Newspapers have published different lists because they used different criteria to compile them, writes Seán Flynn, Education Editor.
A furore of sorts has developed over the feeder schools lists published in The Irish Times and a list published one day earlier by the Sunday Times.
The central allegation is that the publication of both lists has led to confusion rather than enlightenment with some - notably smaller schools - performing very differently on each list.
How can this happen? The reason is simple: the newspapers used different criteria in compiling their lists. The following are the key differences.
Twenty-one lists (obtained under the Freedom of Information Act) from the various colleges had to be matched against more than 700 schools.
Every effort was made to check and re-check the accuracy of the list prior to publication. To date, only a handful of schools (from a list of more than 700) have questioned their figures.
In practically every case, the problem appears to be with a third party, ie there is an error in the list supplied by a particular college to The Irish Times.
It is important in all of this to sketch some background. The Department of Education provides no official information on school performance, despite the huge public demand for this.
Five years ago The Irish Times published, for the first time, a list of second-level schools that provided students to UCD and Trinity.
Since then, the nature of the lists has been expanded and refined. Feeder schools lists have been published for all the universities and for all of the institutes.
In recent years, we have also included the number who took the Leaving Cert in the year in question, after justifiable complaints that the lists were tilted in favour of large schools, notably the State's best-known grind school - Dublin's Institute of Education - where more than 700 students sat the Leaving last year.
This year's feeder schools list supplement is the most ambitious published to date.
There has been a seachange in attitudes to the lists since they were first published in 2000. Whereas they were once roundly condemned, the lists are now accepted as part of the education landscape.
The Irish Times list drew largely positive comment from the main Opposition parties.
Even ASTI - which has been critical of their publication - issued a striking statement.
The union challenged the Conference of Religious of Ireland to explain the socially divisive nature of some of its schools. This followed publication of a list in the feeder schools supplement that showed special needs provision was largely concentrated outside the fee-paying sector.
The feeder schools lists have provoked other changes, not least in official attitudes.
Five year ago, the Department of Education refused to reveal details of school inspection reports to The Irish Times.
On appeal, the High Court ordered the release of this information, a decision later rescinded by the Supreme Court. Five years on, Minister for Education Mary Hanafin now acknowledges the need for more information on schools. From January, she is planning to make inspection reports available to parents - the same inspection reports which the department refused to release to this newspaper five years ago.
So are the various lists published in recent days of any use?
They are certainly a valuable tool for parents making key decisions in their lives - where to send their son or daughter to second level.
Far too much has been made of the differences between the two lists. In fact, the degree of similarity between both lists is staggering.
Broadly, those schools with more than 100 Leaving Cert students tend to do well in both The Irish Times and the Sunday Times list.
The best advice is possibly to ignore the attempts by some to discredit these lists.
If you are a parent, they provide valuable information. However, they are imperfect: they will not tell you about literacy levels, about the social context of the school and about the precise progress made by pupils aged between 12 and 18, because this information is not released by the department.
But they will give some help in evaluating whether a son or daughter will realise his or her academic potential in a school. If you are a sensible parent you should be interested in a lot more beyond this, including extra-curricular and cultural activities in the school.
But the lists are not without value.