Sir, - Richard Bruton of Fine Gael makes what appears to be a reasonable request for examination results from the various schools to be published and for a league table be set up to show the schools with the high failure rates and those with the high success rates.
Behind this, from my point of view as a teacher of 12 years' standing, lies a desire for the middle and upper classes to congratulate themselves on how successful they and their children are.
Mr Bruton says that his concern is to target the areas of need so that more resources can be given where they are needed.
Which world is Mr Bruton living in? Or does he pretend not to know where the areas of greatest social need are? Where there is economic poverty there is educational poverty.
We are living in a vengeful, class-divided society where the poor must be constantly reminded that they are poor so that the middle and upper classes can feel good about themselves. Fortunately, tribunals and their revelations have managed to take away some of that "feel good" glow, but it is still overwhelmingly working-class people who inhabit our prisons.
I worked as a teacher for five years in another country in government schools where league tables were published and I also happened, by coincidence I am sure, to have worked in the two schools which came no. 1 and no. 2 in 1997. The self-congratulation was stupid, short-sighted and ultimately, I believe harmful, in an area of life where competition of that sort is at least unhelpful and at its worst damaging to both the winners and losers, meaning parents, students and staff.
My years in education have shown me that children work best and achieve far more where a co-operative atmosphere is encouraged.
My brief experience of the modern Ireland from some substitute teaching since I returned here last January (although I trained here in the 1980s), is that there is something of a crisis in schools due to large numbers of pupils per teacher with no great wherewithal, despite the so-called "Tiger" to pay for the changes needed. Large classes worked relatively well in previous times. They are problematic now. We are still using 19th-century methodology as we enter the new millennium.
Mr Bruton says we need "a proper set of policies for school improvement". His call for league tables publishing is a clear policy for disimprovement. - Yours, etc.,
Jimmy Blake, Grosvenor Mews, Douglas West, Cork.