A revolution of sorts is coming in Irish education. School inspection reports will be published from around April. But what difference will they make to parents? Sean Flynn reports.

1 The Minister for Education Mary Hanafin is planning to publish school inspection reports shortly. So when will I see the report on my child's school?

Good question. The first batch of school inspection reports should be published on the department's website in March or April.

You might be lucky. Your school might be in the first batch, but you could be waiting some time for your school to pop up on the web.

Inspectors plan to publish about 500 reports on primary- and second-level schools every year. That's the good news. The flipside is that there are 3,200 primary schools and more than 700 second-level schools in the State. It doesn't take a maths genius to work out that it could be several years before your school is inspected and the report published.

2 Relax, I'm prepared to wait. These reports should be really useful. At last, I'll get all the information I want such as Leaving Cert results, the quality of the teaching and so on. Won't I?

Ah, not quite. The reports won't give any information on exam results. Mary Hanafin and the teacher unions say we can't be trusted with that information. Those nasty people in the media would compile school league tables and it could be the end of civilisation as we know it - or words to that effect.

What you will get is what the Minister calls a good rounded picture of what is going on in the school. Department inspectors will provide an overview of school performance. They will assess school management and planning, class preparation, the general atmosphere in the school, the overall performance of various departments and so on.

Some of this will be genuinely useful to parents. But a good deal will depend on the tone. Up to now, school inspection reports have tended to be very polite, even mild-mannered in tone. Very few of them appear to be hard-hitting. The department is hinting that this may change, but we will have to wait and see.

3 What about individual teachers? Most of the teachers in my daughter's school are wonderful but the maths teacher - let's call him Mr X - reads The Irish Times in class and has lost interest in the job - even though this is Leaving Cert year. Presumably he will be named and shamed in these new reports?

Bad news on this front, I'm afraid. Those powerful people in the three teacher unions agreed to publication of these reports - only after assurances that no individual teacher would be identified.

Yes, there might be general criticism of the performance of say the maths department in a secondary school or the level of teaching in first class in a primary school but no one will be singled out for criticism.

The report might say things such as "the maths department in this school is not operating at optimum effectiveness" but it won't write about your Mr X and his class-time devotion to The Irish Times.

Some in the teacher unions say the public might be able to identify teachers in, say, smaller schools. If the inspectors zone in on any section of a primary or secondary school, it should be relatively easy to identify who they are talking about. But Mary Hanafin says this will not happen. The whole process is about presenting a rounded picture of the school and its activities to parents. It is not targeting individual teachers.

4 To use your word, this all seems very polite. My feeling is that parents like myself want the full picture about a school including exam results. Or is that my imagination?

It is not your imagination. The Department of Education spent a great deal of money in 2004 asking parents what changes they were seeking in the education system. When it came to school information the results were clear-cut.

More than 75 per cent of parents wanted information on Leaving Cert results. They wanted to know, for example, how many from each school proceed to third-level. This is the kind of information supplied by The Irish Times in the annual feeder school lists.

These reports don't give anything like the full picture of what is going on in schools but they are a very useful guide if you are trying to decide on the best school for your kids.

If you are sensible, you will want to know about sport and music and debating in the school.

But you will also want to know if the kids will achieve their full academic potential, whether that is 100 or 600 CAO points. The feeder school lists provide some help - and that is why they are so popular.

5 I plead guilty. I read these lists in The Irish Times with great interest, partly because it seems so difficult to get any other decent information on schools.

But how come there is so little information out there on schools when openness, transparency and accountability is de rigueur for all other sectors of society?

A difficult and may I say a probing question. Are schools unaccountable to parents? It very much depends on the school. Some schools will open their books on exam results and everything else without fuss. Others will make you feel that what happens in the school is none of your business - and show you the door.

Traditionally, the Irish education system has been slow to reveal much in the way of information to parents. Both Mary Hanafin and her predecessor Noel Dempsey have admitted there is an information vacuum.

This was no problem in what we might call in deferential Old Ireland where teacher knew best. The view of the Irish public on these accountability issues has changed dramatically even in the past decade. Parents not only want to know what is happening, but they believe they have a right to know.

6 How did the Department of Education respond to this new demand?

With customary caution. Only four years ago, the department refused to release school inspection reports to this newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act, the same reports that should shortly be published on the web.

7 So what caused the change of mind?

Two factors, really. First, the sense that the obsessive secrecy about schools was unhealthy. When ministers are talking about an information vacuum, you know that things have to change.

The second factor was the huge popularity of the feeder schools lists in the newspapers. When The Irish Times first published these four years ago, there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth among the education sector.

But the league tables, as they are called, are now part of the education landscape - for good or ill. The department and the teacher unions know there is now little point in bolting the stable door once the horse has bolted, so they cut a deal on school information.

8 That's good news - even the teacher unions support the publication of school inspection reports?

Well, let's put it this way. The teacher unions had no real choice but to sign up for the Hanafin proposals on school inspection reports.

The alternative is very probably much worse. Fine Gael is moving towards support for some kind of school league tables of the kind strongly supported by many elements in the media.

Against this background, the publication of school inspections - which teachers expect to be relatively kind and gentle in tone - does not seem so bad.

9 What about Mary Hanafin in all of this? Be fair, she deserves credit for pushing through this initiative.

No question about this. Granted, the level of information may be less than some parents would like but the plan to publish inspection reports represents a major reform in our education system.

As a former teacher, Hanafin is much trusted and admired. Teachers believe she is instinctively on their side which helps explain why she was able to cut the deal with the teacher unions.

10 So it's win-win for Mary Hanafin. More information for parents and no real hassle from the teacher unions?

You could see it that way - and you could well be right. But it could also be a catch-22.Hanafin can expect a good deal of criticism from the media and elsewhere if the school inspection reports are too mild and too polite. But if they are too robust, many teachers will be none too pleased.

There is even some loose talk about possible legal action by teachers if they believe a report is unfair. Now, that could get messy.

For parents, here is the situation in a nutshell. You will find out a great deal more about your kids' school.

The only question? Will the school inspection reports give you the kind of information you really, really want?