In the DUP’s new party election broadcast Sir Jeffrey Donaldson explains his five point plan to “build a better future for Northern Ireland”. His proposals include – “keeping our schools world-class”. Does anyone really believe this rubbish, when all the evidence clearly points to a failed and failing system
of education?
In 2019 the educationalist Sir Robert Salisbury told the Northern Ireland Select Affairs Committee at Westminster that it was “an enduring myth” that Northern Ireland had one of the best education systems in Europe: “It has a long tail of underachievement and that long tail of underachievement is still there and it’s stubbornly there and it’s not being tackled.”
We have a failed education system where 30 per cent of adults lack basic qualifications. Economist, Professor John Fitzgerald, Trinity College Dublin, warned that the north’s economy needs a devolved government to tackle, “the worst education system of any region in the UK” which he estimates would take up to 30 years to fix.
Our selective and elitist education system benefits a privileged few while damaging the life chances of a large proportion of the school population. Some disadvantaged groups suffer more than others, Protestant free school meals pupils consistently have the lowest levels of attainment of these particular groups, and only ethnic minorities, such as traveller children, are known to have lower levels of achievement.
Mr Donaldson’s “keeping our schools world-class” is just a piece of electoral rhetoric aimed at a middle-class elite – who have themselves benefited and whose children benefit from a selective system of education.
This is also the group where most DUP politicians are drawn from. The DUP have no vested interest in an educated Protestant working-class – it’s not on the DUP’s five-point plan, for very obvious reasons.
Grammar schools and a selective education system have always been of paramount importance to an elitist party like the DUP and is the main reason they were so keen to secure the education ministry after a succession of Sinn Féin ministers. It was so important to the DUP that at a press conference after the St Andrews Agreement in 2006, the then leader of the party, Ian Paisley, declared that academic selection had been secured as part of the negotiations.
It makes you wonder why we’re having an Independent Review of Education here.
JIM CURRAN
Downpatrick, Co Down
Serious question deserves a response
Unfortunately, Pádraig Yeates contributed a second non-reply to my querying of his truth recovery scheme (March 28). Instead of dealing with the substance, Pádraig repeats that my “criticism of our Truth Recovery Process seems to be predicated in our belief in British goodwill”. It is not, but if that is not the case why does Pádraig write, “we hope” that the scheme “would be endorsed by all the parties... in a spirit of goodwill”, leading to a “binding international agreement”. Is Pádraig indifferent to the British endorsing truth recovery with the same ‘spirit’ used to endorse the Northern Ireland Protocol?
Pádraig again fails to address British state failure, consistently, to reveal its role in running a proxy war via RUC Special Branch, British Military Intelligence and their loyalist allies. Are we to take it that Pádraig’s group has no strategy for dealing with that formidable hurdle? In the absence of any attempt to respond, twice, should we assume that Pádraig is content with non-state actors being judged by a British state representative on Pádraig’s tribunal, as to whether they have sufficiently spilled the beans?
Pádraig celebrates failure to respond to Pat Finucane Centre/Justice for the Forgotten criticism by noting that he published it. This correspondence will not enjoy even that privilege. Pádraig does not possess the “resources” to copy it to his group’s website. How then did other letters make it, including Pádraig’s first one in this series, to which I responded? An organisation seeking to engage in the quest for truth needs to seriously respond to serious questions, if it wishes to be taken seriously.
TOM COOPER
Dublin 2
Dangerous to ignore divisions in society
Mr O’Fiach – ‘Voting devolved institutions will not bring about political stability’ (April 4) – writes that the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) has never brought good governance and that it has merely been a distraction. His conclusion here must be constitutional change and the unification of Ireland. I do not believe Mr O’Fiach’s ‘solution’ to our situation here is sustainable. He will know that to argue that the Good Friday Agreement be jettisoned is as unlikely as Jim Allister’s demand for same to happen. It flies in the face of the democratic mandate the agreement has, as the force of an internationally binding accord. Mr O’Fiach states that “people need now to focus their energy on reunification”. Is he asking or telling? Ignoring the many divisions in our society – deliberately fostered or not – is dangerous. Bringing people towards change means working where people are at. Brian Feeney, in a very recent article – ‘Dublin must rethink attitude to Northern nationalists’ – finishes his piece with “dealing with northern politics is not what you wish it to be”.
Possibly one of the soundest pieces of advice that Mr O’Fiach and Mr Allister could listen to.
MANUS McDAID
Derry City
DUP grasping at straws
It is clear that the organisers of the rallies don’t either understand or recognise democracy. Northern Ireland is still part of the union despite a lone voice on the platform saying different. There is no change to our constitutional status and the DUP supported the protocol. The Good Friday Agreement is an international treaty accepted by a majority – and a minority of a minority won’t change it. It’s easy to tell an election is looming when enemies share the same platform with the same nonsense. Doug Beattie has shown courage, leadership and honesty without sectarianism. This vote for the DUP to stop Sinn Féin is pure electioneering rather than the truth. At a previous election one of the speakers at the Lurgan rally was claiming: “A vote for the DUP is a vote for the IRA.” Which is it?
To say the DUP is in trouble is putting it mildly. They are a shambles and it’s clear they don’t want to be involved in largely little supported ‘rallies’. Jeffrey Donaldson and the DUP are grasping at straws and once again at election time they have failed to mention the victims of the troubles.
RAYMOND McCORD
Victims Campaigner, North Belfast
