Madam, - The table of Leaving Certificate "feeder schools" published in Thursday's edition is a good example of unsurprising and largely unusable data.
The table shows the shocking fact that the school that sends the most students to two universities on the south side of Dublin is the largest school on the south side of Dublin, the majority of whose students are intending to go on to third-level education. If this wasn't the case, it would be news.
On the other hand, schools in Galway, Limerick and Cork are deemed to have much less academic success. It is unfortunate for these schools that academic success is measured by their ability to send students to TCD or UCD, and not the universities next door that their students are presumably trying to attend. (Yes, there are universities outside Dublin!)
Perhaps if you extended the data to include all universities and institutes of technology in a single table and adjusted it to take account of different Leaving Certificate class sizes, it would be more useful. - Yours, etc.,
CONALL DORAN, Waterford Institute of Technology, Waterford.
Madam, - In their front-page report of May 20th on private and grind schools filling most college places, Seán Flynn and John Downes refer to "our leading universities". I presume they mean UCD and TCD, as these are mentioned several times in their report. Perhaps Mr Flynn and Mr Downes might explain by what criteria they judge these two institutions to be "our leading universities". - Yours, etc.,
TOM DALY, Lismeelcunnin, Kanturk, Co Cork.