THE PUBLICATION of The Irish Times School League Tables last week drew a robust response from the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland. ASTI general secretary Pat King said it was important to recognise that these tables “do not tell us about the real performance of schools’’. It was a familiar response from the union, one of the many education lobby groups that successfully lobbied against the publication of official league tables in the 1999 Education Act.
When The Irish Times first published league tables a decade ago, ASTI and other vested interests predicted it would have a detrimental impact on education. Ten years on, is there any evidence to sustain this charge? The league tables have become part of the education landscape, eagerly anticipated by parents and read carefully by school principals and teachers. Despite this, some in the teacher unions and elsewhere like to admonish parents who seek information on school performance. This is grossly unfair.
The choice of a second-level school is one of the key decisions which any parent will face, one which will have a big influence on their childrens social and academic development. Every parent wants to entrust their child to a school that will allow them to realise their full potential; information on Leaving Cert performance can help parents make a more informed choice.
And yet no fair-minded person could argue that the tables published this week present a rounded picture of school performance. The tables take no account of socio-economic factors. And they can grossly underestimate the work of teachers in deprived communities. That said, The Irish Times’ table highlighted the two-tier nature of Irish education where large swathes of working-class communities remain locked out of college while middle-class schools send all of their pupils to higher education. Is anyone seriously suggesting this information should be withheld?
There is a more fundamental question: Has the official culture of secrecy about schools been good for educational standards in the State? Significantly, the OECD is unconvinced. In a review last month, it said the lack of transparency in Irish education could be a factor in explaining Ireland’s faltering performance in its education rankings. In the most recent OECD rankings, Irish teenagers fell from 5th to 19th in literacy, the sharpest decline among developed nations. The OECD was critical of how “only limited data on comparative school performance is made public’’.
The Government has admitted there is an information vacuum. Its programme for government said schools should provide information “across a wide range of criteria’’ but it has still to spell out what this might mean. The OECD has proposed new official tables, weighted to allow for socio-economic factors. The Government should embrace this plan and open up a new era of transparency in Irish education; it might even help to raise standards. As things stand, the league tables published in the media remain the only source on school information. Yes, they are imperfect. But half a loaf is better than no bread at all.