Ms Hilary Harmon:

I would like to respond to the Deputy’s question. It is surprising nobody has actual responsibility to ensure that a child transfers from primary to post-primary school, given that children have to stay in school up to junior certificate or their birthday, depending which comes first. The reason we decided that primary principals should be given a responsibility to check whether that transfer had happened was because, as I understand it, in May of next year the extended report card will be introduced and every primary school will have to fill in this report card for every student in the school. When a student successfully enrols in a post-primary school, that school will get in contact with the primary school and ask it to send on this extended report card. Therefore, principals should be left in a position where, if there are five extended report cards that have not been sent on to the post-primary school, it should be quite evident that those children do not have a place.

From our experience of working with the National Educational Welfare Board, we have found that one of the key issues is when a school hears too late that a child does not have a place or has not secured a place. What we are asking is that when principals become aware, as they will become aware through the extended report card, that students do not have a place in a secondary school, either they contact those students and ask them what the situation is, or contact the National Educational Welfare Board and flag that there could be a potential issue with the students. This is to safeguard against those children dropping off, given this is one of the key areas we have noticed, specifically with Traveller students.