Mr. Noel Malone:

I revert to the issue of the common application system to concur with what has been said there. I have been a principal for 15 years and this common application system has been there for nearly as long as I have been a principal. In my experience, a highly positive aspect is that religion has not really played much of a part because one does not apply particularly under those kinds of terms. I have never heard that being an issue in the context of the 16 schools involved. However, to revert to my original point, the real problem is in respect of social class and mixture. It is extraordinary to me and I find it to be incomprehensible that a kid can come to a school from another county altogether while a kid living across the road or in a primary school across the road cannot get into the same school. As for the section 29 issue, speaking as a practising principal, we all hate them because they are terribly cumbersome and terribly long, there is a great deal of work involved therein and usually it is not really about some of the aspects about which people have spoken today. Usually, it is about a problem with the admissions being fair in the first instance. In many cases, it is not really about not having enough room. Any of the section 29 appeals with which I have been involved certainly have been skewed situations, such as where a child might be living across the road from a particular local school but has been advised he or she is not very clever and another school would be very good at handling the child's particular needs because it is very good with additional resources or whatever, and the child should go there.

Perhaps that person cannot then get into my school because we are overwhelmed because we take all comers as such and they take a section 29 appeal, not against the school that is right across the road from them but against ourselves. Therefore, it is complex. Fundamentally, religion and other such matters will not be an issue if we think of geography first. Primarily, within reason, one should be able to go to one's local primary school, and that is what needs to be looked at.

I would recommend a common application system. In many ways, there are many advantages to it. However, it needs to be fine-tuned. Certainly, I would hope the Minister provides that, whatever about the 25% anywhere else, in the context of a closed group it has to be a common playing field.