Parents back more public information on schools

PARENTS strongly favour a wider range of information about their children’s schools being available to the public, academic research has found.

Less than half of people with children still at school or college think primary schools give parents enough information on the schools’ performance, falling to just over two-in-five parents responding to the same question about second-level schools.

Only half of those surveyed believed schools give parents enough information about how their children are doing, although improved reporting guidelines have been offered to schools since the research was carried out.

While there is stronger support for more information about second-level schools, the strongest support was for comparisons between schools to take account of the resources that are available to them. This idea was favoured by 87% of more than 1,500 people aged 15 or older who took part in the study by Thomas Kellaghan and Michael Daly, published in the latest volume of the Irish Journal of Education.

Their research also found far less support among those still in the education system for public availability of schools’ annual reports, the numbers who drop out of second level schools and absenteeism rates. However, the same level of support – just over seven-in-10 with children still in education and people still in education themselves – was recorded for making each school’s Junior and Leaving Certificate results available.

One area where current students favour more information being published was in relation to the improvements in student achievement during their second level education.

The 1998 Education Act allows the withholding of information that would allow schools to be compared on the basis of exam results and other academic performance, although previous education minister Mary Hanafin took the step of making school inspection reports available online from 2006. A 2004 survey of more than 1,500 people by the Department of Education also found around 70% of adults favour publication of schools’ performance in state exams, while the number favouring information about the number of pupils who go on from each school to third level education was around the same level.

More than three-quarters of respondents agreed that third-level participation numbers should be made public.

“The fact that only half the respondents agreed that schools currently provide enough information to parents suggests that there are several areas for which more information would be welcome,” they wrote.

The type of information for which the greatest demand exists is an annual report for each school, although there was greater demand for more information from parents than from those still in the education system.