Secondary school league tables based on university entrants promote educational elitism and inequality, a conference of teachers was told at the weekend.
Speaking at the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) conference, general secretary John White said the tables "clearly state that pupils with special needs are less important and schools which cater for them are somehow not as good as schools which do not cater for them".
"A new brutalist philosophy which values only the so-called 'top schools' as presented by league tables will have long-term consequences for Irish society and our economy," he said. "Such tables should come with an education warning - league tables damage the education of our pupils."
He defended the ASTI, saying suggestions that it opposed league tables because of narrow self-interest flew in the face of the facts. "However precariously, we have always placed the dignity of each pupil at the heart of the education system," he said.
Mr White highlighted the fact that the Republic comes 29th out of 30 OECD countries in terms of the amount invested in second-level pupils relative to the country's GDP and called on the Government to increase investment in the forthcoming budget. He also said the integration of special needs students into mainstream classes would require more resources.
Other speakers at the conference included: Dr Maeve Martin, lecturer in education at NUI Maynooth; Pat Curtin, chief executive of the National Council for Special Education; Francis Leahy, deputy principal at Paul's Secondary School, Greenhills, Dublin; Michael Kilbride, liaison teacher at O'Connell's Secondary School, Dublin; and Nick Trigoub-Rotnem, president of the Union of Secondary Students.
Dr Martin said young people today were navigating lives more appropriate for adults than for adolescents. She cited issues such as the growth of violence and aggression, the fragmenting of the family and the cult of consumerism.
"The major challenge for schools today is to find ways to counteract the corrosive influence of a potentially destructive cocktail of out-of-school influences and offer instead a suite of activities that grab and hold the imagination of a captive cohort of energetic learners," she said.
