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Education and Religion in Northern Ireland
Section 6: Pupil Performance

There exist a number of studies which have examined pupil performance in Northern Ireland and allow for a comparison of performance between pupils in Protestant and Catholic schools (eg Wilson, 1985; 1989; Sutherland and Gallagher, 1987; Gallagher, 1988; Osborne, 1986; Osborne and Cormack, 1989). However the most appropriate sources are those cited in the previous section, that is Osborne and Murray (1978) and Osborne (1985). 'These papers present school leaver statistics for 1971, 1975 and 1982. broken down by sex and the religious affiliation of the school, and permit the calculation of a measure of relative performance between the religious school systems. In addition, Osborne et al. (forthcoming) present school leaver statistics for 1987. School leaver statistics are an appropriate measure of performance because they indicate the educational output of the schools into the labour market, and the further or higher education systems. It should be noted that school leaver statistics do not deal with a single age cohort as pupils leave post-primary education between the ages of 16 and 18 years.


Relative performance

The school leaver statistics presented in these sources give the percentage of pupils achieving defined levels of performance, broken down by school type (grammar or secondary), sex and the religious affiliation of the school. Using these data it is possible to construct a measure of the performance of school leavers from Catholic schools relative to that of school leavers from Protestant schools. By this method, a relative performance score of zero would imply that a similar proportion of leavers from Catholic schools, as compared with leavers from Protestant schools, had this level of qualification. A relative performance score of less than zero would imply that a smaller proportion of leavers from Catholic schools had this level of performance, while a relative performance score of greater than zero would imply that a larger proportion of leavers from Catholic schools has this level of performance.

The next question concerns the level of qualification that should be used for measuring relative performance. Since the performance of pupils in grammar schools is very much higher than that of pupils in secondary schools it was decided to use different levels of qualification for both groups. For grammar pupils the calculation was based on the percentage of pupils who left school with one or more A Level passes: in 1982 this level of qualification was achieved by over 60% of the pupils. For secondary pupils the level was set at the achievement of one or more 0 Levels, or equivalent, a level which was achieved by over 30% of the pupils in 1982.


Grammar pupils with one or more A Level passes

Figure 6.1 presents the relative performance of boys and girls leaving Catholic grammar schools compared with boys and girls leaving Protestant grammar schools for 1971, 1975, 1982, and 1987. At this level of performance the graph indicates that the relative performance of boys leaving Catholic schools wAS slightly lower in 1971, about equal in 1975 and slightly higher in 1982 and 1987, as compared with boys leaving Protestant schools. By contrast, the relative performance of girls leaving Catholic schools was very much lower in 1971, slightly lower in 1975 and slightly higher in 1982; in 1987 the proportion of girls leaving Catholic grammar schools with one or more A Level passes was equal to that of girls leaving Protestant grammar schools.

Overall, figure 6.1 suggests that among grammar school leavers the proportion of leavers from Catholic schools with one or more A Level passes had been lower than that of leavers from Protestant schools in 1971, but by 1987 a position of relative parity had been achieved.


Secondary pupils with one or more O Level passes

Figure 6.2 presents comparable data for leavers from secondary schools, with the level of Qualification being set at one or more O Level passes. For girls a similar pattern can be observed, that is, from a lower relative performance in 1971 Catholic girl leavers had achieved parity by 1975 and maintained this in 1982 and 1987. 'Re pattern for boys, however, is somewhat different. In 1971 the relative performance of boys leaving Catholic schools was somewhat lower and in 1975 it was lower still. By 1982 the relative performance of Catholic boys had risen slightly, but remained below the 1971 rate. Only in 1987 was the proportion of boys leaving Catholic secondary schools with one or more 0 Level passes beginning to approach that of boys leaving Protestant secondary schools.

Among secondary school leavers with one or more 0 Levels then, the girls leaving Catholic schools had 'caught up' with the girls leaving Protestant schools by the middle of the 1970s. By contrast, boys leaving Catholic schools appear to be 'catching up' with boys leaving Protestant schools only by the latter half of the 1980s.


All pupils

The overall picture from these figures is that, apart from boys leaving secondary schools, the relative performance of pupils in Catholic schools was lower in 1971, but by 1982 had 'caught up' with that of pupils leaving Protestant schools. However, figure 6.3 presents a somewhat different picture. This figure is based on the relative performance of all school leavers (ie boys and girls in grammar and secondary schools) for both levels of qualification used above. The general picture revealed by figure 6.3 is that the relative performance of pupils leaving Catholic schools is catching up with that of pupils in Protestant schools, but nevertheless remained somewhat lower in 1987.

There are two factors which may explain this continuing overall difference in performance between school leavers from Protestant and Catholic schools. The first is related to the fact that over two-thirds of the pupils attend secondary schools, therefore the relative performance of boys in Catholic secondary schools will have had a significant impact on the overall picture. At least as important, however, is the fact, highlighted in section 3, that a higher proportion of pupils entering Protestant post-primary schools enter grammar schools, as compared with pupils entering Catholic post-primary schools. This is important because the average attainment of grammar pupils is higher than that of secondary pupils, even when allowance is made for Transfer status (Gallagher, 1988). The implication of this is that the pupils entering Catholic secondary schools who would have merited places in grammar schools have not achieved as well as they might have done, had places in grammar schools been available and sought.


Pupils with no qualifications

The final figure (figure 6.4) of this section looks at the relative extent of unqualified school leavers in both religious school systems. This is a particular problem in Northern Ireland where the proportion of pupils leaving school with no O Level or CSE qualifications, of any kind, has been and remains higher than in Britain as a whole: in 1986/7, for example, 21.9% of Northern Ireland school leavers had no GCE/CSE qualifications compared with 9.6% of leavers in England and 16.1% of leavers in Wales.

Figure 6.4 presents the relative extent of unqualified school from Catholic, as compared with Protestant, schools for boys and for girls in secondary schools, and for all pupils (the extent of unqualified school leavers in grammar schools is quite low, being less than 2.5% for all categories of pupil in 1987). Here a score of zero would suggest that the proportion of unqualified pupils leaving Catholic schools was similar to that of Protestant schools; a positive score would suggest that a higher proportion of pupils leaving Catholic schools had no qualifications. The pattern displayed by the figure 6.4 is quite clear: although it should be borne in mind that the extent of unqualified school leaving overall has declined, the relative extent of unqualified leaving is greater in Catholic schools. Furthermore, this gap between the religious school systems widened up to 1982 and had only narrowed slightly by 1987. This poorer relative performance for Catholic school leavers is greatest among boys in secondary schools.

This pattern of relative difference, in particular among the secondary boys, both in terms of academic achievement and extent of unqualified school leaving is somewhat paradoxical. Because of the higher percentage of 'qualified' pupils entering Catholic secondary schools, it might be expected that the overall ability level of these pupils would be higher. Following from this it might be expected that these pupils would leave school with higher qualifications than their counterparts in Protestant secondary schools. In fact the reverse appears to be the case among boys. This paradox is only partially explained by a greater proportion of boys in Catholic secondary schools staying on to take other examinations. For the 1982 school leavers there were more boys leaving Catholic secondary schools with 1 or more A Level passes, compared with their Protestant counterparts (3.8% vs. 3.4%), but the difference and the number of pupils involved were small (see also Gallagher, 1988 p 63-65). This appears to be an area requiring further investigation.


Other factors influencing performance

Osborne and Murray (1978), Osborne (1985) and Osborne et al. (forthcoming) used data for the entire school populations for the years examined. Apart from pupils' sex, however, they had no information on individual pupils. For this reason they were unable to examine the effect of other variables, such as social class, on the performance of pupils in the religious school systems (Osborne, 1985 p88-89). Using a sample of some 1,500 pupils who transferred from primary to post-primary education in 1981, Gallagher (1988) was able to examine the effect of these variables. Gallagher found that performance at public examinations was significantly affected by transfer grade at 11, sex, the religious affiliation of the post-primary school attended, social background and the school type (either grammar or secondary). A pupil would achieve a higher performance at 16 if that pupil obtained a high transfer grade at 11 rather than a lower one, was a girl rather than a boy, went to a Protestant post-primary school rather than a Catholic one, was from a middle-class background rather than a working-class background, and went to a grammar school rather than a secondary school. Of all these factors the least important was the religious affiliation of the school.


Further research areas

School leaver statistics are made available by the DENI and will continue to be monitored by researchers. Perhaps the key area for research arising form this section is the poorer performance of pupils in Catholic schools relative to pupils in Protestant schools. A detailed investigation is required to uncover some of the reasons for this continuing disparity.