The new Education Bill, to be published tomorrow, will prohibit any Government agency from publishing or providing information to publish British-style exam "league tables". The legislation will also list exam-related offences, including cheating in State exams, which will be punishable by a fine of up to £5,000 or two years in jail.
The offences include publishing or being in unlawful possession of an exam paper before an exam; the leaking of information by those preparing the exam; knowingly crediting candidates with false marks; destroying exam papers and information; interfering with the exams; falsifying exam certificates and personation.
The Director of Public Prosecutions would decide whether to take a case for a lesser offence - with a fine of up to £1,500 or a jail sentence of up to six months - or for a criminal offence with a longer jail sentence.
The new Bill will make provision for the Minister for Education to draw up regulations prohibiting the publication of information about exam results which could allow someone to draw up and publish a "league table" of schools' exam performances regionally or nationally, as is done in Britain.
Tomorrow's Bill will continue to give each school the discretion to decide how to assess its pupils' performances outside the two big public exams, thus allowing schools' individual social and educational contexts to be taken into account. Educationalists have harshly criticised the British system of national performance assessments for failing to do this.
The Bill will require all schools to prepare a five-year plan, but an annual report to parents will not be compulsory, as it was in Ms Niamh Bhreathnach's Education Bill last January.
The appeals procedures laid down will be at two levels. There will be a statutory right for parents and students over 18 to take complaints, including grievances against teachers, to boards of management.
More serious appeals can be taken to a three-person appeal committee appointed by the Minister. These will include expulsion, long-term suspension and refusal to admit a student for reasons other than lack of accommodation. The inclusion of this last ground for appeal may significantly restrict the freedom of church and other privately-owned secondary schools to choose whom they will admit.
The new Bill will also allow the Minister to make regulations allowing students to get access to their Leaving and Junior Cert exam scripts in strictly limited circumstances, for example as part of the appeal procedure.
Under the new legislation, a patron will be required to ensure that a school is managed "in a spirit of partnership".
The secondary teachers' union, the ASTI, has welcomed reports that the new Bill will abandon the previous government's proposed regional education boards and will make provision for simpler appeals procedures.
ASTI general secretary Mr Charlie Lennon said the former would have been a "bureaucratic nightmare" and the latter "threatened to interfere with the effective running of schools."