Mr. John Irwin:

I thank the committee for the invitation to attend here today. The Association of Community and Comprehensive Schools, ACCS, is the management body representing 96 post-primary schools in Ireland. Of those post-primary schools, 14 are comprehensive schools and 82 are community schools. There is a slight difference between both. Comprehensive schools are designated as either Protestant or Catholic comprehensive schools. All of our schools are joint patronage. The majority of community schools have a religious trustee and an education and training board, ETB, as a trustee. The latest two community schools to open have an ETB and Educate Together as trustees. The model is a community-led management structure which involves representation from within the staff, the community itself and the trustees who form the schools.

By their nature, all community schools are multidenominational. We encourage all schools to have open and transparent admissions policies. The problem that is arising, which is described in this admissions Bill, would affect some of our comprehensive schools but would really only apply where there is over-subscription within the schools, which represents a small proportion of the schools nationally. Some comprehensive schools will have religion as a criterion for priority on initial enrolment but none of the community schools will have it as a criterion of enrolment. The schools aim to meet the needs of the entire community. One will find, as was shown in the ESRI research from 2013, that the main criterion for people being involved in our schools is the locality in which they lived. That was the first criterion of choice of parents when they were asked. The main reason parents were selecting particular schools was the quality of the school over any other factor. It was the key factor. Religion was quite low in the pecking order for most of the schools as a reason for selecting the particular type of school. The ESRI report from 2013 would indicate that this seems to be across the board and that it was a very strong aspect for some people in selection of school but was not predominant across all schools.

There is a rural-urban divide here. Very often in rural primary and post-primary schools, over-subscription is not the same issue as is occurring in some of the larger urban areas. In those areas, our schools accept all students of their community. The ACCS very much supports the objectives of the Bill in respect of bringing transparency and clarity to the area of admissions and is strongly supportive of the Bill. Our aim is to try to meet the needs of all students in the community. There is a statement within the deed of trust in all community schools that two hours of religious education is provided for.

There is also a statement that parents or a student over the age of 18 may withdraw. For community schools, we would be quite supportive of the idea that in any future admissions policy, there would be an explicit statement as to what the provision would be for all students in that particular category. We do feel that it may have potential resource implications, obviously, and alternatives would have to be considered. I do not think recreation or study is necessarily the preferred option.