Sir, – Much of the commentary in the Feeder Schools 2016 supplement (December 6th) is concerned with how families should choose schools. This coverage conceals the depressing reality that many families, including in urban areas, have simply no choice about where to send their children.
My eldest child is currently in his final year in one of five excellent Educate Together primary schools in Galway. Despite living in Galway city, a school planning area with 11 postprimary schools, the only postprimary place he has been offered (or is likely to be offered) is 25km away from his house and far outside the city catchment area.
Sadly no Educate Together post-primary school exists or is scheduled to be built in Galway despite the parents of more than 1,400 children having expressed an interest in their children attending such a school.
For almost five years I and others have campaigned for a new postprimary school for Galway to meet the needs of a growing and diverse population.
Failure to provide this means ongoing hardship and no choice for many families like mine. – Yours, etc,
MARGUERITE HUGHES
Rahoon,
Galway.
Sir, – The intrinsic unreliability of the feeder schools tables can be discerned at many levels but is most clearly revealed in the second last paragraph of Brian Mooney’s explanatory piece on page two of the supplement.
He writes: “In reality, the higher the level of college dropouts experienced by former pupils of any given school, the higher the school’s progression rate will appear as recorded by colleges in the CAO system.”
Put even more simply, the greater the number of potential college dropouts and course-changers produced by a school, the more successful the school will appear in the league tables. Have the educational statisticians at The Irish Times signed on for a distance-learning course at the Alice in Wonderland School of Statistics or have they simply "eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner"?
If the time-consuming and misleading exercise of compiling feeder schools tables is to continue, Mr Mooney’s paragraph should be lifted from its position of relative obscurity. It should then be printed in bold type, surrounded by a border, and placed at the top of page one of the supplement as a simple caveat for unwary consumers of the statistical information that follows.
– Yours, etc,
DENIS KENNEDY
Western Road,
Cork.