Catriona Ruane is on a mission to build a new education regime in Northern Ireland, but to do that, the Sinn Féin minister knows she must cross political fault lines to tackle a system that she says is unequal and divisive, writes

Louise Holden

ON THE steps of Stormont Castle, the North's Minister for Education passes through a group of visiting schoolchildren admiring the commanding view of Belfast City. "What do you think of academic selection?" she asks their teacher. "Sooner rid the better," comes his reply.

Catriona Ruane is consensus-gathering at every turn these days. She wants to build a new education regime in Northern Ireland. The Sinn Féin minister from Mayo has inherited a system that she regards as unequal and divisive.

"There are huge levels of stress in the system. Northern Ireland tells one of the greatest tales of underachievement in the OECD," says Ruane with regret. She is highly critical of the North's schooling culture, and damning figures support her view.

One in four Northern Irish children leaves school without GCSE qualifications in English or maths. Employers' groups complain of endemic low literacy and the province fares badly in international skills surveys.

However, those who excel in Northern Irish state exams do better than their counterparts in the rest of the UK. Ruane is determined to disassemble a system that privileges one sizable minority and condemns another. It all hangs, she maintains, on the "11+" - the exam used by post-primary schools to select students.

"Dividing children along perceived academic lines at age 11 has led to deep inequalities in our system," says Ruane, who has announced the scrapping of the 11+ exam in 2009. "We are telling the majority of our children that they are failures if they don't do well in the 11+. We are forcing educational paths on them at a very young age. Our children have not been well served by this system."

Ruane needs consensus to put things right, but not everyone likes her approach. The scrapping of the 11+, first announced by Martin McGuinness in 2000, has been strongly opposed by members of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), especially the charismatic Sammy Wilson, who fears that the absence of academic selection will lead to chaotic enrolment procedures. He has accused Ruane of removing a working system with no solid alternative in mind.

However, Ruane is unbowed. She believes that schools should work together locally to find solutions to postprimary enrolment that work in favour of the student. She has appointed regional committees, made up of leading educational figures, to examine the best alternatives based on local needs. Her ability to build practical enrolment procedures over the next 12 months will be the true test of the viability of her proposals. The current system, she says, cannot hold much longer.

"The number of post-primary students is in decline - we have 50,000 empty desks in the system. Schools compete for resources and teachers on the basis of numbers. The grammar schools are moving "down" the line of 11+ results to keep their numbers up, and starving the secondary sector of students."

A similar phenomenon haunts the state post-primary sector in the south. As numbers fall, voluntary secondary schools, especially in Dublin, are taking the most academically able students and leaving state schools to deal with smaller numbers and more diverse learning needs. The difference is that academic selection is already forbidden by the Department of Education and Science, although there are those who maintain that it goes on behind closed doors.

Ruane wants to abolish academic selection completely in the North and give parents a choice of schooling based on the needs of the child rather than the results of an exam. She wants to leave decisions about subject choices until the age of 14. Ruane also hopes to see mixed attendance at local schools, rather than the current situation that sees many young people travelling out of their communities to access schools that meets specific academic and cultural norms.

THE DUP IS not the only group she has to win over. Individual grammar schools are not enjoying the new vista. Recently, the board of management of Lumen Christi College in the city of Derry announced its intention to hold its own academic selection tests in place of the 11+. It's not the first school to make such a threat, but it is the first Catholic school to do so.

As a Sinn Féin minister, Ruane is well aware of the political fault lines she will need to cross to make her vision for schooling a reality. "The DUP and the UUP [Ulster Unionist Party] say that they support academic selection at an official level, but on the ground I hear different stories," says Ruane. "The majority of parents in the province have children in secondary schools, and they want to see an end to academic selection. The fact is, many teachers and principals in grammar schools know that change has to come. We can't allow social apartheid to continue because some people have a fear of change."

RUANE HAS spent most of her working life in the NGO sector and has an appetite for overhaul. Through her work for aid agencies in Central America, she's comfortable confronting entrenched positions. She started her career as a professional tennis player, but rejected a tennis scholarship in Chicago in favour of development work in Guatemala, at the age of 21. That's when her political sensibility began to take shape, but Ruane only took an interest in party-politics when she joined Sinn Féin five years ago..

"After working in conflict resolution situations all over the world, I returned to Ireland 20 years ago to find silence on the subject of our own conflict, especially in the south," says Ruane, who spent her childhood in Dublin and was schooled in St Louis, Rathmines. "That's when I started to take an interest in politics at home. I felt we had lessons to learn from the global south. After five years working with Féile an Phobail in Belfast, bringing people from all over the world to see this city, I decided to get involved in party politics in the North."

Ruane says that Sinn Féin was the natural fit for her. "I saw Sinn Féin as the most progressive party in the areas that were important to me - women's participation, north-south relations, community representation and disadvantage. I also support the concept of a united Ireland. It's not a value I've held all my life - to be honest, it didn't really enter my thinking until I came to live in Belfast."

Since joining the party, Ruane has tried to apply the principles of development work in a bureaucratic environment. "I come from a can-do sector, where people fight hard for what they believe in," says Ruane. "In the civil service, people start by telling you what you can't do. I start from somewhere else."

The 11+ is going, but Ruane will have to work very hard to eradicate academic selection when the parliament, and the education sector, is so deeply divided on the issue. Her determination has been variously interpreted; as "visionary" by one commentator, "discourteous" by another. Most observers agree, however, that the issue of academic selection sets a tough examination for the power-sharing project in Northern Ireland.

NI education: The hot topics

Abolition of the 11+

Sinn Féin has announced the abolition of the academic selection exam for post-primary schools. The DUP, among others groups, is opposed.

Underachievement

One quarter of all students in the North leaves school without basic GCSE qualifications in English or maths.

Empty desks

Numbers are falling and there are about 50,000 unfilled places in post- primary. Rationalisation

is needed, but which schools should go?

North-South collaboration

Especially on the issues of ethnic diversity, Irish language and autism - Caitriona Ruane and Mary Hanafin will attend a joint conference on autism in Croke Park, Dublin, next month. Ruane has just launched a joint "Toolkit for Diversity" along with Minister of State at the Department of Justice, Conor Lenihan.

Integrated schooling

Most schools in the North are managed by church groups. There is a push to develop the small but growing integrated sector (currently around 60 schools).

Irish-language schools

Demand for Irish-medium schools is growing, especially as Irish is not currently taught at primary level.

Reform of the A-Levels

Ruane would like to see an increase the number of subjects studied at upper post-primary level.

Catriona Ruane: Factfile

Current Position

Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) and Northern Ireland's Minister for Education

Political Party

Sinn Féin

Born

Swinford, Co Mayo

Education

St Louis, Rathmines, Dublin; Convent of Mercy, Castlebar, Co Mayo

Career

• Professional tennis player and Ireland international at junior, under-21 and senior level.
• Human rights and development worker, El Salvador.
• Latin American Project Officer, Trocaire.
• Director of Féile an Pobail (West Belfast Festival). Founder of the Belfast St Patrick's Day Parade.
• Chair of the "Bring Them Home Campaign" on behalf of the Columbia Three.
• MLA South Down, Sinn Féin's Equality and Human Rights spokesperson.

Personal life

A gaelgeoir with two children in an Irish- language school in Co Down.