Assessing schools - Why is this information top secret?

THIS week 54,000 students got their Leaving Cert results. On Monday many of those young adults will know if they will be able to enrol in the third-level course of their choice when the first round of CAO offers will be made.

Many others will begin professional training or embark on their chosen careers. All of these teenagers can only select from options defined by their academic success. This definition is no more than a reflection of the students’ academic ability and the degree to which that potential has been realised.

It also reflects the impact the pupils’ teachers and schools have had and whether the educational services provided were adequate.

Though the results of this process can be life-defining for the students, there is not yet any meaningful way to evaluate the contribution of the permanent part of our education system: the schools or the teachers.

Education Minister Mary Hanafin has set her stall against any system of comparative judgment, as have the teachers’ unions, which isn’t surprising.

This is an annual bugbear, revisited year after year but shrugged off by the minister, the schools and the teachers like a classroom exercise wiped from a blackboard.

The absolute opposition to answering in any meaningful way the one question any parent should expect to be answered — ‘Is my child’s school any good?’ — is so strong that it has been copper-fastened in legislation.

The 1998 Education Act allows the minister to refuse access to information to allow comparisons to be made between schools in terms of academic achievement. A sign of the Government’s commitment to this policy was seen in the passing of an amendment to the act earlier this year giving the State Examinations Commission — which operates the Junior and Leaving Certificates — the same power as the minister in this regard.

That’s two fingers then to the people who use the system and those who pay for it.

The absolute absurdity of the situation is underlined splendidly by the realisation that rafts of data comparing the performances of Britain’s schools, as they relate to this year’s exam results, have already been published.

They, like us, published the results of their second- level exams just this week.

This absurdity is deepened by a statement from the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland whose newsletter suggested that to publish those details is not in the best interests of pupils, parents or teachers.

“Obtaining ‘adequate and balanced’ information about a prospective school for a son or daughter can be achieved by visiting the local school and communicating with both teachers and parents involved in the school,” said the union.

Imagine the scepticism generated if a bank or, say, an insurance company, took the same position: “You want to know good we are? Come and talk to us.”

Incredibly that is not the end of the absurdity. In a survey commissioned by the minister in 2004 threeout of four people said the number of students from schools who go to third-level college should be made publicly available. There was even stronger support for the publication of schools’ junior and leaving certificate results, a proposal favoured by 71.5%.

This is another example of the tail wagging the dog and another reason to tackle the self interest groups so influential in our society... even the ones we belong to ourselves.