The view from the front door of Portora Royal school is one of the finest in Enniskillen. The eye is carried along the twists of Lough Erne and the whole town unfolds in front of you. There is a sense of inclusion looking down on the County town and that is something which no doubt pleases Neil Morton, the School's Principal. Indeed if he could see the whole of the county it would be even better.

A practical man, Mr Morton has observed the events of the past few weeks with a growing sense of frustration. 31 Grammar schools, of which Portora is not one, have intimated their intention to establish their own common entrance exam while in return the Minister for Education, Catriona Ruane, has lambasted these schools and their decision as elitist and selfish. One gets the impression that Mr Morton rather thinks that the bigger picture is being ignored in the frenzy of discussion centred around academic selection.

Sitting in his Principal's office he shakes his head and looks out the window at his pupils as they leave school after another day's education and bemoans the fact that a huge opportunity to get the education system right is being missed;

" We have been railroaded into this big argument about the 11 plus and academic selection which is really just taking the focus away from where the debate should be," he explains before adding some flesh to his argument;

"There are much bigger issues at stake. There is a new economy and in many ways a new society out there," he says pointing outside. "Yet we are still educating a lot of our young people to leave Northern Ireland and that is nowhere more evident than here in Fermanagh. What we should be doing is seeing how our education system should fit into our new society and that debate should be rich and wide ranging but instead the debate is being driven by the single issue of academic selection."

So what of the Association for Quality Education, the lobby group speaking on behalf of the 31 schools?

"It is a very small lobby group which does not have the support which the noise it makes justifies. I mean what does their name even mean, 'The Association for Quality Education', are they suggesting that only Grammar schools can provide a quality education? It is a very blinkered view that they are portraying and I feel that they are going to find themselves receiving a lot of criticisms and accusations of being elitist."

And Mr Morton believes there is a huge paradox in the logic of a number of these 31 schools;

QUOTA

"If you look at the 31 schools quite a number will not have made their quota on first preference. In other words they are waiting to see what they get from kids who have applied to other schools as their first preference, so I have to ask who are these schools selecting against as they are not over subscribed as it stands and even if they are it will only be by a very small number."

He goes on to claim that this form of selection is not in the best interests of the pupils;

"So what they intend to do is make year eight students sit a number of tests, and pay for those tests by the way, in order to exclude a very small percentage of kids. That seems to me to be really rather injudicious and certainly not productive in terms of educational value."

Using his own school as an example Mr Morton demonstrates the very small number of pupils that this whole issue effects;

"We have 70 places and are oversubscribed on first preference so we can fill all those places at the first possible moment. But we are only over subscribed by about 15%. This means we have turn away around 10 to 15 pupils so I ask the question where is the good educational value making those children sit an exam, for which they have not been prepared , in order to exclude a very small number of kids. And all school's in Fermanagh will be in the same position."

He goes on to reinforce his position by pointing out that already the majority of Grammar schools are accepting pupils with a wide range of academic ability;

"There are only a handful of Grammar schools who have been able to fill up with only A students in the last number of years. There are schools on that list who are taking C's and D's and that is only on second preference so for some of these schools to claim that they are doing this to maintain high academic standards is a bit erroneous."

Mr Morton poses the question;

"Are the Grammar schools really doing what they say they are doing given that their range of academic ability is so high?"

But he is quick to point out that there was a time when the Grammar school system and academic selection did play a useful role in society. The education of working class people, particularly, in the Roman Catholic community in the 60's and 70's was one of the major successes of the Grammar school system but with falling demographics and a wider range of academic ability now being accepted by the schools he wonders can the Grammar schools carry out the role they did in years gone by.

"So, yes the Grammar school system at its very best is exceptional and it is great to work in but it is not without its problems. And one of the problems is that a number of schools who are signing up to this are afraid that if they don't sign up then they will lose some sort of status and be deemed uncaring of the academic profile of the school. They feel they have to sign up to announce themselves as an academic school even though the students they take are across a wide range of academic ability."

Mr Morton also takes issue with the notion that the Northern Ireland education system is somehow seen as the best system in Europe;

STRIVE

"People are fond of saying that we are the envy of Europe but I have yet to see the evidence for that? If anything the evidence says that we have on one hand the highest percentage of working class kids going to university while on the other we have the lowest levels of numeracy and literacy in the UK. So at the very top we are doing well but at the very bottom we are doing very poorly. We also must note that a lot of the kids who go to university do so through the secondary and further education system."

Unfortunately, in Mr Morton's opinion the current debate is the wrong debate. With all the bluster over academic selection he fears that society may miss the point entirely;

"We must strive to give the best education possible to every child but as a collective we are not looking at ways to best achieve this. And this never ending debate on academic selection will simply mean that the real debate, which should be happening, will never be heard."