College success rates vary from school to school — but with good reason

THE VALUE OF INFORMATION

‘There are technical reasons why the tables cannot give a completely accurate picture’

THE dominance of fee-paying secondary schools in the league tables for the past 11 years is hardly surprising. Nor is the success of many all-girls schools or gaelscoileanna, especially those located in the greater Dublin area.

Similarly, the low rate of transfer to college by students from some — but by no means all — very disadvantaged schools is entirely predictable.

Success rates as high as 100pc or as low as 15pc are at the extreme end of the tables. However, the vast majority of our second level schools are showing steady progress in sending more and more of their students to higher education.

There are good reasons for the varying rates in schools. Much of the differences are to do with social background, with privilege or disadvantage, with proximity to schools, with parents’ educational history, with family and teacher expectations, with the individual students and how they did in primary school, with the quality of the educational experience on offer at second level and with the local environment. In other words, the variations between schools reflect differences in their student intake.

It is estimated that about half of our second level students do not attend their nearest school. This means that tens of thousands of parents are currently thinking about where their children will study for five or six years of their life, rather than automatically enrolling them in their most accessible school.

While league tables are a factor, most parents are wise enough to avoid hasty decisions about school choice solely on the reported percentage going to college. They tend to read the whole school evaluations on the Department of Education and Skills website education.ie

Granted these are not as tough or blunt as the corresponding inspection reports published by OFSTED in the UK, which makes no bones about naming and shaming “inadequate” schools, but they are getting better and increasingly calling out individual school failings as well as talking up their strengths. They can help parents make choices.

Students have individual needs and parents should find out if their prospective school can meet all or most of them, whether it’s additional supports, good policies on bullying, relationships and sexuality education, student involvement in school decision-making, green policies, the option of taking most subjects at higher level, sports arrangements and other after-school activities etc.

Ireland still has a fair number of single-sex schools and some prefer them to co-educational schools. Parents of LGBTQI+ students have to be particularly mindful of the ethos of the school their children will attend. Many will also want to know if transition year is an option or compulsory.

The reputation of a school is often out of date so it can be useful to talk to parents of other students currently attending, and to encourage children to talk to their peers who are enrolled there to get more accurate and up-to-date feedback.

School trips and extras are often an unwelcome financial burden on families so it is useful to find out how regular and costly they are and if every student is expected to go on them.

Most parents also know there are problems with league tables. There are technical reasons why they cannot give a completely accurate picture. Some students who went to college last year, for instance, will have deferred a place or taken the Leaving Certificate two, three or four years ago.

It is also a fact that the colleges give the newspapers data in different formats. Some give the last school a student attended but others list all schools a student attended if they sat the Leaving Certificate more than once. Students who drop out of one college and then enrol in another the following year complicate the picture further.

Missing from the figures are those who go to university across the Irish Sea or in other European countries such as the Netherlands and Hungary, which are becoming increasingly popular destinations for Irish students who realise it is cheaper to study and live in Amsterdam, Rotterdam or Budapest than Dublin. The inclusion of students who go on to apprenticeships or further education is also still some way off, despite support for the idea.

President of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland, Seamus Lahart, complains that the tables ignore the efforts of those students who have the odds stacked against them because of, for example, various educational needs, severe health issues, extremely challenging situations or their first language not being English.

He is right, of course, as many students and their families, with the encouragement of their teachers, overcome great difficulties to succeed. The Department of Education’s DEIS scheme for disadvantaged students helps with additional resources, as do initiatives such as the Trinity Access Programme and the UCD scheme which is described in this supplement today (page 9).

Their individual stories are often removed from the everyday experience of most people in Ireland. I was fortunate recently to meet half a dozen such students talking about the obstacles they have to overcome to stay in school until their Leaving Certificate.

Parents with alcohol and drug problems, fathers and siblings in prison, untouchable criminals in the locality — this is an everyday reality for these young people.

Some of the students I met will get to college through sheer determination and support. But it is no surprise that the school they attend features very low down the league table for college transfers, despite small classes and the best efforts of the education authorities.

Their school is situated not too far away from one of the most successful fee-paying schools in the country, which also has small classes, paid for out of the income from fees. It features very high up the league tables. Their respective rankings are entirely understandable.

Parents generally know this and treat league tables as a useful source — but not the only source — of information about which second level school they want for their children.