Dear Madam, - As a concerned reader of the Unionist community in Fermanagh, I too feel duty bound to reply to Mr. Morton, Headmaster of Portora Royal School in which he made reference to my letter in the previous week’s edition. And, after attending the consultation evening at Portora on Thursday last, I also feel duty bound to inform the protestant community of Fermanagh what disastrous consequences the proposed amalgamation will have on their children’s education.

Firstly, my concerns, penned in my letter, refer only to the reduction of grammar school places for children from the protestant community, which Mr. Morton chooses to ignore by quoting “Since 2000 there has been an increasingly greater proportion of children in the county attending grammar schools”. This of course, includes all religions and therefore does not in any way address my concerns.

Secondly, he goes on to say that “Today 65 per cent are educated at the Collegiate and Portora and 35 per cent are educated at Devenish College”. Am I to assume that he is talking about children from the protestant community here? And if so, why then does he go on to state further on in his letter that the proposed amalgamation of the Collegiate and Portora and the new build of Devenish College will enable 53 per cent of post-primary students, from a non-catholic background to access grammar school places? Now, I’m no mathematician but to me that suggests that there will be 12 per cent less protestant students able to access a grammar school education if this ludicrous proposal is allowed to go ahead.

Thirdly, Mr. Morton suggests that I have not given due regard to Devenish College in my letter even though I referred to it as being “a school with excellent opportunities”, and, may I add, the school which I am very proud to have attended myself.

Devenish College is not part of the issue here, nor should it be dragged into it. My argument is that the amount of grammar school places available to protestant children has been reducing over the past number of years and will suffer yet another massive reduction with the proposed amalgamation of Portora and the Collegiate.

I attended the consultation evening in Portora on Thursday March 27, which I must say, in my view, was poorly attended. The audience were asked by Bishop John McDowell to switch off all video and recording devices prior to Mr. Morton delivering his power point presentation which lacked conviction.

Part of his argument centred on his ‘bigger is better’ theory, a theory which Colin Knox and Vani Borooran from the University of Ulster have researched in-depth and concluded that ‘Large schools are neither necessary nor sufficient for good educational performance.’ When asked by a member of the audience whether the school would retain the Royal Charter, there was no guarantee given.

He said: “It was something that could be looked into”. When asked if he was guaranteed the necessary funding and that the new school would definitely be built he replied: “no”.

We were also informed that it is proposed that in the ‘interim period’, (which, if the unmaterialised Devenish College is anything to go by, could be decades long), the students would have to travel to and fro between the two schools to obtain their education. I personally don’t think this amount of disruption is beneficial to any student and would only serve to greatly reduce the current excellent level of academic achievement in both Portora and the Collegiate.

Presently, we have two outstanding grammar schools delivering 1,000 places to mainly protestant students. These schools have maintained a very high level of achievement year on year and there is no suggestion that they won’t continue to do so as two separate schools, so I am at a loss to understand why Mr. Morton thinks “what a wonderful thing it will be, to have a £20 million plus investment in the school infrastructure.

Whilst I do wholeheartedly agree that the Devenish College is long overdue and deserving of its new build, I feel it is preposterous to even consider spending millions from the public purse to build a new school which will significantly reduce the number of grammar school places available to post-primary students from the protestant community and thereby deny them their right to higher academic achievement.

In my letter to your paper, I raised my concerns that children from the unionist community were being denied places within the grammar school system, and I stand by that. At the consultation meeting in Portora, Bishop McDowell, who sits on the Board of Governors in Portora and also I believe chairs the Fermanagh Protestant Board of Governors, was asked by myself: “Can you tell me how many children from a non-protestant background attend this school?” “I don’t know, I never asked”, and he promptly walked off. As chair of the Fermanagh Protestant Board of Governors, how can he not know, nor indeed seem to be interested in how many non-protestants attend the school.

Mr. Morton went on to inform the meeting that 10 per cent of students currently at Portora are from the catholic tradition which equates to approximately 50 students and therefore 50 less places for protestant students.

Nothing that I have heard in the meeting would convince me that the proposed amalgamation would be something positive for the community, in fact, as I have previously detailed, quite the opposite. Add to that the amount of extra traffic it would bring to that end of town which is already a nightmare to get through between 8.15am and 9.00am I feel in the best interests of the community it’s time this proposal was binned.

Yours faithfully, DonalD Crawford Lisbellaw