Never Again

On Saturday, November 14, thousands of children across Northern Ireland will have sat the first of a series of papers to decide their journey from primary to post-primary education.

These have been described as unregulated tests, because the best schools in Northern Ireland (which are also recognised as among the best in the United Kingdom) have been forced to opt out of the system to ensure that parental choice and academic selection are retained.

The DUP and Sinn Fein, the co-equal axis at the centre of the Executive, would not and could not agree a transfer system to incorporate into the Programme for Government. And because they could not agree, the grammar schools were forced to do the job themselves!

That is an absurd situation. People expect a government to be able to provide the basics, yet the DUP and Sinn Fein couldn't even agree a method to get 11-year olds from one school to another. Mind you, they are also unable to agree upon the devolution of Policing and Justice, or the boundaries of the eleven new councils.

What we have today is a fundamentally dysfunctional Executive Committee: a Committee which is failing to provide good government, let alone demonstrate that devolution can make a difference for the better for everyone here.

The transfer test is always a trying time for parents and children. Indeed, any test, in any form and at any age will be trying. The fact is that the circumstances this year, with the chaos, confusion and uncertainty surrounding it, have only served to make matters much worse. Caitriona Ruane hasn't done anything other than force the grammar schools and their feeder primaries to go it alone.

The Ulster Unionist Party has voiced its criticism on this matter for over two years. Rather than be the first of a new annual test the UUP is committed to ensuring that 2009 will be remembered as a mere blip. We want to restore order and sanity to the process and we want to ensure that an agreement is reached which allows all of our schools to remain within the official system.

The people of Northern Ireland deserve good, responsible, accountable government. That's what they voted for. They didn't vote for Ministers to go on solo runs, reducing the transfer system to a farce.

The biggest farce of all, though, is that the DUP and Sinn Fein cooked up a self-serving deal which means that they can do their own thing. Both parties are to blame for what we have now and the UUP will not allow them to forget it!