Sir, — The School’s Admissions Bill and the debate around it, is political correctness gone mad. Such attempts at educational conformity started as a clampdown on setting tests and other criteria to meet the academic profile of certain schools and has now spread to a refusal to allow schools to retain places for sons and daughters of alumni.
The need to destroy part of our educational heritage to satisfy some strange notion of equality is not in the best interest of children, families or the country.
It is puzzling that selection is permissible for sporting excellence but not for the academic equivalent. Of relevance and interest in this debate is that Northern Ireland, which has retained a far greater proportion of grammar schools, consistently outranks the UK in exam league tables.
It is essential for the economic growth of the country that we cease to regard academic ability as not worthy of fostering, whilst encouraging and glorifying sporting achievement.
To put this in perspective, would the Government be taking action if Ireland had a number of elite sports’ schools to train athletes of the future.
Would such schools be forced to put in place an admissions policy that required them to take all applicants, rather than those with the requisite talent and the backing of parents prepared to make financial sacrifices for their future?
Perhaps, instead of wasting time on such red herrings as the Admissions Bill, and millions of Euro on ill-conceived projects, quangos and insane bonuses, the Government could channel much-needed funding into the State education sector. — Yours, etc, JOHANNA LOWRY - O’REILLY, Ranelagh, Dublin 6. Sir, – I had to double-check that the article (“Fee-paying schools step up campaign against admissions bill,” November 24th) on the self-stlyed community of “Rockmen” opposed to an egalitarian schools admissions policy when those “private” schools are in receipt of significant state funding wasn’t an article written by Ross O’Carroll-Kelly about a campaign spearheaded by his mother. – Yours, etc, BRIAN DINEEN, Howth Road, Clontarf, Dublin 3.