Admissions

Transfer 2012

Having given careful consideration to the Minister’s Guidance for Transfer 2012, recently published by the Department of Education , the Board of Governors has resolved to maintain academic selection in its admissions procedure for the following reasons:
• Bangor Grammar School has traditionally been an academically selective school and the heart of its ethos has lain in enabling boys from diverse social backgrounds to achieve their academic and intellectual potential and, by so doing, attend university.
• The skills of Bangor Grammar School’s staff are geared to boys who are academically competent.
• Academic selection is lawful.
• In every available survey so far undertaken, including the household consultation conducted in 2002 by the Department of Education, academic selection was the preferred wish of the majority.
• Academically selective schools have added value to the whole of the Northern Ireland educational system and have enabled more pupils from socially disadvantaged backgrounds to enter higher education than has been the case in England and Wales.

In determining how it will devise its selection process, the Board has resolved, therefore, that the first criterion should be academic ability as measured in the AQE CEAs. If a situation arises that there are more applicants who have obtained the same AQE CEA score than there are places available, priority will be achieved through the application of non-academic criteria. In determining the list of non-academic criteria to be applied, the Board of Governors has given further careful consideration to the Minister’s Guidance for Transfer 2012.

The Board agrees with the Minister that in the selection procedure, some significant account has to be given to children who suffer social disadvantage which has inhibited their academic progress in primary school. It is reasonable to expect such children to benefit proportionately more from immersion in an academic atmosphere at post-primary level. The Department’s recommended measure for determining social disadvantage is entitlement to Free School Meals and the Board therefore proposes to afford a significant measure of priority on the behalf of such children to redress the social, and consequential academic, imbalance.

The underlying rationale of the Minister’s choice of approved criteria expressed in his guidance is that of community and his desire that post-primary schools should recognise as a priority the needs of the children in the community of which they are a part. The Board shares his view in principle, but does not entirely agree with the practical outworking of that view in his choice of criteria. The School will retain its close association with its group of regular feeder primary schools within its reasonably small catchment; it also accepts that it is appropriate for families to wish to send siblings to the same school. None of these criteria in any way conflicts with the Minister’s approved list of criteria. The School believes, however, at the same time, that its sense of community is enhanced by acknowledging the loyalty of families over time and that there is little to distinguish the prioritising of boys with brothers at the School now from boys whose brothers or fathers attended the School in the past. This acknowledges a deeper sense of community, one rooted in identity over time (in tradition) as well as identity characterised in location.

For nearly seventy years, the Preparatory Department, Connor House, was always an integral part of the School. Although Connor House is now regrettably closed, the Grammar School feels that it is appropriate to retain past attendance at Connor House as a non-academic criterion to acknowledge the traditionally close affiliation between Preparatory Department and  School and the contribution Connor House made to the School community as a whole. A measure of priority will be afforded to those children who were at Connor House on the date when its closure was formally announced.