Fee-paying schools increase ‘education apartheid’ — Labour

THE wide discrepancy in the number of students from different schools going to third-level colleges demonstrates an educational apartheid in Irish cities, the Labour Party said yesterday.

Jan O’Sullivan, the party’s education spokesperson, said tables showing which schools’ students went into degree, diploma and certificate courses last year show the extent of social division in the education system.

The tables, published in this week’s Farmers Journal, list which schools’ students went to which universities and institutes of technology (ITs) last year. They break down the percentage of students from every school who began degree, diploma or certificate courses.

In Dublin and other cities, private colleges and tutorial schools supplied more university students than most free schools.

“Fee-paying and grind schools in large cities vastly improve a student’s chances of making it to third level,” Ms O’Sullivan said.

“The Education Minister must intervene with clear regulations that oblige all schools which receive public funding, including fee-paying schools, to enrol in a balanced way or lose State support,” she said.

The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) said it is wrong to use league tables to measure a school’s performance.

“The only meaningful comparisons would be between schools that enrol pupils across all ability levels. For example, it’s absurd to compare a school in a leafy wealthy suburb which only takes in high-achieving pupils, with a school that has a high proportion of pupils with special needs,” said ASTI acting general secretary John White.

The publication of Leaving Certificate results in individual schools is banned under the 1998 Education Act. But Education Minister Noel Dempsey has indicated this should be reconsidered, as long as other information about schools can also be made public.

He has asked the OECD to show the kind of data about schools made available in other countries and plans to hold consultations with interested parties.

“Any information model that we might use to gauge the effectiveness and quality of schools must be sufficiently sophisticated to reflect the fact that achievement in school is influenced by factors as diverse as socio-economic background, gender and ethnicity,” Mr Dempsey said in the Dáil this week.

The National Congress of Catholic Secondary School Parent Associations (CSPA) said yesterday’s figures were not surprising. Spokesperson Barbara Johnston said schools with more money can provide resources, such as extra teachers, which can lead to smaller class sizes.