Is it time to put results in their place?

The teacher unions are angry with grind schools where results appear to be the only criterion of success. The National Parents Council Post Primary is also worried about the effects of an education which may exclude non-exam subjects such as PE and religion. Grind schools do not offer programmes, such as the Leaving Cert Applied, which do not provide a direct path into third level. A diversity of talents, other than the academic, is not recognised.

Grind schools are again under the spotlight following the announcement by the new ASTI president, John Hurley, that he intended to crack down on his members who are double-jobbing, working part-time in grind schools. Fifth and sixth-form colleges are now a staple feature of the second-level education scene. Students are voting for them with their feet. Undoubtedly, the loss of students from mainstream schools is contributing to anger in both the second-level teacher unions. This year 4,181 students were registered as external Leaving Cert candidates (this excludes students on the VTOS scheme). It's a reasonable assumption that most of these are in fifth and sixth-form colleges.

Meanwhile, it's estimated that more than 20,000 pupils attend crash courses in more than 30 centres at Easter and Christmas. And there is a huge trade in evening and Saturday morning classes.

Students want to top up their schooling with extra tuition or they choose to take a subject not offered in the school. Or they elect to leave mainstream schools for the final two years to concentrate on getting points for college entry. So, what's the problem?

Grind schools are erecting an offensive Darwinian hierarchy of results, according to the ASTI. This is doubly offensive as secondary, community and comprehensive schools could do so also but do not choose to, says John White, the association's deputy general secretary. "We take the proper and human view that we should cherish all of our pupils and that we should not exploit the results of particular pupils," he adds.

Following a motion passed at its annual congress, the ASTI will launch a public information campaign to challenge the "exaggerated claims of grind schools". The union is particularly concerned about fifth and sixth-form colleges.

Fighting back, Ray Kearns, redoubtable director of the Institute of Education in Dublin, the doyen of grind schools, faxed E&L a page crammed with students' achievements, ranging from one student getting seven A1s this year to 15 students being awarded TCD entrance awards on the basis of their 1996 results to "6 As - too numerous to mention."

To put this in perspective, one student in the State achieved eight A1s in the Leaving Cert in 1997, 15 got seven A1s; 41 got six A1s and 101 got five A1s. At the time of the exam results, two grind schools took out advertisements in national newspapers. Bruce College featured a student who got seven A1s while the Institute of Education featured a group of four students, one with seven A1s, and the others with "all As."

The inference is that all of the other high-achievers attended mainstream schools or grind schools which did not choose to engage in this form of advertising. But, the picture is not quite so clearcut as crash courses and part-time grinds must be factored in.

Of course, doing a grind is no guarantee of improved results. Evening or Saturday grinds may often produce chaotic and counterproductive results, according to John White. Students may not have time to do their homework as their time outside school is employed attending grinds.

In fact, the picture is so confused that Sean Mitchell, president of the National Parents Council-Post Primary, tells an anecdote about the worst teacher in a school getting the best results as the whole class went to a grind school. This clouds the issue of teachers not performing, he says.

At a local level, if somebody has to get a grind - what does that reflect, he asks. It may be because a student is weak at a particular subject or has been ill or a teacher is performing poorly. The ASTI says that the issue of under-performing teachers will be addressed through the early retirement scheme.

Whatever the truth about results, the ASTI says that advertising during the exam results season was exploitative. The NPC-PP has expressed concerns about the fact that these ads "used youngsters to an extent". Bruce College, which operates grind schools in Cork, Limerick and Dublin, refused to talk to E&L at all - this was one of the issues on which we wanted them to comment. Ray Kearns denies that these advertisements are exploitative - this is the age of accountability and transparency, he says. If a student did not wish to be profiled in a paper, there would be no problem. He would also consider looking into the use of advertisements in the future, if people had particular problems with them.

The NPC and the ASTI are concerned that students going into fifth and sixth-form colleges are losing out on a broader education. Employers are impressed by results but they are also impressed by somebody who has had a well-rounded education, says John White. Grind schools concentrate on the regurgitation of knowledge and handing out of notes, he adds. Employers are looking for somebody who can work with a team, somebody who is creative and has ideas.

It would be unfair to lump all fifth and sixth-form colleges together. They vary quite a lot in what facilities they offer. Ray Kearns says that the Institute of Education, the oldest and largest grind school, has just built a £1m sports centre which will open shortly. Students there take part in activities such as sports and debating at present.

Keith Rowe, principal of the Pre-University Centre in Dublin, says that it considers itself a full-time senior-cycle college which offers its 150 students extra-curricular activities such as sport, public speaking, debating, field trips and visits to the theatres. It does not offer evening or Saturday grinds.

Joe Griffin, director of Ashfield College, Templeogue, Dublin, which has 280 full-time students and also offers grinds to evening students, says that the college emphasises non-exam areas such as personal development and career guidance but does not offer sports. He questions how many sixth-year students in second-level schools participate in sport.

If grind schools are posing a threat to State-funded schools and if they are undermining education by reducing it to an instrument to gain entry to third-level, why is the Department of Education not intervening? TUI president Alice Prendergast notes that the Department allows grind school pupils to sit State exams. Can it completely wash its hands of these schools when it supplies them with exam papers?

The simple answer is - yes. In a free-market economy, anyone can set up a private school. A spokesman for the Department says that the Department's contract is with individual external students.

Some of the grind schools' literature states that their school is a designated exam centre. The spokesman says that this only means that they have a suitable hall which is convenient for candidates. It's not a cachet of approval for the college.