Teachers resist plan to publish results
Friday November 27 2009
THE country's 730 second-level schools could be compelled to publish their exam results online in the near future.
Education Minister Batt O'Keeffe is considering either guidelines or regulations obliging them to make a lot more information available to parents, including exam results.
But the secondary teachers' union ASTI has warned that any such move could distort the picture of the school system.
A spokesman for the Department of Education stressed last night the intention was not to create league tables of results.
"Academic performance is but one aspect of the role of a school in the holistic development of its pupils," he said.
He added the minister wanted to encourage a consistency of approach whereby all schools would provide certain operational information to parents -- including learning outcomes.
"Some schools are already good at this. The objective is to encourage the spread of existing good practice to all schools.
"Any guidelines or regulations would have to take account of the undesirability of adding to the administrative workload of the school.
"What is envisaged is that schools should more widely and comprehensively make available to parents and the wider school community information that is already available internally in the school.
"For example, as schools engage in development planning and self evaluation they should share the outcome of such work with parents," he said.
But members of ASTI have attacked league tables of college entry.
"These tables do not tell us about the performance of schools and present a distorted picture of the second-level school system," said general secretary John White.
"These tables distort the fact that a school which develops a pupil in order to attain a pass grade may have contributed as much or more as another school which develops a pupil to attain an A grade."
He said there was not a scrap of evidence to prove that two pupils of equal academic ability would perform differently if one went to a school at the top of the league tables and the other to another school.
Numbers
Meanwhile, Rose Tully, PRO for the National Parents Council (post-primary) said parents wanted more information about issues such as the retention rate of students and the numbers going to further and higher education.
But she would have concerns about too much detail of exam results being made available locally, especially in small communities where it would be possible to identify pupils who did badly in different subjects.
This could have a serious effect on them, said Ms Tully, who added that she was strongly opposed to league tables.
- In yesterday's league table, the Drumshanbo vocational school in Co Leitrim should have been credited with one student in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.
- John Walshe Education Editor
Irish Independent
