MORE THAN 15,000 primary school children in the North have taken the final paper of the 11-plus transfer test.
It is the final time the examination will be used to determine which pupils go to grammar schools.
However, many teachers and parents are worried that plans for next year's schools transfer process have not been made sufficiently clear.
The exam has been abolished by Education Minister Caitriona Ruane, who is opposed to "academic selection", especially at age 11.
The 11-plus has been used since 1948 to determine the top 25 per cent of exam candidates who will be offered the bulk of grammar school places.
Originally it was seen as a method of allowing pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds to attend grammar schools which previously had charged fees.
Some grammar schools have vowed to continue with their own form of academic testing to select entrants following abolition in defiance of the Minister's policy.
The Minister has compromised, allowing a form of academic selection which can be used over the next three years before it is eventually phased out.
She is allowing grammar schools to use a new form of testing to allocate half of their places initially pending total abolition. The other half will be allocated following applications based on informed parental choice.
Yesterday's 11-plus candidates must wait until February for the results from the two papers they sat this month and then a further four months to be sure that the second-level schools they apply to can offer them a place.
Ms Ruane's department has also announced that a new educational organisation due to bring together a host of existing boards and bodies has been delayed for more than a year.
She wants to establish a new Education and Skills Authority replacing several education and library boards as well as bodies governing the Catholic sector and second-level curriculum. The creation of the new authority was approved on Thursday by the Stormont Executive at its first meeting in nearly five months.
Education reform remains one of the most contentious issues dividing the main unionist and nationalist parties in the Executive.
It has been on the agenda of a series of meetings between them which have been aimed at resolving key divisions over policy.