The National Parents' Council has called on the Minister for Education and Science to appeal the decision of the Freedom of Information Commissioner to publish individual schools' examination results. He has not yet made a decision on an appeal.
The commissioner, Mr Kevin Murphy, decided to release detailed results of the 1998 Junior and Leaving Certificate examinations on a school-by-school basis to the Sunday Times, Sunday Tribune and Kerryman. This follows a refusal by the Department of Education and Science to release the information.
It refused for two reasons: retrieving the information would cause "substantial and unreasonable interference" with the work of the Department; and the examinations were not conducted to compare the performance of schools.
Mr Murphy said the refusal was not justified under the Act, and ruled this information could be released except where 10 or fewer students in a school sat a particular subject at a particular level.
According to a spokesman, the Minister for Education and Science, Mr Martin, has not had an opportunity to study the commissioner's decision, which came in a 37-page document and so cannot yet decide if he will appeal to the High Court.
The National Parents' Council (Post-Primary) said it hoped he would appeal the decision. "Who's looking for this?" asked Mr John Whyte of the council. "The teachers aren't looking for it, the managers aren't looking for it, the Department isn't looking for it, the parents aren't looking for it," he said. "We had meetings all around the country and no one was looking for it."
Mr Whyte also said: "Everyone, including the Department of Education, is looking for the integration of children with special needs into mainstream education. What school will want any child with special needs, or any child who will bring the average results down?
"It will affect subject choice as well. For example, 91 per cent of those who repeat the Leaving Cert take geography or home economics because there are a lot of As in these subjects. There are very few in music. What school will do music as a Leaving Certificate subject?
"If every school turned into a grind school, how would things like sport and games fare? What people are really looking for is information about schools. This would only show very limited academic success. It will not tell parents what support the school will offer their child if the child is weak."
The Secretariat of Secondary Schools, representing the managements of voluntary secondary schools, also feels the decision will have a detrimental effect on the educational welfare of students. "This will lead inevitably to the publication of league tables of examination results," according to Mr George O'Callaghan, its general secretary.
"This is a crude and blunt instrument which will place pressure and stress on the current group of students about to sit their examinations next June. It will be intrusive on the privacy of individuals. It will take no account of the context factors that influence the environment in which each school operates," he said in a statement.
The Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland, is also opposed to the publication of this information. It said in a statement that the fundamental principles of Irish education, which are concerned with the development of the whole person, would be violated.
The Teachers' Union of Ireland pointed out that schools which did not employ selection mechanisms would not "perform" as well as those who did if league tables were compiled. "It would damage vocational schools and community and comprehensive schools with a larger intake of disadvantaged students and students with disabilities," the union said in a statement.