An Insider's guide to education.

It is the biggest scandal in Irish education - but you would never know it from the muted reaction of certain vested interests.

What are we talking about? The educational apartheid which sees pupils with special needs locked out of some of our elite, fee- paying schools, many of them run by religious orders - and all supported by some €80 million in an annual subsidy from the taxpayers.

All credit to Labour's Jan O'Sullivan, Sinn Féin's Seán Crowe and the TUI's John MacGabhann, who had the courage to confront this scandal. All three have a strong record of speaking out on the issues that really matter.

But where were other powerful forces in education?

Not a word from the supposedly left-leaning ASTI who continue - long after the debate has ended - to direct their fire at "brutalist" school league tables. What about "brutalist" enrolment policies?

And not a word from the Joint Managerial Body, representing school management in most second-level schools. Can this silence have anything to do with the fact that both bodies represent teachers or managers in fee-paying schools?

Fine Gael's Olwyn Enright was also marked as absent on the issue.

What is going on in the National Parent's Council (Post Primary)?

This group is supposed to represent the interests of hundreds of thousands of parents with kids at second-level but no one here can remember the last time they issued a meaningful statement on any education issue.

What is the NPC policy on fee-paying schools, the decline of the State sector in Dublin, educational apartheid, league tables, reform of the Leaving Cert, changes in the Irish and maths exams etc? Who knows? Your guess is as good as mine!

The Governing Body of UCC, in tandem with the Higher Education Authority (HEA) has appointed John Malone to investigate the series of allegations made against UCC president Gerry Wrixon.

Malone is a former secretary general in the Department of Agriculture.

You can only stand back and admire the efforts of Daire Hickey and his team in the Philosophical Society at Trinity.

The great Al Pacino (below) will be addressing students tomorrow, the latest coup for a society which has also welcomed Desmond Tutu, Oliver Stone and John McCain.

The Phil is the country's largest student society with 7,000 paid-up members. . . and its all all run by students.

Got any education gossip? E-mail us, in confidence, at teacherspet@irish-times.ie