Patently, the Sunday Independent is Ireland's best newspaper. On the criteria that matter, readership and circulation, it is way ahead, says Breda O'Brien
Never mind that it also excels in gossip about Ireland's D-list celebrities, and appears to believe that a woman's chances of being pictured in a newspaper should increase according to her willingness to discard her clothes. The market has spoken, and that is all that counts.
What? You want to take into account things like the standard of writing, and the breadth of coverage and analysis? Don't be ridiculous.
People who value serious journalism would be outraged at making sales figures the only criterion for judging the worth of a newspaper, but apparently teachers (and I am one) who object to league tables are merely whingers. Yet exactly the same reductionist model is at work. Once a token genuflection to the notion of education of the whole person is out of the way, we can get on with measuring the real value of a school, that is, its ability to send as many people as possible to universities and institutes of technology.
According to Government statistics, approximately 52 per cent of young people who sit the Leaving Cert progress to university. Are the rest worthless human beings? Are the people who teach them valueless?
"Cherishing all the children of the nation equally" begins to sound more and more hollow in a country where one in five pupils will not even sit the Leaving Cert, but where the chattering classes are consumed by vapid comparisons between schools.
Furthermore, what kind of hypocrisy or naivete is it to complain about schools "dodging" their special education needs obligations, while at the same time publishing league tables? What incentive is there for any of these exclusive fee-paying schools to increase their numbers of children with special educational needs, when to do so will push them down the league tables?
In a consumer-driven market, where all people care about is numbers going to university, it would be utter folly to take in anyone who will take the shine off the school's ranking. Meanwhile, those schools that currently do take more than their fair share are consigned to the league-table equivalent of outer darkness.
There are so many factors that tables of feeder schools do not take into account that it is difficult to know where to begin.
A school in a deprived area will no doubt have a highly dedicated staff, because no teacher could stand the stress unless she or he had a genuine caring commitment to kids.
However, according to the department's own figures published this October, many of the pupils in disadvantaged areas, perhaps as high as 50 per cent, will not even get as far as Leaving Cert. A school like this is unlikely to feature in the top 200, much less the top 25 of the tables. Schools that are complaining that the figures are inaccurate, because they do not take into account the numbers going to British universities or taking "gap" years, are missing the point. The tables are invidious, not because of minor inaccuracies, but because they reflect a narrow, elitist view of education, and give no credit to the real frontline heroes.
There are 30,000 students on Post-Leaving Cert (PLC) courses, and they do not even merit a mention. During the 1980s, at a time of high unemployment, the PLC sector came into existence to help to bridge the gap between school and work. The sector has pioneered education in such areas as childcare, community care, teleservices, e-commerce, tourism, sport and leisure, as well as more traditional areas such as business studies, arts and craft, information technology, construction and electronics. It also provides important progression routes to higher education through the institutes of technology.
It has impressive statistics regarding mature students, in that the PLC sector serves more new mature students each year than the entire third-level sector put together. Now that we are no longer a low-wage economy, the PLC sector plays a crucial role in helping people retrain for the higher-skills jobs that are the only viable route forward.
The fact that PLC courses are invisible in league tables is merely irritating and annoying. The invisibility of funding for PLC courses in the budget estimates is desperately serious.
The McIver report, commissioned by the Department of Education and Science (DES), has been sitting on a shelf since 2003. The McIver report grew out of commitments in the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness to redress the serious neglect and underfunding of PLC courses. Ireland is almost alone in the EU in not having a developed further-education sector.
PLC colleges grew out of second-level schools, and to date have been forced to operate within the confines and constraints of second-level administrative, management, staffing, support structures and resources.
This is completely unsustainable. Among other things, McIver recommends that the department should establish further education formally as a distinct sector of education, with an emphasis on post-second-level provision. A council of further education is recommended, along with a major reduction in workload for those teaching the courses.
The TUI and other interested bodies came to an agreement with the department that €48 million would be needed to establish proper management structures.
Not unreasonably, there was an expectation that at a time of major budget surpluses there would be some commitment in the estimates to funding further education.
Not only the TUI, but parents and students were shocked to discover that no such commitment has been given. The fact that further education is particularly vital for people in disadvantaged areas should be enough to cause the Government, even at this late stage, to begin giving it the resources it needs. However, if justice is not sufficient motivation, politicians would do well to bear in mind that students in the PLC sector can be easily mobilised to vote, and could make a difference between winning and losing for the major parties in the coming election.
As for league tables, there are huge, pressing issues in education, everything from easing the transition from an era when most schools were run by religious orders, to lowering dropout rates, and helping pupils with special needs. In comparison, devoting column inches to satisfying the curiosity of the chattering issues is sad indeed.