Addressing the problem of underachievement among disadvantaged children in Northern Ireland: what the dogs in the street know.

Our MLAs have made much of their determination to enhance the academic attainment of those children in Northern Ireland who live in disadvantaged circumstances.  Our universities have been given large sums of money over the years, and have developed a succession of failed progressive teaching models.  Public money has been squandered in looking to higher education to identify the most effective teaching method for levering up the life chances of the poor.  What should be shocking to the general public is that this problem has already been solved in one of the most sophisticated experimental studies in the history of education.  We know precisely how to raise the academic performance of poor children to middle class standards.  Furthermore, this highly effective teaching method is the very antithesis of the progressive methods advocated…