Government publishes school inspection reports

The Department of Education has published school inspection reports for the first time today.

The first set of reports comprising 128 schools were published on the department's website at midnight.

But people were experiencing difficulties accessing the website this morning because of the huge level of public interest in the reports.

A spokeswoman for the Department admitted the website was having technical problems because of the increased level of traffic.

The reports include detailed reports on 18 primary and five secondary schools.

Almost 100 reports on the teaching of various subjects in schools are also published today.

Minister for Education Mary Hanafin described the publication of the reports as a landmark in Irish education, heralding a new era of more information for parents.

But she repeated her opposition to school league tables which, she says, can only provide "a narrow and meaningless measure on the effectiveness of schools". She said the reports published today, by contrast, "provide a balanced and fair assessment".

Reports on a further 30 schools will be published before the end of the month.

The National Parents' Council (NPC) welcomed the publication of the reports but said the Minister must ensure they give parents "meaningful information".

The NPC said: "Parents need to be able to compare schools so that they can make the best possible choice for their child. A system must be developed to allow parents to do this - and league tables are not the answer."

Labour Party education spokeswoman Jan O'Sullivan criticised the reports on the grounds that the assessment methods used to evaluate schools were inconsistent and that only a limited number of schools had been evaluated.

Ms O'Sullivan said: "The information that has been included is itself not very clear.It is obvious that individual inspectors have different means and methods of assessing the schools assigned to them. This makes the evaluations rather inconsistent," she said.

"Only 23 schools are actually listed today, while only 300 such assessments will be available per year," she added.

Fine Gael's education spokeswoman Olwyn Enright welcomed the publication of reports but she said there were problems in the manner in which they were presented, and the timescale for the evaluation of all schools.

"Fine Gael is not calling for the introduction of league tables. But we do believe that we need more and better information on our schools so that we can use this information to influence policy and funding," she said.