SINN Féin’s Elisha McCallion said improvements in educational attainment in recent years serve to underpin the fact that academic selection is both wrong and unnecessary.
She was speaking after the Association of Quality Education (AQE) and the Post-Primary Transfer Consortium (PPTC) issued a statement saying they want to produce a common test.
No agreement has been reached yet and it could be at least two years before the one-exam can be sat by primary seven children:
The former Mayor of Derry said: “Sinn Féin believes strongly that academic selection in our schools has a hugely negative impact on children.
“We are not alone in our opposition to academic selection. Many educationalists, parents, teaching unions, and both children’s and human rights organisations also oppose academic selection.
“The Human Rights Commission in the North has called for the abolition of academic selection as it is socially divisive and not in the educational interests of children or young people.
“Sinn Féin believe that education should be about nurturing the individual talents of the child or young person.
“The huge improvements in educational attainment under successive Sinn Féin education ministers demonstrates clearly that academic selection is wrong and unnecessary.”