Edwin Poots, DUP Assembly Member for Lagan Valley has re-affirmed the DUP’s commitment to the concept of academic selection. The DUP MLA said that any future educational arrangements must contain academic selection at their centre and called on those scare-mongering around the issue to recognise the political and legal reality that selection is enshrined in law and will remain in place.Speaking today Edwin Poots said:
“The DUP believes in academic selection. As a party we are committed to the concept fully. Indeed we placed such a high priority on saving our grammar schools that we made the retention of academic selection a key demand in the St. Andrews negotiations.
People need to remember what the education system would look like had we not got a devolved assembly at Stormont. We would not be having a discussion about the future of post-primary education because the issue would have been settled by the direct rule regime long ago. Academic selection would have been outlawed. Northern Ireland would be operating under the failed comprehensive model right now. Our grammar schools would have been abolished or forced to turn into fee-paying private schools where those with the most money got access to them. The DUP stopped that disastrous prospect from coming about. Even our harshest critics, including those who are attempting to whip up public concerns over this issue acknowledged at the time of the St. Andrews talks that the DUP saved academic selection.
The DUP is working to find a way forward on this issue – one that creates a truly holistic education system in which all of our children can achieve their full potential and which retains academic selection at the centre.”