Madam, - In response to the article by Fionnuala Kilfeather of the National Parents' Council ("Time to open up the school system to scrutiny", Opinion, August 30th) and your Editorial of August 29th, I would like to point out that there are sound educational arguments against publishing "league tables" based on schools' examination results.
I recently attended the annual general meeting of the Educational Institute of Scotland, the main teachers' union there. I found that EIS, unlike its English neighbour, has got rid of league tables on educational grounds. It was found that their publication had a demoralising effect on schools which came towards the bottom of the table.
Such schools acquired the tag of "failing", even though they may have been extremely successful in allowing pupils to realise their potential.
It was clearly seen that league tables seriously damaged effective schools and teaching in disadvantaged areas. As well as that, the morale of teachers and students in so-called "sink" schools was seriously affected.
Promising to publish information on schools, as the Minister has done, is always a winner with the wealthier end of the middle classes. They are the only ones who have any real choice. For most rural and town dwellers in Ireland, choice may mean two schools, both of which are known inside out.
All the partners in education believe that education should value the dignity and uniqueness of each person. This fundamental principle of Irish education is violated by the publication of selective and simplistic information about examination results.
If such information is published, schools will feel under pressure to get rid of those aspects of education which do not contribute to improving their position on the league table, with a consequent impoverishment of education and neglect of the pastoral, spiritual, social, caring, cultural, physical and sporting dimensions.
Publishing Leaving Certificate results would turn all schools into "grind schools" and distort the true meaning of education. In today's materialistic world we have allowed the language of business and commerce to infiltrate all aspects of life with words such as inputs, outputs, products, strategic management initiatives. Everything nowadays has to be measured and if you don't measure up you are branded a failure. We have to get away from the use of such language in education.
It is interesting to note that the country which came top of the recent OECD Pisa survey - Finland - does not have league tables, nor does it have any inspectorate in our sense of the word. But as I found from talking to Finnish representatives at a recent conference, teachers are very highly respected and valued in Finland.
The problem in Irish education is not about "opening up the school system to scrutiny", or publishing exam results, but underfunding. Ireland ranks 20th out of 26 OECD countries in the funding of secondary school pupils. - Yours, etc,
PAT CAHILL,
Past President of Asti,
Whitehall Road,
Dublin 12.
Madam, - Could someone please be a good chap and pop down to the offices of the three teaching unions in Ireland, to hammer on their doors and inform them in clear and unambiguous language of a few basic facts of life in this country?
The first fact they need to be reminded of is that we, the taxpaying public of Ireland, are the ones paying their salaries. Yes, it is us the public who employ them. The second fact is that we don't just employ them, but we also employ them to teach our own children.
These two salient and sobering facts should be kept at the forefront of these unions' minds, and the minds of their members, when they have the effrontery and arrogance to suggest that we, the public who are paying their salaries and whose children they are teaching, must be prevented from learning how they are performing in their duties to teach and educate our very children.
What other profession would have the audacity to try to maintain a layer of secrecy about their performance from both their employers and clients alike?
It is long overdue that both parents, and the wider taxpaying public, are supplied with full and complete disclosure of information, specific and comparative, about the performance of our teachers, our schools and our colleges and universities. We have a right to know how they are performing in their duties and to know how they compare with each other.
We should be long past patience in demanding this information be produced now, without any further delay. The suggestion by the unions and some élitist politicians that parents are not capable of understanding or assessing these comparative tables should be treated with the utter contempt that it deserves. How patronising, condescending and insulting they are to suggest such a thing.
Let us end this pussyfooting around and get the information, all of it, out there for us - the ones who pay - to make our own minds up. - Yours, etc,
HOWARD BRITTAIN, Killiney, Co Dublin.
Madam, - I read with great interest Fionnuala Kilfeather's demand for parents to have more access to information on schools. What surprised was the absence of any call for parental accountability.
Parents send their children to school but often don't keep their end of the education partnership that must exist between schools and home.
As a secondary teacher I frequently have to remind parents that they must make sure their children do homework and study. I might teach over a hundred pupils a day - is it too much to expect parents to check that their two or three children do some work in the evenings? Ms Kilfeather suggests that best practices could be shared among schools. What about best-practice parenting in terms of making sure parents support their children's education?
It's too easy to point fingers at schools and demand they publish results. Who is going to tackle poor parental input? Who will publish the results of fruitless calls, notes and meetings? - Yours, etc,
JOHN MURPHY, Marlfield Close, Tallaght, Dublin 24.