Madam, - Your Education Today pages of September 19th were informative in more ways than one.
The advice given by the very talented Ruth Gilligan was indeed valuable for Leaving Certificate students, as were the tips offered by Ruth Borland in a similar article last year.
However, one cannot help noticing that both students went to fee-paying schools. This fact, I suggest, is indicative of a heavy emphasis on these schools in the education - and also sports - pages of The Irish Times.
Such emphasis, which acts as valuable PR for these schools, contrasts somewhat with the attitude of Prof Tom Collins of NUI Maynooth, who noted in the same pages that fee-paying schools have "the effect of further segregating the social classes and ethnic groups".
Is The Irish Times in favour of maintaining such a situation or does it merely have an infatuation with the youth of fee paying schools? Until elements of the media, including The Irish Times, desist from increasing the hype surrounding private schools, the morale of State schools, which Prof Collins refers to in his excellent article, will continue to slip. - Yours, etc,
OISÍN McNEELA, St Anne's College, University of Oxford, England.