Transfer test: RBAI to use primary school test scores

One of NI's most prominent grammar schools has said it will use primary school test scores to decide which pupils to admit in 2021.

Royal Belfast Academical Institution said it would "adopt other academic criteria for admission to the school".

That is despite the vast majority of grammar schools not planning to use academic criteria this year.

The tests run by the AQE and the Post-Primary Transfer Consortium (PPTC) were cancelled in early 2021.

As a result, grammar schools - which are attended by about 45% of post-primary pupils in Northern Ireland - are drawing up new criteria for how they will select pupils in 2021.

Banbridge Academy, Bangor Grammar, Belfast Royal Academy and Regent House are among those to have published their admissions criteria for 2021.

None of those schools are using academic criteria, but pupils applying will have to have entered the AQE transfer test.

Some other grammars like Thornhill College and St Columb's College in Londonderry, which decided in 2020 not to use the PPTC transfer test in 2021, have also published admissions criteria.

In a statement to BBC News NI, Royal Belfast Academical Institution (RBAI) said it was "committed to the principle that a child should be placed in a school which offers a curriculum best suited to the aptitudes of that child".

"For this reason RBAI believes that the use of academic criteria for admission to grammar schools is the outworking of that principle," the school said.

"Accordingly, in the absence of AQE and PPTC tests for admissions, RBAI will adopt other academic criteria for admission to the school."

The school is planning to use standardised scores in the Progress Test in English (PTE) and Progress Test in Maths (PTM) which pupils sat in Primary Five to decide which pupils to admit.

RBAI said that school year was "the most recent one which has not been interrupted".

Pupils scores in practice AQE or PPTC transfer tests taken under supervision by a teacher will also be taken into account.

"RBAI is satisfied that this is a reasonable and robust way of selecting pupils based on academic aptitude in the absence of a bespoke test," the school said.

RBAI normally admits 150 pupils each year, but received 227 applications for places in 2020.

The admissions criteria for all post-primary schools will be published on the Education Authority (EA) website on 2 February.

The UUP assembly member Robbie Butler had proposed that pupils' results in tests in primary schools could be given to parents and then used by grammar schools to decide which children get a place.

But Education Minister Peter Weir had said there would be "major problems" with that approach.