Social Engineering?
Anyone who watched Stormont Live on Tuesday might have noticed Basil McCrea talking about plans from the Education Minister Caitriona Ruane for quotas being set for the proportion of children from lower income groups in each post primary school. I wondered aloud whether this would mean the "bussing" of children between affluent and less affluent areas. John O'Dowd did not deny the plan but pointed out that many children are bussed to school in any case and that, outside of some areas of North Down, most schools' catchment areas would include a mix of families from different income brackets.
To try to get to the bottom of this I have got my hands on some confidential notes from a briefing given by the Education Minister on Wednesday of last week. The minister talks about the challenge of addressing social inequality within the transfer procedure. she says that currently 1 in 6 post primary children are entitled to free school meals, but only 1 in 17 grammar school children are entitled, compared to 1 in 4 in the non grammar school sector.
She continues "let's say that 20% of an oversubscribed school's applications were from applicants entitled to Free School Meals. What if this meant that the school had an obligation, in law, to ensure that 20% of its places were allocated to Free School Meal entitled applicants. Such a "responsive" quota could clearly have a ceiling to prevent schools receiving large numbers of Free School Meal applicants incurring unreasonable obligations".
The ministers' critics argue that this would amount to "social engineering" but she obviously sees it as a way of "grappling with the challenges of social disadvantage".
The confidential note also reveals the minister's thinking about what to do with rural children. She appears to want to write into legislation a child's need to go to the "nearest suitable school" alongside geographical criteria such as distance to school, catchment area or parish. she thinks this would avoid her new transfer procedure becoming a "post code lottery".
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