Debate contribution: Academic Selection

Debate contribution by Mr Peter Martin on 3 February 2026.

MLA

Mr Peter Martin

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

3 February 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Academic Selection

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5362571

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I was not planning to speak in the debate, but I am passionate about tackling educational underachievement. I will start off with Danny's comments. To a degree, I agree with him on some of his points that it is a stressful test. There is no doubt about that. I suppose all tests are stressful, and children will face tests at some point in their lives. However, I disagree with him in that, if we are looking at negative impacts on children in schools today, the transfer test does not stack up against, for example, mobile phones or social media. Those things roll on every day for children. I honestly believe that they have more impact on children than the transfer test. I have a couple of kids who have gone through the test and one who is facing into it.

I thank the Member for his question. I do not have figures on the latter part of his question, but what I say about the former is that I am simply making the point that any testing is stressful. We are talking about emotional impacts on children, and phones and social media have greater emotional impacts than the transfer test. Some of the debate has been framed in a way that says that ending academic selection will somehow deal with educational underachievement or, as the motion suggests, it frames it in terms of educational disadvantage. I want to address that. Many Members will be aware of the 'A Fair Start' report, and I believe that Noel Purdy and Joyce Logue were on the panel that the Minister mentioned earlier. I looked at the research that was commissioned for 'A Fair Start'. They were tasked to look at that. They did research with a large sample of 1,500 parents on the main causes of educational underachievement in Northern Ireland, and number one was the level of family and parental support. Out of 14 causes, academic selection came twelfth, with only 3·5% of parents saying that it was the main cause of educational disadvantage or underachievement in Northern Ireland. Those are the views of parents, and I accept that, but that is a ranking. Some of the things that they cited are the things that the Assembly should be looking at. In dealing with educational disadvantage, the Minister is addressing poverty. I agree with the Members opposite that poverty is a driver. All the research suggests that, so we have to address that.

To the Chair of the Education Committee, of course, I will.

I thank the Member for his question. The 'A Fair Start' report cited a whole range of causes. I am simply making the point that, in how we deal with educational underachievement or disadvantage, academic selection is not the key driver. It is things such as poverty, parental aspiration and the level of parental support. If we want to close a long tail of underachievement, that is what we address. This might be a sound bite, and it might be covered today in terms of academic selection being a contentious issue, but, if we are serious about tackling educational underachievement across our sectors for Protestant and Catholic kids in Northern Ireland, those are the things that we should be focusing on. I have one and a half minutes left. I will give the Floor to the Members opposite. When I read the motion, I thought, "OK, so we're going to end academic selection". What do we do after that? How do kids choose which schools to go to? We will have the same schools; they will just be called different things, so what is that process? It is OK to say, "End academic selection", but how does a school that was previously a grammar school choose its intake for the following year? Does it do it on the basis of where the school is, as with primary schools, in which case house prices will rise? Do you want to create a situation in which, instead of there being maybe one or two private schools in Northern Ireland, there will be a proliferation to eight, where you can be assured that the only kids who will get to those schools are the ones whose parents can pay? That cuts off social mobility. It is OK to have a sound bite, but what happens next is significantly more complex. A problem that the Assembly would not have to deal with but the Education Minister certainly would have to is how those schools then select. That could increase the level of disadvantage based on wealth more than leaving the current system in place. The Chair of the Committee said the right thing — you can frame my having said that later, Nick — when he quoted the DE policy, Every School a Good School, from way back in 2009. That is what the Assembly needs to do. It needs to create the conditions that mean that every school should be a good school or an excellent school or a brilliant school. This Education Minister is doing all that he can to achieve that.

852 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:26 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

Disagree with this assessment?

Classifications can be challenged. A person reads every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.

Challenge this classification