In their recently-published Choosing a School, a guide to secondary education in Ireland, Deirdre Raftery and Catherine Kilbride list every school in the country. A surprising number - some 42 - take boarders, and a few are boarding-only, writes Arminta Wallace.

The idea of the book, as Catherine Kilbride explains, is to give parents information on which to base their decisions with regard to educating their children.

"Reports about league tables are not a good way for parents to make these decisions," she says. "They use them because they feel they have to - but what parents really want to know is what's actually going on in the particular school. We try to indicate some of the questions they should be asking. We also give an overview of the Irish education system - which really is quite unique - and how it evolved."

In the course of their research, Raftery and Kilbride surveyed parents and came up with some surprising trends - particularly in relation to boarding schools. "It was almost a given that parents said they'd send boys to boarding school but wouldn't even consider it for girls," says Kilbride.

"Many parents seem to think of secondary education as synonymous with single-sex education, whereas the reality is that even in boarding schools, which have traditionally been single-sex, mixed schools are now the rule rather than the exception."

Kilbride says that, at the end of the day, parents know their children better than anyone else, and must make the choice of school accordingly. Celtic Tiger realities have, however, brought a whole new set of parameters into play.

"If you've bought a house in Athy, for example, are you happy to leave your children at school there every day while you travel to work in Dublin," she asks.

For most people, though, money is also a factor.

"If you compare what it's going to cost you to send your children to, say, Sutton Park, where the fees are €20,000 a year, with what it's going to cost to send them to your local community school - well, it's a lot of money," says Kilbride.

What can parents do? Put pressure on schools to deliver the kind of services they want, she suggests - otherwise the gap between private and public schools in Ireland will only get wider.

"A lot of ordinary day schools are now providing supervised homework and other after-school facilities," she says. "So developments are parent-driven, to some extent."

Choosing a School, Deirdre Raftery and Catherine Kilbride, Mercier Press, €16.99 paperback