To think the 'Troubles Northern Ireland 1969-1997' ensured the Grammar system stayed in operation In Northern Ireland, thus is now the best education system in the United Kingdom.

Yes it has. Both financially and personal resilience (where failure/giving up is not an option). Probably set me up pretty well to be fair.

And has this advantaged you in the long run?

I attended a grammar school in Northern Ireland. My father used to bribe me with ££££ when I came first in tests/ exams……it worked well 🤣. There was no £££ for second place.🥈

Grammar schools do still exist in England, although most secondary schools are now comprehensive.

The grammar school that I attended in Kent in the 1970s is still a grammar school. I think there are still a lot of them in Kent.

I'm not convinced that it's a better system. My children both went to university and got good degrees. I didn't. I left school at 18 with one A-level and six O-levels.

Me too, @Dysonquery - those teachers took no prisoners.

I suspect most people that the poster knows were nice middle class types who were unaffected.

It is true that people in working class communities were disproportionately affected though.

Which bit of this are you seeking evidence for? The discrimination history is well established. You won’t have to go far to find details in history books.

Statements are also legally binding. But SEN provision is a mess unfortunately

It very definitely resulted in Catholics aiming for higher education, because unskilled/ school leaver jobs in industry (H&W, etc) weren't going to be available, nor were unskilled or low skilled local government jobs. At one point, it was reported that protestants/ Unionists felt that QUB was not a friendly environment for them as it was full of Catholics. Catholics from NI also went to Irish universities. In recent years, white working class protestant boys were reported to have the lowest attainment levels in formal education in NI. This was put down to a failure by their community to adapt to the end of the industrial era and the increasing importance of the information economy.

SEN is a quagmire at the moment in NI. A classroom assistant is seen as the answer to everything. EHCPs in England are much more specific, detailed, and legally binding.

NI is so much better in some respects and so far away in others, it’s a bit of a head melter. My nearest town has about 3000 people more than Eniskillen but only has one secondary school that finishes at 16 (nearest post 16 education is about 10 miles away), a small library, a health centre and a leisure centre in terms of amenities. Enniskillen has multiple secondaries, colleges, Erne Hospital, the Ardhowen and a boatload other public amenities that would be unthinkable in a similar sized English town. I get that Enniskillen is a rural centre and that we have other options closer to us in England, but I don’t think people in NI realise how far public services have been cut in England. Our roads were better in Roman times too!

We do seem to do SEN better. I was appalled at how my nephew was treated at primary.

I agree re: leisure centres. I live in Belfast and there are at least 6 pools / leisure centres within a reasonably short distance of me - Lisnasharragh, Templemore, Grove, Andersonstown, Valley and Bangor Aurora. If you include Ards Blair Mayne and Lagan Valley Leisureplex it's 8 and those are only the ones i can remember!

Colleagues in the west tell me waiting lists for swimming lessons etc. are long and there's nowhere near as much choice as around Belfast.

Delicious irony that people who are trying to look like smart arses apparently wouldn’t recognise a logical fallacy if it leapt up and bit them.

@ScholesPanda there is an area in Northern Ireland that does academically select at 14. Craigavon has had the Dickson Plan since 1962.
Somewhat dated but comprehensive (boom tish) article Craigavon Historical Society

Delicious irony that a thread about the best education system in the UK should have a grammatical error in the title.

I do believe in selective education, but why we would hark back to a system designed for the conditions of the 1940s is beyond me. Grammar Schools training liberal professionals and managers for industry; Secondary Moderns training people for guaranteed jobs in coal mines and steelworks. How outdated.

We'd be better looking at systems that educate for longer, stream at 14 and then provide both high quality technical or high quality academic education to meet the needs of the future economy.

But that would require moving away from our pernicious class system so we probably won't bother.

My DC did the Transfer Test. DS1 did the old style separate exams and DS2 did the SEAG the first year it was introduced. Both were reassured by us that they didn’t have to do the test. I didn’t want them to feel under pressure at such a young age. But they both wanted to do it. I didn’t have tutors for either of them. Their primary school gave them practice papers - two a week in class and some to take home, but no pressure to complete these. I didn’t make them do any tests at home during holidays. DP and I helped them in any areas they struggled with. I felt the primary school had a perfect balance of being encouraging but relaxed. Three quarters of DS1’s class went to grammar schools, some tutored, some not. DS1 did extremely well. DS2 did extremely well too (slightly better than his brother, much to his delight!) but his best friend didn’t get a high enough score for automatic acceptance to the grammar school he wanted. This was despite the fact that they achieved similar scores in practice papers. DS’s friend went to pieces in an exam situation even though he was very bright. He will always do well because he’s a little grafter and sharp as a whip, but I felt so sorry for him. I strongly dislike the system of categorising children at 11 years old, but it’s what we’re stuck with here for now. I had no choice but to get sucked up into it. My eldest desperately wanted to go to the closest all ability integrated school, but the only way he could be assured a place there was to do well in the transfer test and enter via the grammar stream, which is what he did. Otherwise it would have been a complete lottery. The fact that this essentially comprehensive school (albeit with a grammar stream) is the most oversubscribed school in NI tells a story of its own.

The secondaries in my area are very, very poor. This may not be the case for all of NI - I don’t know - but the ones around here are dreadful.

I went to a NI Catholic Grammar School in the sticks during the 80's. We were all prepped for the exam at our primary school. The Grammar was not high pressure, they still got good results, kids were bright and their parents expected them to work hard, the teachers had a reputation for being very lazy.

The Grammar School I attended did get a makeover a few years later - a new HT cleared out all the well known "lazy" teachers and she relentlessly drove up standards across the whole school not just in the academic subjects. It's brutally competitive now - one of the best for results but it's not for everyone - even if they are the brightest, not everyone thrives in a pressure cooker.

I did not want my kids to go through the grammar system so we moved to an area with great comps. My kids would say they were expected, amongst their peers, to work hard at school - failing was definitely not a badge of honour. I like to think they had space to breathe whilst working hard when needed. I did not want them to have a pressure cooker experience. The culture of a school is what matters, imo, but not the easiest thing to fix.

Speaking of the transfer test, I have a very able child who is awaiting his results.

Out of his class, all but a handful (say 3/4) of the children sat the tests. From what I can tell, almost of all these children were tutored privately. My own son was tutored privately from Christmas in P6.

When I did the old 11+ in the 90s, only the struggling children were tutored.

I paid £50 per week, others in and around that but I think the lowest was £30. Plus the summer camps/revision classes.

If we had to fill out a form, we’d claim a Unionist background - but in reality none of us have set foot in a church except for funerals, and we live in a very middle class area with doctors, surgeons, pilots etc.

High hopes for my own children, but I do feel sorry for the able children who come from environments that cannot support their ability.

This is from the 2021 census. They don’t have the SIC codes for lawyers and accountants but this is a decent proxy.