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.

I remember the old 80s Andytown leisure centre, which we visited basically every Saturday and stayed there much of the day!!!! I think it was British policy to build leisure centres in Belfast to divert recruitment of young men to the Provos: only to have the provos use the gyms in said leisure centres to train. 🤣

Key word here is in Belfast. Large parts of the country, especially west of the River Bann are still severely neglected in terms of investment and far behind what they should be. As an aside.. have you seen the state of our health service? Makes things in the rest of the UK look like luxury!! I couldn’t believe how modern and organised the hospitals were when my DD had to have surgery in England (funnily enough as the waiting lists here were too long..)

I’m not doubting at all that there was rampant discrimination against catholics, I was querying that it resulted in more Catholic solicitors and accountants.

And yes - huge sums of money are clearly evident in Belfast. Your public spaces, facilities and transport are light years ahead of anything we have across the water, and I get cross when people in NI say they are hard up. NI hasn’t seen anything like the decimation of parks, leisure centres and education budgets that other places in the U.K. have.

I can’t think of anything in my region in the last decade that compares with the new Andersonstown leisure centre, for example. All of our parks round here charge for parking - never seen that in Belfast.

There’s a sense that discrimination has gone the other way now, that working class catholic communities was where all the big bucks were pumped - community regeneration and early intervention projects etc. Don’t have any official figures on this.

You got 96%? What happened to the other 4%? 😂

I went to the school that shares its name with a popular television show, so we had a non-violent but still pressured, academic environment.

Exactly @Dysonquery

Everyone knows Catholics were historically discriminated against. The attitude to education and parents’ support of teachers and strict attitude to working hard and achieving academically in the Catholic community came from a place where you got yourself out of poverty through education.

In my grandfather’s generation, people tried to find out your religion in job interviews and woe betide you if you tried to progress in somewhere like the civil service as a Catholic. Police? Forget it.

As an aside, also love how Derry girls shows how gentle parenting definitely wasn’t a thing in 80s/90s working class NI, while also showing that family as one that was close and loved eachother. In my home, a regular question was “So, you came second in the test? Who came first and why wasn’t it you?” Several of my compatriots in similar schools had similar. Academic pressure definitely weighed heavily.

Oh and yes, as someone whose great great grandfather worked as a blacksmith in East Belfast, I can assure you that there was discrimination in the shipyards (he was a non subscribing Presbyterian but didn’t agree with it and wasn’t a member).

😂I suppose gerrymandering never happened either.

Any evidence for that?

Yes, exactly that

Lisa McGee let Derry Girls’ Clare articulate it best. ““We’re girls. We’re poor. We’re from Northern Ireland and we’re Catholic, for Christ’s sake!””

Definitely education was very important in Catholic communities; many jobs were only available to those that could show their own or their father’s LOL number. There is a reason why there are so many Catholic solicitors and accountants in NI.

I do wish education was completely secular though, both sides of the border. That’s another thread though 😤

I think the disparity is a legacy in part though? Money was pumped into certain communities and less in others. Catholics were more motivated to seek higher education levels due to the job discrimination in certain areas etc. I even remember seeing job adverts in the 90s / hearing of companies in the south that would only hire people from certain community backgrounds.

@Mintypanda said "100% working class (unionist) boys are I think currently the most disadvantage in NI society." I would generally agree with that.

"This is a legacy of the troubles and associated reforms." I would very much disagree with this reasoning for it. The poor educational outcomes existed long before the late 60s. There was less of an impact in the past when there were more manual/industry jobs that recruited from that demographic. Those opportunities no longer exist.

There was less need for higher level education in the past, but it is increasingly important in the last 20 years. The area I'm from would have large numbers of families that never had students go to Uni, many drop out early, very poor work prospects, and it's clearly inter-generational.

I think the effects of the Troubles are overstated on the majority of the NI population. Most people had a reasonable comfortable middle class lifestyle, especially if your family had a public sector job.

That’s a pretty sweeping statement!!

Also a result of the demise of many industries here. For example generations of young Protestant men were previously assured jobs in the shipyard. For that reason, many of them didn’t have the same drive to succeed academically as their Catholic counterparts, for whom education was pushed as a way out of deprivation and poverty. DP grew up in a Catholic area and watched hundreds of Protestant men walk past his house, within inches of his living room window, every day on their way to work in the factory at the end of the road. Not one Catholic worked there, or certainly not any who were prepared to admit it. Many industries were not an option for Catholics. They had to find other ways of making a living. Education was hugely important to working class Catholics. I’m speaking very generally here of course.

100% working class (unionist) boys are I think currently the most disadvantage in NI society. This is a legacy of the troubles and associated reforms.

What proportion of children get to go to a grammar school in those areas and what kind of education do those children get? Presumably an inferior one as you don't mention them at all.

I know what you meant. Essentially parents just do it. Sometimes they will tutor the children themselves. I work in education so have first hand experience of this. It wouldn’t be all year but in the run up to exams.

A few people know my in RL, and my comments/thoughts on NI education system. For reference, I went to boarding school in the England. I'm from north Down, almost no Catholics where I grew up. My observation is that the current system fails many (most?) working class children, and especially those from a unionist background. Many of these children are siphoned off at 11 to separate grammar and secondary streams, where very few secondary pupils progress to 3rd level, and so so many drop out early. You can see the impact in smaller towns, lack of opportunities, social issues, etc. It's seldom seen as a priority issue for our (Unionist) politicians. Catholic grammar schools typically dominate the top positions in academic league tables.

Our kids have experience of the ROI education system too, and at secondary level I've been impressed. There is a certain level/standard of teaching and dedication from the staff that is notable (versus England).

I didn't mean schools themsrlves stopping doing PE (is that even legal?) We had 11+ practice once a week in P6, back when it was called "Structured Reasoning" -does anyone else remember those big black and yellow booklets?- but we still did PE and Art.
I mean parents keeping their children out of school for private tutoring. How does that even work? Do they pretend the children are sick those days? And what days- art and PE are usually mixed in through the week so it's not as if you'd send them in to school Mon-Wed to do all the maths and English and keep them off Thurs+Fri when their classmates are doing the "fun stuff" Considering a lot of tutors are actually teachers (or were back in the 80s, not sure what happens now), how are they even available during the school day?

Cut out all the fun stuff like Art, PE etc and concentrate on transfer test practice. It’s not massively common but it does happen.