School league tables were published today by a number of national newspapers showing the progression rates from individual secondary schools around Ireland to third level. Overall there appears to be little difference between the performance of fee-paying and state schools although the lists of schools which send students to high points courses is dominated by fee-paying schools.

In general, an increasing number of students are proceeding to third level education. The Irish Times interestingly notes that when they first published League Tables a decade ago, the average progression rate was around 70% while now most schools are sending 80 % or more of the students to third-level and these figures are rising.

A particularly interesting figure is that only 71 % of this year’s college registrations are of students who sat the Leaving Cert in June 2013. Another 14 % are mature students, and 15% either came through a PLC course or dropped out from a course last year and are returning to college this year.

Schooldays.ie has also published data today on it’s website setting out the progression figures for each individual secondary school although it does not present the data in league tables. On visiting each school’s profile page on the Schooldays.ie site, parents can view the progression data for the school for this year and the previous seven years. Schoolday.ie is asking parents who visit the school pages on Schooldays.ie to take a few minutes to complete the ‘Parent Survey’ (link in left hand menu of school page) if they have a child in the school. Schooldays.ie are working to provide parents with comprehensive information on schools and parent feedback through the survey along with the data the site provides on college progression and student numbers are of great assistance to other parents. The survey data is treated confidentially and is displayed statistically and not attributed to any individual.

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