Madam - Breda O'Brien (March 21st) makes a number of very sweeping claims with regard to Enda Kenny's recent article on education policy.
Ms O'Brien states that teachers would be tied up for "hours and hours" in putting together the information on schools that Fine Gael believes should be available to all parents as a matter of course. In actual fact, when publishing details of our proposals Fine Gael made it very clear that schools would be allocated specific support from the Department of Education in helping them draw up these annual school reports.
Every time the issue of releasing more information on schools is raised there is a deafening clamour from those who would have us believe that parents cannot be trusted with that information. I believe they can. Parents choose schools for many reasons. While exam results are important, they are only one part of the total package of information that Fine Gael believes all parents should have access to.
Ms O'Brien also disagrees with the proposal that the skills of all students would be assessed before entry to secondary school. She then quotes the example of a sick child whose parents are going through a divorce, because the child's father's girlfriend is pregnant, as a reason why this educational reform should not take place.
Regardless of this extreme, I believe that it is exceptionally important that we check the literacy and numeracy skills of children at primary level, and use this information in the best possible way to improve standards for all children. Obviously, no child's individual results would be published.
Finally, when it comes to the Irish language I am at a loss as to how anyone can, in all honesty, point to the position that our language is in today and claim that compulsion is working. Compulsion is driving students away from the language by the busload - only a wide-ranging reform, of everything from curriculum content to choice for post-Junior Certificate students, will stem the current decline. - Yours, etc,
OLWYN ENRIGHT TD, Spokesperson on Education and Science, Fine Gael, Dáil Éireann, Dublin 2.