Helen Armstrong lives in the North West and is a psychotherapist, executive coach and trainer.
Here we go again on the Transfer Test merry-go-round as children all over NI have just sat the first test of 2024. I want to continue the conversation from my first article at the beginning of this year around why I think the test is a really bad idea not just for our children but for our society as a whole.
He coped with it well at the beginning, my youngest twin, when he found out he was going to the local High school and not with his twin brother to the Grammar. His reaction felt genuine and not a façade of being OK – I take some kudos for this in that I felt I had prepped him well emotionally for this possible outcome. As outlined in my previous article, my main ‘go to’ comments were around his age and being far too young to be tested on anything and that a test of 56 Maths and English questions says little about intelligence and even more so, ability.
Such an event could easily have been an ACE; this is a psychological term and short for an ‘adverse childhood experience’; research shows that the transfer test ticks all the boxes for this category, traumatising children by exposing them to extreme pressure at such a young age where there is a direct correlation between anxiety/stress/poor self-esteem and not doing well in this test. You’d be forgiven for thinking I am totally over-exaggerating here and that surely this category only belongs to the poor wee critters on the Gaza Strip or in Yemen. Thanks to more advanced research into trauma in the 21st Century, it is now recognised there is indeed a whole spectrum to this; trauma can be more subtle – it varies from war and combat to being put under too much pressure or being severely misunderstood in our younger years: anything that dysregulates our nervous system and switches us on ‘on’ and into flight or fight mode is an adverse experience and one that our emotional memories will keep the score on.
Even if you do pass, you are ultimately being subjected to a very unhealthy form of competitiveness; research shows that it kills academic motivation in the classroom and there must be nowhere more competitive than all the P6/7 classrooms at the minute. Success should equate to growth and trying hard, NOT to outperforming your counterparts.
I would be able to sit here and take this if the research carried out by the originator of the transfer test, Sir Cyril Burt had not been discredited for his findings on many an occasion. Burt tried to make out that intelligence was a fixed entity and the best thing to do was therefore to sort out the wheat from the chaff at a young age. Nicholas Macintosh, a British experimental psychologist summed up the evidence against Burt in 1995, describing his data as ‘so woefully inadequate and riddled with error’. Burt’s ideas around a fixed intelligence are now widely regarded in the world of psychology as totally fabricated and he is at the centre of the biggest case of academic fraud in the 20th century.
So, what the heck are we doing in this next century to our kids? It just seems incredulous to believe that ability is a fixed, non-changing entity, yet here we are still churning out the tests that rest on Burt’s ‘laurels’. We have put the grammar school system on an elitist pedestal in the belief that hothousing our children is the best thing. Have we gone mad? From what I can gather, Paul Givan continues to say it has nothing to do with his department and is a matter of ‘ parental choice’: as a parent all I can say is that I have felt no sense of this choice, only a sense of despair in trying to navigate an out-of-date, draconian and harmful system.
It would be foolish of me also not to mention the fact that this issue is driven by the fear amongst the middle classes that their kid won’t get the ‘ best’ education if they surrender the grammar school system. It’s nice in a way that they may genuinely have their best interests at heart but I’m asking this tranche of our society to think deeper about these issues; to try and step back and see the bigger picture – the transfer test divides our society even more than it already is, rendering it even more impossible to have a healthy one: everyone suffers.
” So, you’re the family failure then”.
A few weeks into the term and these were the exact words uttered from the mouth of his classmate when my son told her his siblings all went to the adjacent grammar school. I would be lying if I said my son hadn’t been badly affected by such a statement: the tears and feelings of inadequacy have come through and I stand with my heart near enough broken, at the precipice of wondering will he too fall into the ACE category. I don’t blame this other pupil personally: she is a victim of the system as much as my son is and such words are symptomatic of the state of play here and that state of play is not good. Indeed, this incident shows just how far we still have to go as a society. If we want a healthy society, one of the key building blocks to this is surely a healthy, fair and equitable school system that averts division at a social and academic level.
The neo- liberal world we live in of the ‘ haves’ and ‘have nots’ is wrecking our society right in front of our eyes and feeling a failure if you don’t get the test is part of this boiling pot.; low self-esteem, comparison sickness, high levels of anxiety and overthinking, depression and lack of motivation are just a few of the symptoms I witness every day in my work as a psychotherapist and coach. Surely a post-primary school system that doesn’t finish children’s self-esteem off at the first hurdle and can nurture every member of our society (not just the select few that have the money to pay for tuition), is as good a starting point as any to help address these kinds of sicknesses. After all children spend a large tranche of their time at school and after all, children are our future.
I have joined the Northern Ireland charity, Reclaim the Enlightenment (RtE henceforth) as I finally found a group of people, inspired by the liberal, radical thinking of the 18th century, to whom I feel a real kinship: these pioneers of that time wanted to bring about radical social change for the benefit of everyone in society, not just the elite few. They had a keen interest in education and deeply believed in a fair, equitable, child-centred and non-sectarian system. An education working group has been set up recently within RtE to campaign for a more inclusive post-primary sector and with the main aim of ending this test. Come join us if you are interested in spreading the word and helping us in our mission by signing our petition.
Nelson Mandela said ‘There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats it’s children’ – so let’s start by avoiding this psychological harm, creating an equal playing field for all and ending this madness.
Thank you, Slugger, for this second attempt.
This is a guest slot to give a platform for new writers either as a one off, or a prelude to becoming part of the regular Slugger team.
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