Today's decision by the Minister for Education is a disappointment. It turns away from the principles of transparency on the question of how our children are doing. This question is a basic concern for every one of us.

The decision means that relevant comparison of what similar schools are achieving will be impossible if the Minister has his way. Concealing information about our education system is a step backwards. This is a Department that publishes no information about literacy standards in our schools and no information about school attendance. Now it is bottling up information in one area where information is available.

Of course, it is true that exams are only one dimension of what our education system is about. However, they are an important dimension. Exams determine, for example, what pupils get through to third-level education. We need more information, not less; we need better measures of what our education system is achieving, not fewer. We have the extraordinary sight of a Department which for years has insisted on exams as the only yardstick of success now denying the public access to this information.

If the Minister is successful in his High Court action this will bottle up an important debate on just how very selective our education system is. It will conceal some of the harsh realities:

how few children in some areas achieve educational advancement.

how poorly schools in disadvantaged areas are resourced to tackle the problems they are confronted with.

how unsuccessful the Minister's policies have been in targeting disadvantage.

This is the debate that will now be side-stepped by the Minister and his Department. It is not about condemning schools. It is about the exposure of policies that are failing too many of our children.

Information is power. Those who want to prevent information getting into the hands of the public are to be suspected. The Information Commissioner got it right. We need a sturdy debate about what our education system is achieving. It will galvanise demands for action in an area where we have been far too self-congratulatory.

This debate is not about the condemnation of schools. It is about the exposure of failed policies.

Schools are suffering from overload from the Minister and his Department. They are told to take on new roles and cope with complex issues such as substance abuse, sexual relationships and counselling. Schools have not been equipped to take on these roles.

Ireland needs a proper set of policies for school improvement. Fine Gael has published a discussion document on just how this can be achieved. At the heart of this process must be an honest look at the resources available to the school and the policies used to achieve its targets.

Comparison of schools across a range of measures including exam results will be at the heart of this process. This information must be publicly available to parents and prospective parents. If there is no obligation to report the outcome of policies, the easy thing is to do nothing about shortcomings or incompetence.

The Minister has failed dismally to promote proper public information about what our education system is achieving. The hard realities are that one in six young people leave our school system with basic literacy problems. Until we look beneath this figure and see why this is happening, in what schools this is happening and how we can prevent it, we will never resolve this problem.

The Minister's model school evaluation is riddled with defects:

it does not look at the adequacy of resources in the school.

it rules out from the start any comparison with other similar schools.

it refuses to share the results of the evaluation with parents.

We invest £3,000 million annually in the education system. We cannot get the best from this investment without analysis and comparison. The Minister is offering only the mushroom grower philosophy to schools and parents: "Keep them in the dark and up to their knees in manure."

Richard Bruton is education spokesman for Fine Gael