For decades the “Eleven Plus” exam has blighted the lives of children in Northern Ireland. Despite clear evidence that the exam fails the majority of children, and that most people want it to go now, it appears now that the eleven plus, or a similar exam, will continue for at least another three years.

A vocal minority are digging in to defend the status quo. A well organized campaign by some of the grammar schools has had a significant media impact with acres of press coverage. The arguments of the campaign, which are fully endorsed by the unionist parties, need to be answered.

Supporters of the eleven plus use the experience of comprehensive education in England to back up their arguments but they distort the real picture.  It is worth examining the evidence.

In England some schools and many individual pupils fail, but those that do fail don't do so because of the comprehensive system. They fail because schools in poor areas are deprived of the teachers and the funding they need. They fail because of an overly prescriptive target driven culture.

They fail because many so-called comprehensive schools are not comprehensive at all-in various ways some schools do select who they take, leaving the genuinely comprehensive schools to deal with disproportionate numbers of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

At the moment, around 90% of children in England are educated in schools that are nominally comprehensive. Successive governments have introduced subtle and devious ways for schools to select pupils however. The better off work the system to their advantage.  In many cities there now is what the London schools commissioner Tim Brighouse has called a “dizzyingly steep hierarchy of schools in to which children are sorted according to a variety of different means; faith, cheque book, postcode, aptitude or a combination of all four.”

Such elements of genuine comprehensive education as existed are being fragmented as schools seek a competitive advantage by becoming "specialist" schools, "trust" schools or "academies". The result is a growing polarisation between schools at the top and bottom of the league tables and a widening of the class divide in education.

The number of pupils at grammar schools in England has jumped by 20% since New Labour came to power. The retention of "secondary moderns" for children deemed “failures” at 11 in Lincolnshire and Kent meant these two authorities had the highest numbers of schools in the “bottom 100” in the latest GCSE exam league tables.

One of the myths peddled by opponents of comprehensive education is that it denies the route out of poverty for working class children previously provided by grammar schools. While some working class children may have escaped poverty through the old grammar schools in England, the vast majority did not. Studies of children coming from streamed primary schools in the 1960s showed that most who went on to grammar schools came from professional or managerial backgrounds.

The key factor preventing children from reaching their full potential is social class. That is not in any way to accept the insulting idea that middle-class children are 'brighter' than working-class children. It is simply to state the obvious: affluence offers many advantages, such as a good diet, decent housing, access to books and the internet, and time for parents to read to their children, all of which lead to educational advantage.

School league tables are simply league tables of pupil affluence. A 2006 analysis of nearly a million individual pupils' results by London University academics concluded: "For schools the message is clear. Selecting children who are in high-status neighbourhoods is one of the most effective ways of retaining a high position in the league table".

Schools which educate children of all abilities together are recognised to be the best way to raise standards for all children. When the comprehensive system was introduced in England only 18% of young people left school with 5 O Levels/GCSE’s. Today that figure is over 50 %. More pupils than ever before are going into higher education.

Properly organized and resourced comprehensive systems work well in other countries. Some of the most successful education systems internationally, for example in Finland and Canada, are fully comprehensive. Selective systems, for example in Germany, rank poorly in international studies carried out by the OECD.

At the present time tens of thousands of young people in Northern Ireland are branded as failures every year. This is unacceptable and must change. We need a fully comprehensive, integrated education system. Every school must have the resources and teachers it needs to deliver a top class education. Northern Ireland has some of the highest class sizes in Europe while at the same time classrooms lie empty and qualified teachers can’t get a job.

The abolition of the eleven plus and the introduction of a properly funded comprehensive system has the potential to raise standards for all. Working class children cannot wait another three years for change. It has to come now.