Seanm
pfm Member
Unlike the UK, Northern Ireland (which operates a separate Education Authority) never got rid of grammar schools, and as a result has some of the best secondary schools in the UK. These schools routinely send kids from ordinary working-class backgrounds to Oxbridge. (It's one of the oddities of Norn Iron that Belfast, a working-class town, has these brilliant schools and a first-rate university and nowhere for the products of these institutions to go, apart from away from Norn Iron).
I never went to one of these schools (didn't get to do the 11-plus because of my odd birthdate, of all things), but I'm glad they exist and keep doing an outstanding job. I got to go to university because of a particularly stubborn headmaster, who, refused permission by the Education Department to do the NI version of O- and A-level GCEs, outflanked it by enrolling us for London University GCEs.
In the poisoned atmosphere of Northern Ireland, the schools often do an outstanding job of reconciling the communities. One of them, Rainey Endowed in Magherafelt, Co. Tyrone, has always educated both Catholics and Protestants. One of my university friends, who went on to become Rainey's senior chemistry teacher, had in one of his classes a kid whose RUC father had been murdered by the IRA and another whose IRA father was interned in Long Kesh.
I suspect your experiences were exceptional. I went to a grammar school in Northern Ireland. Many of my friends there had siblings who for one reason or another failed the 11-plus, and went to secondary schools. Their respective career paths were exactly those you would expect in a country where manufacturing has been destroyed: the professions on the one hand, service industry, unemployment, in some cases early death and worse on the other. Fate determined at 11 years old.