really value in their ethos and to use it to help the whole system evolve.
The main problem with this vision is that it just does not feel like the way the world is heading.
Parents may yearn for more provincial mini-Hogwarts of jolly hockey sticks and hurley sticks but there is a conservatism behind this that is otherwise in general retreat. The philosophy of most education reformers points to a straightforward comprehensive model. They would be aghast at any suggestion of imbuing it with consciously middle-class grammar values.
So the endless argument continues - because while unionists and nationalists do sometimes shift their positions, liberals never back down.
