Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

Recently, I met the UK Secretary of State for Education and Skills and his officials, who outlined the damage done in that country by the publication of results. The Deputy is correct that whole school evaluations are only one element of the evaluation of a school. Evaluations will not be published on each school every year but even parents whose children do not attend schools for which evaluations were published last week learned a lot in terms of questions they could put to their own schools. For example, after learning from the website that a school did not give daily English or maths lessons, parents will ask about the curricula in their children's schools.

We encourage schools to participate in self-reviews, and guidelines, Looking at our Schools, were published to enable schools to examine their own strength and weaknesses with regard to self-evaluations and interactions with parents. Many schools produce comprehensive newsletters and annual reports for parents.

While the staffing of the inspectorate can vary, 105 inspectors are currently employed. The extensive series of reports published by the inspectorate has generally been welcomed. However, it is not possible to indicate when a school will be inspected because that would depend on the number of inspectors employed in three or five years' time.

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