Education policy across the whole system has been affected in some way through the lens of selection and the need to protect the province’s grammar school ‘gold standard’. Whilst selection remains a vestigial aspect of educational policy in a small number of Local educational agency in England and Wales, it has been retained as the underlying principle of the province’s system of secondary education. Selection was determined by an attainment test consisting in Northern Ireland of English composition, English language, arithmetic and an intelligence test used mostly in border line cases. Criticism of selection took two forms: that it was wrong in principle and; that the testing procedure was at fault. The argument on principle was stated clearly by the government’s Advisory Council for Education in its report of 1973 recommending the discontinuation of selection, initially it advised, by a statement of intent to this effect from the minister responsible.