Mr. Paul Rowe:

I thank the Chairman and members of the committee for this opportunity on behalf of the now tens of thousands of parents and children who attend Educate Together schools. We welcome the Minister's efforts to bring greater transparency to the fraught area of school admissions. This is an area of long-standing concern for Educate Together. We are striving for a system which provides equality of access and esteem to children and since demand for our equality-based schools currently far outstrips demand, we are more familiar than we would like to be with the issues of over-subscription. Equal access is one of our core objectives, yet with the growing pressure on them to meet an ever-increasing demand, it is a challenge for our schools to operate enrolment policies that are as fair as they can be.

First and foremost, the case we would like the committee to consider is that there is a need to reconfigure the education system to bring it in line with parental demand. In this regard, Educate Together applauds recent Government commitments to bring the number of non-denominational or multidenominational schools to 400 by 2030. Correcting the current imbalance in school types will reduce over-subscription and thereby reduce situations where families cannot gain access to their chosen type of school. We would ask the committee to consider something further than that. We believe there is a necessity for systemic reform of school admissions with the State taking responsibility for an area-based system in which parents' preferences are collected and school places are allocated in a fair and transparent manner on an area-based State controlled system. We would like to see much stronger powers for the Minister in section 65 of the proposed Bill in order that such a system could be enabled.

We are particularly concerned with the retention of measures to allow religious discrimination in section 61(2)(b). In our experience, this remains the most serious issue concerning school admissions facing a rising number of families in Ireland today. Until this is addressed both by legislation and by dramatically increasing the availability of Educate Together model schools, the political issue of school admissions will simply not go away. We are also concerned with section 62(6)(h) relating to an opt out provision for children whose parents do not wish to attend religious instruction. While we understand the Minister's wish to shed light on an area hitherto unclear, Educate Together contends that when children of minorities simply opt out of faith formation classes within school hours, this leads to serious exclusion. Merely requiring schools to publish their arrangements does nothing to prevent this exclusion.

In regard to the provisions of section 66, which enables the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, to designate a school a child can attend, it is important that the legislation is strengthened to place the responsibility on the NCSE to ensure that all necessary resources are in place prior to the admission of the child. Children with special educational needs have a right to more than just a school place; they have a right to an education which meets their needs, and resources must be provided.

This is a very short statement and I look forward to discussing these matters. I assure the members that Educate Together's accumulated experience of managing schools is at their disposal.