Sir, - Under no circumstances should the publication of league tables of Leaving and Junior certificate results be allowed. The Minister for Education and Science has in the past rightly praised the integrity of our examination system. Central to the integrity of the system is its fairness. Any student wishing to have his/her exam scripts rechecked can do so. Everyone gets fair play.
Publication of these results on a school-by-school basis will hugely damage the integrity and fairness of such a system. The Ombusdman, Kevin Murphy, may feel the Freedom of Information compels him to allow media access to all exam results. Has he considered the way in which the media may interpret these results? Even your very own newspaper saw fit to highlight the fact that 39 students got 10 A grades in this year's Junior Certificate (The Irish Times, September 16th). These exceptional students represent a mere 0.06 per cent of the 63,000 students who sat the exam. Are the 10 grade A students in Junior Cert and the 6 grade A students in Leaving Cert to become the Manchester Uniteds of our education system, getting all the media spotlight and leaving everybody else with precious little to cheer about? A league system will ensure such a regressive step occurs, but are teachers, students and parents ready for this?
In a league-table environment, less time can be allocated by the subject teacher toward developing a meaningful relationship with a particular class. The development of good manners, self-confidence, self-respect and respect for others, often taught incidentally to the teaching of a subject or during extra-curricular activities, will become of secondary importance. Schools, and the students and the teachers within them, will become narrowly focused in an effort to achieve academic success. Such a system will breed a rat-race mentality and in any rat-race the rat never wins.
It is mainly the teachers at primary and post-primary level who form the backbone of our education system. It is incumbent on these teachers to voice their protest in a reasoned yet firm way through relevant channels. The Department of Education and Science must put the strongest case possible in rejecting the implementation of such an unfair system. -Yours, etc.,
John O'Callaghan, Kilcummin, Killarney, Co Kerry.