Rearguard action
Religious schools will endure in Ulster. Academic selection may not
ALTHOUGH academically selective, state-funded grammar schools were purged from most of mainland Britain in the 1960s and 1970s, they clung on in Ulster. And with good reason. Many are wonderful, and the Catholic ones in particular have been a route to the upper middle class for many clever children from that historically downtrodden group.
Yet these schools are also part of an education system that remains starkly divided on confessional lines. More than 90% of Northern Irish children attend schools that are mainly Catholic or mainly Protestant. At Lumen Christi in Derry, one of the best Catholic grammar schools, all pupils are encouraged to study religious education up to age 15, learning, for example, the history of clerical vestments.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Rearguard action"
From the January 31st 2015 edition
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