Robert McCartney QC, chair of the National Grammar School Association, responds to Mervyn Storey:

The comments of Mervyn Storey of the DUP on my speech at the TUV conference demonstrate the superficial nature of his understanding of the present educational crisis. The DUP did succeed in preventing the formal abolition of the principal of selection as the price of signing up to the St. Andrews Agreement.  The draft clause to which Mr Storey refers was deliberately inserted by Secretary of State Peter Hain as a piece of political blackmail to which the DUP succumbed. The DUP failed totally however to secure any alternative method of implementing the selection principle following Sinn Fein’s abolition of the 11-plus exam. The principle of selection is valueless unless there is a method for its implementation.

On the other hand what Sinn Fein secured via the Education Order (N.I.) 2006 was a foundation curriculum designed to be untestable. Unless primary schools deliberately flout the Department’s ministerial guidelines which directs them to teach to the new curriculum, and instead prepare children for one or both of the unregulated tests, the whole system of selection will inevitatibly continue to fail.

The fact that the grammar schools have provided unregulated tests owes little to any political effort by the DUP. Indeed some would argue that the existence of a number of tests has provoked increased criticism of both the principle and the method of selection and has fuelled support for those opposed to them.

Mr Storey personally gave the writer, in the presence of several witnesses, a categorical assurance that the DUP would never support the establishment of the all-embracing Education & Skills Authority (ESA), a body with the most comprehensive control of education throughout Northern Ireland. Moreover ESA is headed by Mr Gavin Boyd an avowed opponent of selective education and one of the architects of the untestable foundation curriculum. Yet within weeks of Mr Storey’s pledge the DUP was actively supporting ESA, presumably as some form of trade-off to induce their partners Sinn Fein to return to the Executive.

The failed Pupil Profile was widely acknowledged as the non-selective replacement to the 11-plus. When it proved both defective and unworkable as a method of matching a pupil to an appropriate school, an attempt was made to improve it by attaching a very expensive form of computer assessment and re-labelling the process as the Annual Report. This addition, code named Incas has also proved to be equally defective. Mr Storey’s Education Committee which included Jeffrey Donaldson MP MLA endorsed the introduction of Incas. It is difficult to understand how endorsing support for a repackaged Pupil Profile can be a defence of an objective test.

The above are but two examples, of at the very least, an ambivalent attitude by the DUP to the education issue. Few doubt the objective of the DUP which is to remain in power. This can only be achieved while Sinn Fein remains the DUP’s coalition partners. Inevitably education and with it the principle of selection will like so many  other issues become the subject of compromise to achieve that political objective of retaining power in the Assembly.

Mr Storey’s personal remarks putting my integrity on the educational issue and my motives in question are beneath contempt. I am sure that my character and personal integrity will be judged favourably by the electorate when compared with the political apostasy of the DUP leadership.