Sir, - Your feature on Blackrock College (EL, May 23rd) was illuminating, to put it mildly. The school is "synonymous with producing the best and brightest"; there is "a wide range of extra-curricular activities"; its graduates include a "string of lawyers, businessmen and doctors"; its students choose from "24 subjects for the Leaving Cert rather than having to make confining choices"; its pupil-teacher ratio "compares favourably with other EU countries"; and it costs £2,300 for day pupils and £5,375 for boarding pupils.
Our school is similar in many ways. We try to produce the best, though we acknowledge that parents are the ones who normally produce the brightest. Our transition year is "a creative, vibrant experience". There is a wide range of extra activities, and a sports centre for which the community raised £150,000 back in the grim 1980s. We offer 18 Leaving Cert subjects, and 12 more if the Leaving Cert Applied and Leaving Cert Vocational programmes are included - hardly a confining choice. We, too, have produced lawyers, engineers, doctors, businessmen (and women), politicians and sports stars, though whether in sufficient quantities in our 19-year history to make up a "string" I cannot say.
But there are differences between our schools. Our pupil-teacher ratio does not compare favourably with EU countries, as with most Irish secondary schools, and our students must make do with a lot fewer teachers than Blackrock's 77. While our two schools "care deeply about the disadvantaged", such students can actually afford our school: our voluntary activities fee is £25 a year.
There is one other difference. They had what looked like a full front-page ad in EL entitled "Blackrock College: Star Quality". It was, apparently, free, as I failed to spot the words "advertising feature" anywhere on the page.
In our school we do not begrudge Blackrock its success, or its successful marketing of its educational achievements. A college with its distinguished history fully deserved a two-page spread in EL. But I do think we deserve a free EL front-page ad too. We work just as hard and, I hope, just as effectively with our resources. - Yours, etc.,
Michael Sheridan, (Principal), St Kilian's Community School, Bray, Co Wicklow.