Secret diary of an Irish teacher: School league tables are nothing short of toxic

I got my hair done last week. It was the first time in a while, so I went all out. I’ve long straight dark hair normally; I chopped it to a long bob and added some copper highlights. Big news. I arrived back in school feeling that terrible ‘new haircut’ awkwardness. A few colleagues acknowledged it from behind their masks. They observed the change rather than complimented it. That’s ok, I thought to myself. All I wanted was a change.

Then I entered the classroom.

‘Your hair, Miss!’

I smiled expectantly.

‘Wow. Did you do it yourself Miss?’

And there it was. The true joy that comes with being a teacher. Honestly, if I weren’t one, I’d take myself far too seriously. The humour and honesty of a teenager can smash your little insecurities into smithereens and make you laugh at yourself before you’ve had your morning coffee. It’s priceless.

‘No Karl. It cost me a hundred euro.’ I pretend to look sad.

‘Ah it’s lovely Miss. It makes you look way younger sure.’ This is clearly code to the rest of the class that I look ridiculous. Still, it’s said without malice. It’s strangely loving and I smile.

At the end of the lesson a shy student who I rarely hear from, comes to my defence in a beautifully brave way. She disinfects her desk a little slower than the rest on their way out to a socially- distanced lunch and popping the paper in the bin says gently, ‘I think your hair is great.’

These small interactions with young people are what school life is all about. It’s a joy to be part of these funny, wobbly, wonderfully diverse lives.

It’s from this position of loving my job and my students that I reel at the publication of this year's school league tables in the Sunday Times. Big bold headlines loomed about a non-fee-paying school getting the top place and all-girls schools dominating the top ten.

It makes me beyond angry. How dare anyone put young people and their schools in such a pecking order. I deeply resent how the media ranks our schools as if they are all in the same reality, in the same communities, with the same provisions, the same definitions of success. How dare they omit so much of the beauty and the bravery I see every day.

What’s more, I deeply object to their only measure of success being the students’ entry into one of our national universities. More than resenting the papers that do it though, I object to the fact that we, the Irish public, allow it to happen. We should question any publication that does such a disservice to our young people. 

Is this what education means to us? Is this how we define a school as the ‘best’ school there is? Well then shame on us.

Because the race is fixed! It is a nonsense! It’s no surprise that these top schools are predominantly fee-paying and in the South side of Dublin or Cork. These are the schools with the greatest material privilege in the country, with the ‘best’ postcodes. There is so much research on the impact of socio-economic background on your chances of attending university and the ten percent of Irish students who don’t sit the Leaving are disproportionately represented by people with less money.

Of course, they are. And yet we sit on the side lines, cheering the students who crossed the finish line first, even though the ones behind have had their legs tied together and are half-gagged. What is wrong with us that we allow this to happen? And who is to say that the runners who left the track altogether and decided on a different destination aren’t going to be more valuable to society? Writer Patrick Kavanagh left school at the age of thirteen! Granted they were different times but plenty of interesting people I know never went to University or returned to it later in life. How wonderfully ironic that students in these ‘top’ schools are busy studying Patrick Kavanagh for their Leaving Cert.

Clearly, we’re happy to read these tables. Are we also happy to witness the rising rates of depression and anxiety in youths, as found by an extensive study carried out last year by Jigsaw, the national youth mental health service in Ireland? Where is that information in these tables? Because the lists don’t help it. Trust me. If you have parents and students and teachers paying any attention to them whatsoever, then they are feeding that anxiety; it is growing and growing.

The tables tell us that top all girl schools are doing brilliantly but have these girls been taught about the reality of Irish universities? Do they know where they’re headed? Are they aware that 70% of female students currently report being sexually harassed by the time they finish their final year? How much time do they give in these highly competitive schools to objective sex education?

Education is not just about getting into college. It’s about what can’t be put in a league table

I hope my students didn’t see the Sunday Times over the weekend and I hope that if they did, they scanned them with the same lightness of spirit with which they regarded my hair. Because whilst my new hairdo might be ill-advised, these school league tables are nothing short of toxic.