NORTHERN IRELAND

IT’S NOT BIG. WE’RE NOT CLEVER.
AND NOW THIS.



It’s bound to happen, sooner or later. We’re bound to get our own version. I’m just thinking ahead when I say this, but Ladies and Gentlemen: Welcome to the Northern Irish NIBacc.

The NIBacc is a curious creature. It doesn’t have coursework, it doesn’t have modules, and its terminal exams are timed very precisely to avoid the festivities of both St Patrick’s Day and the July Marching Season. The lack of coursework is going to cause consternation among the clannish territory of Northern Ireland, where the world is so small that you can end up finding out that you’re related to yourself.

‘But my sister said her Jimmy would give me the coursework when he’d finished with it, and my wee Mary could just use that, and no-one would know because she’s at the Convent and he’s at the Brothers,’ one distraught woman was heard to complain. ‘And I know it was good coursework as well because Jimmy’s six older brothers all used it and they got a whole clatter of As. A*s even, a few of them. Terrible like. Terrible. Mary is going to fail and it’s all because of West Minister.’

The colloquial pronunciation of the seat of government aside, Northern Ireland does have its own devolved Legislative Assembly, and they have worked tirelessly to adapt the Ebacc from E to NI, from England’s needs to those of Northern Ireland.

This is only the start of it.

English
Depending on your point of view, this is either the students’ native language or an imposed lingua franca which is very nearly as bad as Latin. English needs to be passed for students to get a job and for schools to stay afloat in the league tables. Depending on your point of view, you will call the people who teach this subject ‘English teachers’ or ‘Teachers of English’. No. You probably won’t postmodify with Maths or Geography or Art. Students of this controversial discipline will learn all about grammar and apostrophes. They will be encouraged to apply the rules they learn about spelling, punctuation, grammar and handwriting to all their other subjects, though when they forget or make mistakes, their English teachers (or teachers of English) will be blamed. They will learn which way to pronounce certain letters of the alphabet and how to spell certain place names in accordance with the tradition into which they were born. They will read and be examined on a range of texts from Shakespeare onwards in the English canon. Some Northern Irish writers will be included for local authenticity, and you can probably put some Ulster Bank fivers on Seamus Heaney being included. Those frogs get everywhere.

Maths
The most interesting thing about NIBacc Maths is that the ‘how to calculate a BOGOF’ which stretches back via GCSEs to O Levels will continue to operate. Pupils will be herded into segments of a Venn diagram at the end of Key Stage 3. The ones on the left will do Maths. The ones on the right will do Maths and Add Maths (often colloquially called Sums and Hard Sums), because the ones on the right are smart enough to get one free by doing their Sums a year early and then earning the right to a full year of the joyful experience of Hard Sums. The ones in the middle are the people who should have been left alone with Sums, but who got lumbered with Hard Sums as well, probably because they were quite good at something else.

Religious Education
Here’s the complicated bit. Concentrate. Northern Irish schools are often (but not always) segregated along religious grounds. A unique part of the NIBacc will be the possibility for students (and schools) to select either Protestant RE or Catholic RE. The complicating bit is when you have a more mixed student population or (God forbid – pun of the day) an Integrated school. There are all kinds of possibilities here, and I have heard that students will be offered cross-community funding for listening to one another’s traditions and beliefs, and counselling in case this proves distressing. Students will sit terminal exams to ascertain whether they still believe what they believed when they began their course. This will be an interesting way of testing the hypothesis that enlightenment and knowledge challenge faith.

Modern Languages
This will be the greatest revolution of the NIBacc as a move from the GCSEs and their O Level predecessors. Two main languages will be studied, one of which will be chosen: these are Ulster Scots and Irish. Ulster Scots, the traditional lawland tongue of the North East, will be funded to attain full accreditation as a NIBacc subject. The Heid Mon For Noo of the NIBacc Council will put in place a Course o Leernin for the language, and the we’ans will sit tests in Speakin’ Listnin’ Readin’ and Writin’ at the end of twa years hi. Irish has of course been a strong tradition in GCSE for many years and will continue as before.

It is considered unlikely that many schools will offer both Ulster Scots and Irish, but students who wish to learn the language not offered in their school will be able to access it through reciprocal arrangements with local schools.

Short course NIBacc (MiniNIBaccs) in French, Spanish and German will be offered with a focus on the vocabulary of travel, tourism and seduction. The exams in these will generally be taken at the end of one year. After that, in the second year of their NIBacc studies, students will be able to take a second MiniNIBacc or concentrate on their core language.

Science / Technology
There will be a shift of emphasis in the Science NIBacc, away from the academic and towards the more vocational as it is relevant to Northern Ireland. This will include:
Agricultural Science – how to milk a cow. How to wean a piglet. How to dissect any animal alive or dead, but mainly dead. How to train a sheepdog. How to mix fertilizer. How to spread fertilizer. How to time the spreading of your fertilizer to annoy a maximum number of people. How to use fertilizer for political protest. How to grow and rotate such crops as potatoes, corn, potatoes, barley, potatoes, grain, potatoes, flax, potatoes, oil seed rape, potatoes, carrots, potatoes, sheep.
Political Science – how to use fertilizer for political ends; how to use milk for political ends; the workings of the NFU; the workings of the Young Farmers’ society; public speaking; country dancing; the calculation of friction between political parties.
Industrial Science – how to mix chemicals; how chemical equations work; how this applies to getting work in industry; how to apply for a job in a factory.
Gadget Awareness – how things work and how to fix them – it is thought unlikely that many girls will follow this part of the course.

History
Students, as with Religious Education, will choose from Protestant History and Catholic History. They will begin with a study of the Easter Rising, learning either about terrorists or heroes. The rest will diverge from there, both further back and further forward in a timeline encompassing such key events as the Plantation, the Famine and the Opening of the Titanic Centre in Belfast.

Geography
Having studied erosion and weathering of every kind for several years pre-NIBacc, students will undertake a comprehensive study of the ox-bow lake and the Lagan Estuary. This will necessitate much drawing of ox-bow lakes and numerous field trips to the Lagan Redevelopment area, where bored teenagers will sneak off to the Odyssey Pavilion to have coffee in the Streat café to thaw their icy fingers. Their teachers will try in vain to tell them that it could be worse, that back in the days of GCSE they had to measure a river’s spate in the rain. But they won’t listen. In the end the teachers will despair and everyone will drink hot chocolate.

Home Economics
In Home Economics, the curriculum will include learning about the construction of a healthy diet, some elements of home management (eg. how to get a personal loan or a car loan and shift the balance from one credit card to another), some elements of health and social care (eg. how to pick a child minder and what kind of 4x4 to choose), medical awareness (eg. how many fish suppers one should eat per week and when one should diversify to burgers or pizza) and benefit awareness. Advertising will be studied to give students an awareness of the many occasions when the small print of an advert warns that a deal is not available in Northern Ireland. The practical element will include the acquisition of a provable proficiency in the cooking of such traditional dishes as: boiled potatoes, mashed potatoes (without use of packet mash), champ, colcannon, roast potatoes, gratin potatoes, chips, chunky chips, French fries, wedges, potato bread, ham sandwiches, the Ulster Fry (which can also be termed Full English or Full Irish, according to preference), gammon and pineapple, chicken drumsticks, battered cod and sherry trifle. Students will also be tested on their ability to sew a button onto a simple garment such as a shirt.

Art
All students of Art will be taken on a compulsory monthly trip to the Ulster Museum, during which they will admire the pictures and purchase a toy dinosaur. They will experiment with various media during their course, working with paints, charcoal, crayons, felt-tips, spray-paint and agricultural by-products, on a range of surfaces including paper, canvas, walls, floors, ceilings and their own and others’ bodies. In the exam they will have to design and produce a mural for a local housing estate, and each student will be responsible for the gable wall of an empty house. The theme for the examination will change each year.

Music
According to tradition and personal preference, each pupil will be required to demonstrate a proficiency in the flute or the tin whistle. Those with embouchure issues may instead opt to take bodhran or Lambeg drum as their first study, while those with issues of embouchure and tinnitus may choose between the violin and the fiddle. Terminal examinations will include performance, listening examination and a written examination about the history of music and their own experience of performance in a range of situations. Performance may be static or may done while walking. In the case of the latter, examiners will have been trained to walk alongside candidates.

Economics and Business
The specification for this subject has been written by Hon Sammy Wilson MLA, former Economics teacher and Minister for Finance in the Legislative Assembly. It includes the study of the support and setting up of local business, the overall strategy for finance in Northern Ireland, the fact that climate change is a complete myth and, despite the fact that it isn’t actually getting warmer, that it’s perfectly acceptable to cavort around naked on your holidays, so long as you’re not in Northern Ireland where the midges can get you. There will be a case study each year into a business in the students’ home town. This will most usually be a business in the service sector: a shop which has closed, a café which has failed its food hygiene accreditation, a hotel of bad reputation or a wildlife park where the animals are usually asleep. Students will undertake a study which will given them the opportunity to show how they would improve the business’ situation.

PE
Finally, PE will be almost the most diverse subject of all, with students offered the choice of specializing in any of the following groups of sports according to their school:
Option A – rugby, cricket, hockey, netball, rounders;
Option B – gaelic football, hurling, soccer, camogie, girls’ soccer;
Option C – quidditch, cabor-tossing, haggis-hunting, troll-football, ultimate Frisbee;
Option D – cricket, real tennis, polo, lacrosse, croquet.
Schools will select the option block most suited to their catchment area and the social grouping of their students. Students whose needs and tastes are not best catered for at their own school will have the opportunity to pursue alternatives at other local schools. If they do this, walking to the other school and back will serve as part of their stipulated hours of physical exercise each week.



So there it is, ladies and gentlemen. The Northern Irish Baccalaureat, NIBacc to its friends, Norn Irn Bacc to its enemies.

It’s not here yet. But like Christmas, it’s coming, like taxes, it’s inevitable, and like a winter day without a nice warm scarf, it’s a bit of a pain in the neck.

I’m getting ready for it.

Are you?