Madam Chair, Honoured Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen In 2002, I urged my audience not to be too concerned about the Costello proposals to abolish the Transfer Test. I argued that abolition didn’t mean the end of grammar schools. If we stood by our ethos of high academic expectations, then we could be sure that there would be many young men who would not choose Portora as their school of choice at transfer for they would see that the fit between their academic aspirations and this school was not a given. Looking at recent evidence, I realize now that I was off the mark. Twelve years later, with significantly fewer young men in the county, 112 candidates have enrolled for our Transfer assessments. We may not be the most highly over-subscribed school in the county, whatever that betokens, but we are attracting interest from young men, many of whom will not understand the expectations of a grammar school. And the narrative of our examination successes indicates that while it is possible to support a student cohort identified by a broad academic profile to success at GCSE, it is more difficult to support a student cohort with a broad academic profile to success at GCE A level. So forgive me if I reconfigure my argument of twelve years ago and consider more carefully what a grammar should look like in the context of falling rolls leading to a broad academic intake. The standard definition of a grammar school - one given to me last year by a Year 11 student - is a school which selects its pupils according to an assessment of academic ability at the age of 10 or 11. In 1944, when Britain was beginning to address post-war rebuilding it was expected that academic ability would be identified through a test taken at the age of 10. The top 25% to 30% of the population sitting the test would be offered places at grammar schools which were then regarded as being designed to prepare them for higher education, banking or the civil service. Later, in Northern Ireland, it was agreed that if parents paid a tuition fee they could buy a place for their child at a grammar school with the place being subject to an annual review. Miraculously, most pupils gained a grammar school place after a year of fee-paying.
Madam Chair, Honoured Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen In 2002, I urged my audience not to be too concerned about the Costello proposals to abolish the Transfer Test. I argued that abolition didn’t mean the end of grammar schools. If we stood by our ethos of high academic expectations, then we could be sure that there would be many young men who would not choose Portora as their school of choice at transfer for they would see that the fit between their academic aspirations and this school was not a given. Looking at recent evidence, I realize now that I was off the mark. Twelve years later, with significantly fewer young men in the county, 112 candidates have enrolled for our Transfer assessments. We may not be the most highly over-subscribed school in the county, whatever that betokens, but we are attracting interest from young men, many of whom will not understand the expectations of a grammar school. And the narrative of our examination successes indicates that while it is possible to support a student cohort identified by a broad academic profile to success at GCSE, it is more difficult to support a student cohort with a broad academic profile to success at GCE A level. So forgive me if I reconfigure my argument of twelve years ago and consider more carefully what a grammar should look like in the context of falling rolls leading to a broad academic intake. The standard definition of a grammar school - one given to me last year by a Year 11 student - is a school which selects its pupils according to an assessment of academic ability at the age of 10 or 11. In 1944, when Britain was beginning to address post-war rebuilding it was expected that academic ability would be identified through a test taken at the age of 10. The top 25% to 30% of the population sitting the test would be offered places at grammar schools which were then regarded as being designed to prepare them for higher education, banking or the civil service. Later, in Northern Ireland, it was agreed that if parents paid a tuition fee they could buy a place for their child at a grammar school with the place being subject to an annual review. Miraculously, most pupils gained a grammar school place after a year of fee-paying.