Dr. Karen McAuley:

I thank the Chairman for her question on this issue. Our understanding in respect of anti-bullying procedures for primary and post-primary schools introduced in 2013 is that they include a requirement for schools to undertake an annual review of their anti-bullying policies. An increased focus by the Department of Education and Skills inspectorate as regards promoting positive whole-school cultures and examining how schools are dealing with bullying is envisaged.

From our perspective, we are concerned that there is no agency or mechanism in place that is tasked with examining schools' annual reviews of their anti-bullying procedures. While there is an internal review mechanism within schools and a broader review by the inspectorate in the context of the whole-school evaluation, we believe there is need for the establishment nationally of an annual monitoring and review mechanism that could address any issues or anomalies that may arise.

In regard to the Education (Admission to Schools) Bill, we agree, based on our experience as an office over a number of years, that there are soft barriers in existence relating to enrolment. This was one of the reasons the office initially welcomed publication of the then general scheme of the Education (Admission to Schools) Bill. Having reviewed the subsequent Bill published earlier this year, we are satisfied that a number of our concerns have been addressed. We welcome in particular the retention in the Bill of the section 29 appeals committees. However, we have a number of outstanding concerns which I think some members of the committee share, one being the past pupil criterion issue mentioned earlier. We are of the view, for reasons that may be similar those of the committee, that the past pupil criterion should be removed as a possible derogation in cases of oversubscription.

Another of our concerns, which was also touched on earlier, relates to section 7 of the Equal Status Act. To be helpful, I would like to clarify our view on this issue. In our submission on the general scheme of the earlier Bill we recommended that section 7 of the Equal Status Act be amended to provide that in general no child should be given preferential access to publicly funded education on the basis of religion. We appreciate that there may be constitutional barriers to making this an unqualified provision due to a prospective tension between Articles 42 and 44 of the Constitution, as referenced in the committee's report on the general scheme of that Bill. We suggested in our submission that this be addressed by way of amendment of the Equal Status Act to provide that a derogation could be granted to a denominational school where the operation of that principle would give rise to a situation where the school student body would no longer reflect the school's denominational character. Like the committee, we are conscious that given the constitutional framework within which the Bill and subsequent Act will need to operate, there may be an impediment to progressing change through an amendment to the Act.