But browser beware. Lists can be useful, lists can be great fun . . . but lists never tell a complete story.

The world is round and colourful, and lists are twodimensional, columnar, and generally black and white . . . lots of nuance gets lost as slag in the smelting of reality into bare inventory. Which explains the annual public spectacle of mass brow-crinkling over these stupid, stupid 'school-ranking' lists.

If you were to compile a list of the most contemptible lists in the world, these school charts would be right up there. They are simplistic and grievous on so many levels. Who is to say, for instance, that 5% of students going on to college from a school that draws kids from disadvantaged areas isn't a better achievement than 95% going on from a school at the top of the list?

What really grates is the narrow view of education they promote, the idea that success at school is measurable only by exam results. There's no taking into account the other things that make a school great . . . the debating societies; the photography clubs; midnight, star-lit readings of Shakespeare plays that aren't even on the curriculum.

The funny thing is, the schools at the top of these 'school rankings' are full of this kind of stuff, which goes a long way to explaining why such a high proportion of their students progress to college.

Meanwhile the schools not on the list, determined to get a placing next year, misguidedly strip the education process to its bare bones so that the school day, for the few pupils who still bother to turn up, is an endless, dour and unchanging procession of lice, gruel, darned socks on radiators, and people getting beaten up on GAA pitches.

So you wonder why people abide these ridiculous lists. People are right to heed them. Because the schools heed them. And it's all so imbecilic. Because lists are a laugh. Lists are for Christmas, for new year's resolutions. But lists are not a design for life.