I'm not saying it's not a good school, but . .

This teacher betook herself last week to a parent-teacher meeting in the second-level school where her two boys get a less-than-thrilling education. The school prides itself on the superb delivery on a holistic education; in my opinion the whole is a lot less than the sum of its parts. This school is long on ethos short on education. This school, if one were to believe the PR spins in the local paper, achieves exceptional results at Leaving Cert.

Last August the principal let it be known that seven of the boys secured As at the 1999 Leaving Cert examination. Naive and gullible parents interpreted this to mean that each of the magnificent seven was each awarded seven straight As. Not true. One boy, a neighbour of mine, got two As. No boy ran off with straight As. My boys are not particularly bright, but whatever potential they have is terminally untapped. EU fruit regulations are applied to the brains of the boys in this school. IQ is determined within days of commencing studies at this establishment; the boys are classed and qualified according to size and quality of cerebral talent. The best boys get the best teachers, and the not so good are, to put it mildly, left to learn the basic laws of evolution: the survival of the fittest.

I did not sit before the desks of the terrific teachers of this school. Rather, I had to endure the delusions of some teachers I know to have greater powers of acceleration, inspiration, dedication and application on a golf course than they can muster at a blackboard. Mr X drooled over the younger boy's personality - a hoary old escape mechanism for side-stepping assessment of the boy's ability. Mr Y kept a class photograph upon his knees so that he would have some idea of what the other boy looked like. Mrs Z thought the older boy should pay more attention to his homework. That remark I took personally as I pay a lot of attention to the little homework he gets.

I DEPLORE school or examination league tables. What this school needs is an old fashioned school inspection, examination of sceimeanna oibre, close analysis of homework set, and generally the generation of disease in this bastion of the banal. The general view of my boy's progress was that they were fulfilling their potential. They are not. They are imbibing by educational osmosis the incompetence and indifference of their teachers. I am not amused.