The Teachers' Union of Ireland has criticised Fine Gael for saying that comparison between the performances of schools was a necessary incentive for improving them.
It has accused the party's education spokesman, Mr Richard Bruton, of advocating UK-style "league tables" for Irish schools.
Last week, Mr Bruton published a paper in which he criticised the Minister for Education's recently-announced pilot scheme for "whole school evaluation", a new form of school inspection.
He said it was "bewildering" that, before the scheme had even started, Mr Martin had declared that the data generated by it would "not be shared or used to compare schools, either locally or nationally".
"You need this stimulus of outside comparison to identify strengths and weaknesses and to act as an incentive to improvement," said Mr Bruton.
He said Mr Martin's pilot scheme "largely sidelines the quality of teaching which has been the key to the success" of the Irish educational system. "This should be at the heart of a school's pursuit of excellence."
He pointed out that the British Education Minister, Mr David Blunkett, had not abandoned the Tories' system of comparing schools' performance but had sought to improve it.
As an alternative, Mr Bruton suggested a process focused "plainly on school improvement" involving "an appraisal of the resources, methods and policies of the school".
All the educational partners and outside facilitators would have an input and the process would "result in a number of targeted improvements and agreement upon a set of resourced development strategies to achieve those targets".
To this end, each school should publish its school plan and an annual progress report, both of which would be "freely available and openly debated". This would "inject a new dynamic into the system".
However, the TUI general secretary, Mr Jim Dorney, has said he "profoundly" disagreed with Mr Bruton. "He is saying effectively that whole school inspection arrangements could be used to compare schools and set up league tables like in the UK. The Minister has given us assurances that this will not happen."
The TUI is reviewing its original refusal to co-operate with Mr Martin's pilot scheme. In a letter earlier this month to branch secretaries, assistant general secretary Mr Declan Glynn, emphasised that "the data obtained during whole school evaluations would not be used to compare schools, locally or nationally".
He said individual teachers, including principals, would not be named in evaluation reports and their work would not be referred to. "The focus of reports will be on the whole school and the quality of the learning/teaching experience generally."
He stressed that "whole school evaluation is separate from any process concerned with disciplinary procedures against a teacher".
He said the pilot project, in evaluating a school, would take into account its socio-economic circumstances, its enrolment policy and those of neighbouring schools, its range of pupil ability and its level of resources.