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.

Also don’t forget NI has nowhere near the levels of social issues that England has to cope with.

Pointless comment. No amount of logical fallacies will miraculously make the English secondary education system better than the Northern Irish.

They are all over the internet if you do a quick Google. It’s definitely a thing.

I agree entirely with the poster who said that there were historically very limited opportunities in NI that weren’t farming or public sector. I was always encouraged to “get out”- and the way to do that was to go to Uni across the water.

I think it’s the combination of respect for education plus choice at secondary (choice in education systems is apparently correlated with improved performance). Teaching is highly competitive and there is no truck with modern fads.

But having seen what happened to my SEN nephew, I’m quite glad my children are not educated there. And he only got into a grammar because family pulled strings - which would be unthinkable here.

Sorry for the broad brush strokes here, but do you mean that all kids should be taught together, working at the pace of the least academic?

Or would you expect to see streaming within each year group?

Whoever wrote the OP clearly didn't fully benefit from the NI Grammar system, notably with regard to punctuation and sentence construction.

I live in an 11+ county. It is awful and only benefits people who are able to pay for a tutor or have the privilege of time and knowledge to help their dc by themselves. There are plenty of bright working class pupils in primary who aren't even entered by their parents because they don't have time to coach for the test and plenty of middle class children who are coached through but wouldn't have stood a chance if it went on school grades.

Obviously state comprehensives. The ‘straight to work’ cohort are written off in the grammar system. Even the fact it’s called the ‘grammar system’ tell you everything you need to know about how the system treats those who don’t get in.

What structure do you think best allows all kids to achieve their potential both academic children (think Latin/Philosophy) and the “straight to work cohort”?

The catholic ones do better. On a recent Sunday Times assessment out of the top ten I think seven were catholic schools.

I went to two very well known grammar schools in NI, I did get a great education but it is not the be all and end all. It is also not comparable to private schools, which a different type of confidence and self-belief behind academics.
Some grammars are incredibly competitive get into, but this can be by popularity/location but they get their results by having the highest score admitted and not through anything special they are doing. Also pastoral care can be dreadful - well known at some of the name checked schools on this thread.

DH went to a non-selective secondary and got an equally solid education. The secondaries are also different from the UK comprehensive system and many achieve solid results.

Overall the national curriculum is slightly different here with higher focus on maths and English for primary, but most of it comes from the attitude to education as the majority of parents encourage the 11+/SEAG preparation and schools tend to have stricter discipline.

It is not all roses though, as obviously children are disadvantaged if the parents can’t commit to help at home/afford tutors and Protestant working class boys are one of the most disadvantaged groups in the UK (another legacy of the Troubles).

I would question who you think it is best for?

Is it best for SEN students who, last time I checked, were being educated under legislation which dates from 1995 and have no provision past the age of 18? (Other UK students have benefited from more recent legislation & have substantial support built in until they are 25).

Is it best for the children who are told that they have failed aged 10 or 11, while their peers gloat & punch the air with joy and go off to a school which is laden with considerably more privilege and future networking opportunities?

Is it best for the students who leave school with no qualifications?

Or is it just best for the students whose parents have paid for them to have tutoring and who have been able to go off and learn Latin and get top GCSE & A level results as a result of hothoused support?

This varies and is at the school’s discretion. My eldest did a few papers in Year 11 (equivalent to Year 10 in England) but the bulk of the exams were in Year 12. For example, the Spanish Department chose not to split the exams and the pupils completed all papers at the end of Year 12 exams. Basically, it gives schools flexibility. Having exams after one year is great for some children and terrible for others. My son definitely wasn’t ready to do a bunch of official exams in Year 11. He did far better in the Year 12. NI GCSE’s can absolutely be compared with those in the rest of the UK. The curriculum is very similar and standards here are high.

At university, I noted that private schools have an edge over NI grammar schools (despite popular opinion to the contrary). This was noticeable in terms of experiences, opportunities to study different things in depth and privately educated peers were massively endowed with confidence. Some of them had not got the slightest clue what they were talking about but, with bags of confidence, sounded impressive. :-D

Not clear what you mean here. England is awash with private sector opportunities and always has been. The workforce is not dependent on a depressed public sector. Also there is a culture of English employers treating employees a lot better. Some things never change.

As a working class girl from a single parent family, I was extremely fortunate to go to an excellent grammar in NI, back in the eighties. I had an excellent education which enabled me to go to Queen’s, and like a lot of us, escape to London after graduating. I doubt if I’d have managed it at a comp, and I am eternally grateful that I had the opportunity. My husband went to an expensive boarding school, but I think my education was easily as good as his. I would have loved my son to go to a similar school, but don’t live in the UK now.

NI has great results at one end of the scale but it also has the highest rate of kids leaving secondary education with no qualifications whatsoever, and an appalling record in terms of SEN support.

I agree with the poster upthread who suggested that it is the supportive culture from parents that is the difference - education was very much seen as an escape route from low incomes and teachers were to be respected. It still is from what I hear from family there.

I was at primary school up until 1987 and DD is shocked when I tell her about the monthly tests that we did in a state school and your results were linked to your desk position - 1st in class equal 1st desk and last in class equals last desk etc and this was after they had already streamed the year into two classes - one college bound and one tech college bound.

Are all grammars equal? Or are catholic or Protestant ones better?

And this is all true too you have to be very strategic if you want to get a job that’s not caring, teaching or farming here, all of mine went to England to work

I voted YANBU but there are many reasons why pupils from NI do so well. The grammar system is one! I felt so very lucky 🍀 that my children went to Grammar schools, got great degrees (as a college lecturer I can confirm that unis across the water LOVE NI students) and went on to fabulous careers. One of the biggest reasons pupils do so well is peer pressure in the grammar schools. It’s completely normal for the young people to always do homework and study because ALL their friends do and it’s very normal to get 12 GCSEs. I often wonder if the religious nature of the place has a bearing? As I’ve said as a further education lecturer here in NI even the students who come to the ‘tech’ have at least 5 GCSEs and my current class all have English and Maths, never display bad behaviour and will complain if they think you’ve not taught them enough!

The private sector isn’t a great place to work in NI, compared to England. People who want to stay there often have to work in the NHS, civil service or education. That’s where the best jobs are. I don’t think the same can be said for England.

Also, I’ve been told by university staff that statistically the secondary sector in NI spits out a lot of people who no qualifications whatsoever. There are, of course, lots of amazing secondary schools there too. There is a cultural awareness of how education can lead to upward social mobility, particularly among Catholics, who suffered significant discrimination in the past.

As an ex grammar school student of one of the schools above, I did well under the grammar school system. I recall the horrible time & atmosphere when a dyslexic sibling failed their test, aged 10. Said sibling is now extremely successful with a Maths degree from a Russell group University and a stellar career.

A lot of students are tutored into the grammar schools and I feel the system is unfair and writes a lot of students off at a very young age.

No, not from the US but spent my Elementary education there. Just a wierd, young, smart kid. Who passed the 11+ and yes I did indeed find that Grammar School was way wierd. But I'd lived in California and had visited the UK often so wierd was normal.

Also in Calif at the time they had a 'Mentally Gifted' test which was similar to the 11+ and if you passed you got to go do lots of fun stuff like make movies, ride on BART and visit woods.

So I passed both the fun test and the 11+. Decades later as a mature student at a UK Uni my lecturers were teaching me how only the well off kids went to Grammar Schools because their parents could afford tutoring.

I said no that wasn't true as I passed without without tutoring. The Lecturer's response was "well you must have been very smart then".

Well Dude yeah, that's the general idea isn't it?