Education in Northern Ireland

Education in Northern Ireland differs from systems used elsewhere in the United Kingdom, though it is more similar to that used in Wales than it is to Scotland. A child's age on 1 July determines the point of entry into the relevant stage of education unlike England and Wales where it is the 1 September. Northern Ireland's results at GCSE and A-Level are consistently top in the UK. At A-Level, one third of students in Northern Ireland achieved A grades in 2007, which is a higher proportion than in England and Wales.

Read more about Education In Northern Ireland:  Central Administration, Local Administration, Curriculum, Eleven Plus, Controlled Schools, Catholic Education, Integrated Education, Irish-language-medium Education, School Years, School Holidays

Famous quotes containing the words northern ireland, education in, education, northern and/or ireland:

    “For generations, a wide range of shooting in Northern Ireland has provided all sections of the population with a pastime which ... has occupied a great deal of leisure time. Unlike many other countries, the outstanding characteristic of the sport has been that it was not confined to any one class.”
    —Northern Irish Tourist Board. quoted in New Statesman (London, Aug. 29, 1969)

    “Those who first introduced compulsory education into American life knew exactly why children should go to school and learn to read: to save their souls.... Consistent with this goal, the first book written and printed for children in America was titled Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes in either England, drawn from the Breasts of both Testaments for their Souls’ Nourishment.”
    —Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)

    “I envy neither the heart nor the head of any legislator who has been born to an inheritance of privileges, who has behind him ages of education, dominion, civilization, and Christianity, if he stands opposed to the passage of a national education bill, whose purpose is to secure education to the children of those who were born under the shadow of institutions which made it a crime to read.”
    —Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)

    “There exists in a great part of the Northern people a gloomy diffidence in the moral character of the government. On the broaching of this question, as general expression of despondency, of disbelief that any good will accrue from a remonstrance on an act of fraud and robbery, appeared in those men to whom we naturally turn for aid and counsel. Will the American government steal? Will it lie? Will it kill?—We ask triumphantly.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “The tragedy of Northern Ireland is that it is now a society in which the dead console the living.”
    —Jack Holland (b. 1947)