This has been a period of great turbulence for all teachers, as we have grappled with the complexities of remote teaching, assessment preparation and home schooling. In the middle of this, here in Northern Ireland we have been thrown into a needless squabble with our own Department of Education. 

In late January, buried in paragraph 7 and 8 of a Department of Education circular, news came that Northern Irish students were to be banned from sitting any and all courses offered by WJEC, the Welsh exam board. This decision had an impact here in Northern Ireland, where a number of schools choose to teach WJEC courses. Particularly at A Level, CCEA – our home board – have significant gaps in their curricular offer, and WJEC courses that fill these gaps have the advantage that they fit the modular structure that English boards moved away from.

The Department justified the move over the Welsh government’s earlier decision to cancel summer exams, claiming it had caused an undue amount of stress and uncertainty to teachers in Northern Ireland. Instead, we as teachers would just have to find alternative courses, design new content and adapt our A Level curricular offer.

Response to the decision

Surely there had been some mistake. The following week saw a flurry of letters to Peter Weir, Stormont’s Education Minister. First of these was the Governing Bodies Association – the representative organization for the voluntary sector of Northern Ireland’s schools – who expressed their surprise and dismay and the unjustified narrowing of curricular options for students.

The NI Teacher’s Council highlighted the lack of consultation with teachers in the process of the decision. Subject representative bodies such as NI Drama, of which I am a part, communicated their shock at the disruption caused by a decision made ostensibly on our behalf. 

The signatories to these letters were not only from teachers, but universities and arts organisations as well. The story was picked up by BBC Northern Ireland. At the following meeting of the Education Select Committee, we were delighted to hear our questions put directly to the Minister. And he seemed to open the door to changing his mind. His main concern was that the Welsh Government may move away from exams in the future, insinuating there were indications from WJEC that this may be the case. In reality, the organization has never so much as considered this course of action. It seems that a welcome reverse must be made – but it has not happened yet.

Disappointment with the decision-making process

Should this be the end of it? We certainly hope so. But there is deep disappointment with the decision-making process the Minister has taken to date. Mr Weir has pledged to await the results of an independent review into “alternative awarding arrangements” in Wales that has in reality already concluded. It recommended that exams be maintained as the best of the available methods of assessment for A Level courses. 

The Minister is also worried about any future moves away from exams in Wales. But throughout this process WJEC have made it clear that Northern Ireland is free to decide how students on WJEC courses be assessed – sticking with exams if desired – and it would work with our Department of Education to ensure these assessments had parity across the cohort. It has also expressed frustration with the Department’s approach to negotiating and discussing solutions, finding it uncommunicative and uncooperative. 

The need for better leadership

We have lived through a seismic change in educational delivery. We are battling a pandemic that has challenged every aspect of how we organise teaching and learning. On one hand we teachers are proud to have responded so well. On the other, Peter Weir’s record on the pandemic is appalling – from efforts to stall the first school lockdown, to a failure to anticipate the grading crises, and finally dithering to a useless compromise on grammar school entry tests. 

As regards the WJEC decision, the Minister seems to have staked everything on trying to ensure exams took place in Northern Ireland. For whatever reason, he has ended up using NI students as bartering chips in a fantasy flight of brinksmanship. It is impossible to see who benefits from this. Put simply, he has staked his flag on a procedural issue, and tried to breathe into it a symbolic importance that is lost on anyone who works in the sector and is not noticed by anyone else. 

To save face, he has manufactured criteria that WJEC already meet in the hopes of presenting his U-Turn as a victory. Our students are still banned from WJEC courses until he feels he can reverse this blunder with minimum fuss. It is not good enough. More than ever  the interests of learners need to be prioritised before jumping into another attempt at bureaucratic pugilism.

Mr Weir has come to symbolise the lack of purpose at the heart of much of our thinking on education in Northern Ireland. The pandemic has shown that many of our public bodies exist only in order to continue to exist, having long since lost sight of their duties of service. By holding them to account in public, we show that we deserve better than this.  As we emerge from this crisis we must make sure that we as voters choose better leaders to hold power. Let’s hope now that the views of teachers, academics and Arts specialists are taken on board, the qualifications are restored, and we learn to lead through consensus, negotiation and by listening to people.

A longer version of this article was originally posted on the National Education Union (NEU) Blog.