The Education Minister has announced a new plan which will ‘transform’ the teaching of children in Northern Ireland in decades to come.
The new ‘TransformED’ strategy sets out a 10-point plan which Paul Givan said will leave Northern Ireland with a world-leading education system based on a knowledge-rich approach to learning.
Setting out the most systematic programme of transformation in over a generation, the strategy will focus on the core areas of curriculum, assessment, qualifications, school improvement and tackling educational disadvantage. Reform in each of these areas will be underpinned by significant investment in high-quality teacher professional development.
“This strategy represents a break with what has gone before,” the Minister said, who dismissed a call in the Assembly from Sinn Fein MLA Pat Sheehan to abandon academic selection.
“For too long we have focused on structural issues in Northern Ireland and simply relied on our highly qualified workforce to continue to produce excellent outcomes.
“The heart of education lies in the classroom. We need to put aside these tired, old conversations and focus on what children learn, how and for what purpose.
“Now we must focus on investing in and supporting high-quality professional development for our school leaders and teachers and relentlessly improving curriculum, pedagogy and assessment.”
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The strategy is accompanied by a 10-point plan for delivering educational excellence, which draws together the key commitments.
The Education Minister continued: “To ensure that our education system is world-class, we must be willing to learn from the best-performing education systems globally.
“This new strategy sets out our determination to learn in a sophisticated way from those countries which outperform us at present. It identifies the core elements of excellence that are common across high-performing jurisdictions and uses these to inform the way forward in Northern Ireland.
“I look to the Republic of Ireland with envy on how they have managed to drive up their standards” he added.
“We have to understand where we are right now and we have been falling behind countries which have taken a knowledge-based approach to learning, focusing on the fundamentals of numeracy and literacy.
“Once delivered I have no doubt this evidence-based approach will make a significant difference, but this is only the beginning.
“To tackle the weaknesses currently identified within our system, we have published a ten-point plan that has been developed from learning from the most effective and fastest improving school systems in the world.
“Over the coming weeks, I will make a series of important announcements about assessment, professional learning, literacy and numeracy and school improvement. The work on these is already at an advanced stage.”
‘I look to the Republic of Ireland with envy on how they have managed to drive up their standards’
As work begins to implement the strategy, two school principals’ panels have been set up to inform discussions on key policy issues and to offer insights and advice.
The Minister added: “Our aim is to ensure our education system is truly world-leading — excellent, equitable, inclusive and able to meet the needs of all children and young people in an ever-changing world. This ambitious reform programme has the potential to transform education in Northern Ireland for a generation.”
Asked if following an ‘evidence-based’ approach’ included following the evidence that academic selection should be ended, the Minister replied:
“We need to focus and support every school to ensure every child has the best education.
“It is too easy to be drawn into a debate on the merits of academic selection. The focus is on improving achievement in every school.”
“What we have to see within our society is that every single child can perform well with clear, explicit, consistent teaching, consistent structure and approach across all our schools. That will drive up standards for every single child.”
“This is something which should unite all of us across this Assembly.”
Asked whether teacher workload concerns had been considered in setting out the new strategy, the Minister added: “We do need to address that. Working with the unions we have identified issues and set out a timeline to address those issues.”
A review of the school curriculum is also ongoing, with the panel expected to report back to the Department of Education in May, though the Minister said it remained ‘deeply regrettable’ that the programme of school inspections was currently not happening due to action short of strike amidst the ongoing teacher pay and workload dispute.