Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

On behalf of the committee, I welcome Dr. Michael Redmond, director of research and development at the Joint Managerial Body, JMB; Mr. Paul Crone, director of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals, NAPD; Ms Eileen O'Rourke, general secretary of the National Association of Boards of Management in Special Education, NABMSE; Mr. Pat McKelvey, director of schools at Education and Training Boards Ireland, ETBI; and Ms Áine O'Sullivan, assistant general secretary of the Association of Community and Comprehensive Schools, ACCS. Ms O'Rourke will be attending virtually.

Our witnesses are attending to assist the committee with our scrutiny of the Education (Admission to Schools) Bill 2020. The format of the meeting is that I will invite Dr. Redmond to make a brief opening statement, followed by Mr. Crone, Ms O'Rourke, Mr. McKelvey and finally Ms O'Sullivan. Their statements will be followed by questions from members of the committee. Each member has an eight-minute slot to ask questions and receive answers. I will call people to a halt after eight minutes or thereabouts. As the witnesses are probably aware, the committee will publish their opening statements on its website following the meeting.

I remind members of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. Since Ms O'Rourke is giving evidence remotely from a place outside the parliamentary precincts, she may not benefit from the same level of immunity from legal proceedings as a witness who is physically present does. She has already been advised of this.

Witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not criticise or make charges against any person, persons or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that may be regarded as damaging to the good name of a person or entity. If statements are potentially defamatory in respect of an identifiable person or entity, witnesses will be directed by the Chair to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

I invite Dr. Redmond to make a brief opening statement. I ask witnesses to stick to three minutes each.

Dr. Michael Redmond:

Beannachtaí libh. Our written submission to the committee sets out some key challenges faced by schools in allocating places in situations where there are more applicants than places in any given year.

A particular challenge relating to the committee's focus today is the fact that parents can, and increasingly do, accept offered places from more than one school, cancel applications late, fail to present in September, and-or fail to communicate with the school about their intentions. We urgently need to address this anomaly if any real progress is to be made on the challenge of oversubscription.

It is important to recognise that current legislation and regulation around the enrolment process can present challenges to making timely provision for incoming students with special cognitive, physical or sensory needs. For such applicants, our schools require a longer timeframe than the one year set out in the Bill. That said, neither current legislation, nor indeed any legislation, can address the fact that, in some areas throughout the country, there is a shortage of school places.

What is certain is that, in oversubscription situations, the practice of prioritising siblings and children or grandchildren of past pupils arose from a concern for continuity of family experience and for the primacy of parental choice as protected in the Constitution. Schools, like families, are not solely operational entities. They thrive on relationships, values, continuity, local community cohesion and loyalties built up over time and, indeed, generations.

In terms of transparency, schools must declare the number of places being made available in first year. They must admit all applicants if places are available and must specify the criteria that will be used if the school is oversubscribed. All schools that were oversubscribed in the previous year must publish a breakdown of the total number of applications received and the number and order of offers made in that year by reference to each of the selection criteria.

Section 62(10)(a) of the Education Act 1998 allows schools to include a criterion based on a student's connection with the school by virtue of a sibling attending or having attended the school. Section 62(10)(b) allows schools to include a criterion based on a student's connection to the school by virtue of his or her parent or grandparent having attended it. The parent or grandparent criterion is subject to a maximum of 25% of the places being made available by the school.

It is important to note that there appears to be a misconception that, where schools choose to include the parent or grandparent criterion, 25% of the total number of places being made available are automatically set aside for qualifying applicants. In our experience, very few schools reach the allowed cap of 25%. The school may not be oversubscribed or the criterion may have been placed down the list of criteria so that it is not reached at all or, where reached, very few places remain to be allocated.

The JMB supports the retention of section 62(10)(b) and welcomes the committee's focus on oversubscription and the shortage of school places more generally

Mr. Paul Crone:

I thank the committee for the invitation to present at this meeting. The NAPD is the professional association for post-primary school leaders and provides a united voice for principals and deputy principals on issues of common concern across all three post-primary sectors. I am here to speak about the Education (Admission to Schools) Bill 2020.

Education in Ireland is seen as an enabler, a means of personal development and a way towards self-improvement and personal fulfilment. Our education system prides itself on promoting equality and inclusiveness and embracing diversity. The local school for the local child builds a sense of belonging and ownership in the community in which the child lives. The development of this stewardship builds the communities in which we live.

The vision for Irish education, as outlined in the Department of Education's 2021 statement of strategy, strives to give every student the same opportunity to achieve his or her full potential. This means that every student must be given equality of opportunity. It is understandable that a school may wish to prioritise the children or grandchildren of past pupils, given that they have previous connections with the school, have contributed to the development of the characteristic spirit of the school and share common values. However, the operation of this criterion with the potential to reserve 25% of places can have the consequence of excluding newcomers to the area, international children, members of the Traveller community and parents who may not have completed their own education yet value education for their children.

School boards of management are charged with deciding on the admission criteria for schools and many choose such criteria as having siblings who have already attended the schools, living in defined catchment areas or attending specific feeder schools. It is likely that parents or grandparents who attended a school may still live in the local area, the applicant may have a sibling already in the school or an applicant may attend the local primary school.

In preparation for this hearing today, I sought and identified one post-primary school that operates the parent or grandparent criterion to use as an example. I asked how many current first-year students relied on this criterion to gain access to the school. The answer was none. While many students had parents or grandparents who attended the school, all of the current first-year cohort qualified to be awarded a place under the other criteria operated by the school ahead of the parent or grandparent criterion. This raised the question of the relevance of this criterion for this school. This situation may well be replicated elsewhere throughout the country.

While I accept that this is a complex issue for some schools, the strength of our belief in the purpose or vision of Irish education to promote equality and inclusiveness will determine the decision required to adopt or reject the proposed Education (Admission to Schools) Bill 2020. I thank the committee for its time. I will be here to answer questions afterwards.

Mr. Pat McKelvey:

Gabhaim míle buíochas leis an Chairperson and the committee for the opportunity to present. I am the director of schools for Cork Education and Training Board, ETB, and I represent ETBI today. There are 250 post-primary schools in the ETB sector, of which 48 offer education through the medium of Gaeilge. In addition, we have 27 community national schools within our remit.

When people walk into an ETB school, they walk into a school reflective of its own local community. They might see signs on the corridor walls reading "co-educational", "multidenominational", "excellence in teaching and learning", "an inclusive school" or "a diverse school". When the school bell rings and the students of an ETB school emerge onto the corridors, they will witness at first-hand a manifestation of those signs including: children emerging from a special educational setting, international students, children in receipt of learning support, children from Traveller backgrounds, students of various religious persuasions and none, refugee children and children living in the community. They have to ask themselves how all of these students, representing such diversity, come through an admissions process and end up under one roof. The answer is simple; in an ETB school, the school community is a reflection of those who live and work within its environs. An ETB enrolment or admissions process is open. We accept all and, where we are oversubscribed, we have criteria within our policies that are very much embedded in a spirit of supporting the members of the local community. Yes, we have admissions criteria to support a fair and open admissions process. These are used especially where we have an oversubscribed school. These criteria are very much grounded in a community focus within the spirit of accepting all students and providing a welcome for everyone.

The parent or grandparent criterion is a cause of concern and ETBI would have no difficulty with its exclusion from the legislation. Many siblings of current students, students from primary feeder schools and students in the recognised catchment area are, in fact, children of past pupils. The enrolment of these students, when added to the 25% of places set aside for past pupils, often results in a far greater percentage of past pupils in the cohort of students in any incoming year group than would be representative of the local community.

While we have an opportunity today to consider the current Bill, it would help to give some consideration to all areas relating to admissions that are a cause of concern within the current legislation. There is a loophole regarding applicants applying to more than one school in that there is nothing in the legislation to set out a timeline for when parents must tell the school that they are not accepting a place. The Act does not allow schools that are not oversubscribed to refuse a student on the grounds of age. This presents difficulties in respect of children coming into primary or secondary schools who have not reached the age laid out in the Department's regulations. The Act does not allow for a principal or board of management to uphold its duty of care to the school community in the case of an applicant who poses a threat. If the school has a place, such children must be accepted into the school. This is all fine as long as all schools apply the Act in the same way but that has not always been our experience in the ETB sector. The issue of twins, triplets and other siblings who seek to join a school in the same year group in the same year is a difficult one. Should we treat their applications separately or together? Either way, there is potential for discrimination. The approval or sanction by the special educational needs officer, SENO, of a special class often comes after the annual admissions notice has been published and the admissions application window closed.

ETB schools have an open and transparent approach to admissions. While the parent or grandparent criterion does exist, it exists in only a very small number of ETB schools. Where it does exist, it is so low down the list of criteria that it is not often used. Indeed, many students of past pupils will be offered a place as a sibling of a current student, as a student of a feeder school or because they are from the catchment area.

As such, it would not be a cause of great concern to ETBI if it were removed, provided it were removed for all schools.

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I invite Ms O'Sullivan to make her opening remarks.

Ms Áine O'Sullivan:

My name is Áine O'Sullivan. I am the assistant general Secretary with ACCS, the management body that works with 96 post-primary schools across the country. ACCS welcomes many parts of the Bill or what has come with the Bill. It has provided greater clarity and consistency in the drafting and application of admission policies in our schools. The transparency that comes with the annual admission notices is most welcome. The clear designation of the responsibilities of the various stakeholders is also welcome. Section 66, on the co-operation between boards, is particularly welcome. It has really assisted in the allocation of places where schools are oversubscribed. For example, in one large urban area, there are three post-primary schools. A total of 1,192 applications was received by those schools for 472 places. Working together, the schools were able to bring the deficit down to 57 places from the figure of 1,192. On the ground, schools are working hard and constructively to try to work on the issues around oversubscription. The argument that we make in our submission is that schools are communities that are strengthened by strong family connections. In our schools, attending parent criterion is not widely implemented at all. In fact, in a survey of 67 schools, six schools stated that they included that as a selection criterion. According to the survey, of the six schools, only one used it where students lived within the catchment area. Most of our schools work on the basis that living within the catchment area and having siblings at the school are the main criteria, because community schools and comprehensive schools are schools for the local community. Really, it is only where schools are hopelessly oversubscribed that they have to perform this balancing act. In our submission, we reference the judgment of Judge Teehan in the Stokes v. Christian Brothers High School Clonmel & Anor case of 2011, where he talked about the role of school boards in seeking to strike such a balance between legitimate competing interests. We argue that the role of boards in seeking to strike such a balance should not be removed. We do so in the context of that judgment, which was made with some hesitation. The hesitation highlights just how complicated and complex the issue is for schools. We argue that the lack of school places in certain locations is the main issue here.

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Ms O'Rourke has three minutes to make her opening remarks.

Ms Eileen O'Rourke:

Apologies for being late; my connection let me down today. I represent NAMBSE, which represents the boards of management of special schools and mainstream schools with special classes all over the country. Our schools work with and support students with SEN from the ages of four to 18. These children may have mild, moderate, severe and profound disabilities. They may have autism, social, emotional and behavioural difficulties and also complex medical needs. The access to education and the well-being of our pupils is, as always, the central consideration of our boards of management. Section 62(10)(b) of the Act, if applied to enrolment in special schools and special classes in mainstream schools, would be contrary to the centrality of the child's specific needs in the enrolment process. Therefore, NABMSE supports the removal of this paragraph from the Education (Admission to Schools) Bill.

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The first member to ask questions is Deputy Ó Laoghaire.

Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I read the submissions of the organisations represented here today. Apologies for my late arrival; I had another engagement. I thank the witnesses for attending. I think this is a most important issue.

From reading some of the submissions, I think that in a way it goes without saying, but it is worth putting on record, that yes, sometimes these issues only arise in the minority of cases but that is when enrolment policies matter. In the vast majority of instances, school enrolment is fairly straightforward. It is where there is high demand that it becomes a significant issue. Not exclusively, but typically, that is in the large urban centres and the counties around Dublin. I will put my questions to any of the witnesses who wants to respond.

Some of the concerns that have been raised relate to the issue of continuity. It has been said that family and connections inform the values of the school and the school community. My own view on that is that while that is entirely legitimate and perhaps desirable, the key point is that it should not disadvantage a child who is in the local community. Those are the potential circumstances that can arise and this Bill seeks to avoid them. Such circumstances include cases where there is an oversubscribed school, there is a child in the community who has applied to go to the school, whose parents may not be from the locality or even the country originally, and they are in competition with a child who is not living as locally, whose parents did go to that school. I know that family connections to schools matter. I do not believe that they are of no value or should be discarded lightly. However, the point is that the local child should be the key priority. I ask for a response from the witnesses on that point.

I do not have the submissions in front of me. I ask the witnesses to correct me if I am wrong, but I think the JMB raised an interesting point on another issue relating to school admissions, namely, that there is a need for a two-year run-in for children with SEN who are trying to seek placements. We have come across this issue in my own office in relation to the new disability teams trying to get up and running and the challenges that they have faced. There have been cases where children have applied to get into a school but they do not have the educational placement assessment document. It is an interesting idea and one that is worth exploring.

As a final observation, not all the bodies represented here necessarily have dealings with primary schools, although obviously, ETBI does. Another issue that I have come across in relation to school admissions at primary level is the inflexibility that exists around school planning areas. In cases where a primary school is oversubscribed or is located on the very edge of a school planning area, a child from the far end of the school planning area - which can be quite large and take in several towns - has priority over a child who might live 2 km or 3 km away, but just falls on the wrong side of that line. Obviously, that is an issue that only arises in circumstances where a school is oversubscribed, but I have come across it. It comes up in areas where schools are oversubscribed, such as Cork, Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow. I ask the representatives of the organisations that are dealing with primary schools for their observations on how that issue arises. Perhaps it also applies in relation to secondary schools. That is all I have for the minute. Generally speaking, I agree with the objective of the Bill. It is a straightforward Bill. There is a value in preserving family connections, but for me, the local child has to be at the centre of things and they have to be given that highest priority. That is how it should be.

Mr. Paul Crone:

The connections that families have is something that we put in our submission. Parents often feel that they have had a positive experience in the school themselves and they would like that experience for their child. That is very real and positive. However, it can indirectly or inadvertently result in discrimination against a child who lives directly outside the gate of the school and who is perhaps looking at that school for 12 years of their life. It may be that they have to attend a primary school closer to where their grandparent lives because they are doing the childminding, but the child always intended to go to the local school.

That is an important and valid point, and one which should be central in decision-making. Equality of access for local children to local school should be a priority.

Regarding SEN, that was not in the JMB but it is something very close to our hearts. Planning for students with special educational needs starts in the October before they start school the following September. Often, that means there is not enough time to collect reports, do what needs to be done and prepare and collaborate with all of the other schools and agencies in order to have a SEN plan, SNA or whatever else is needed. I will not comment on primary schools as we are primarily concerned with secondary schools.

Mr. Pat McKelvey:

From an ETBI point of view, we believe schools should serve their local communities first and foremost. While we understand the importance of tradition and continuity, we would also make the point that even if this clause was removed from the legislation there would still be a large number of parents or grandparents in an area whose children will attend the school they did. We have some statistics on this and found that the rule is very seldom used, yet a significant amount of parents still send their children to the school they went to. There is a threshold above which schools do not need to have that policy enshrined in law in order to keep that continuity and consistency.

From an ETBI point of view, what worries us is equity and serving the local community. The idea that the rights of a grandchild of someone who went to a school 70 years ago would trump those of a child who lives across the road from a school is wrong. We understand the importance of continuity, but this is about a balance of rights rather than one right trumping another. From an ETBI point of view, we are very much committed to serving local communities.

An important point was made by the Deputy on primary schools, and there is a piece of work to be done on that, in particular where a school falls on the edge of a planning area and the natural catchment area of the school does not concur with the planning area. That is something that needs more scrutiny.

Fiona O'Loughlin (Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the opportunity to take Deputy O'Sullivan's slot. I thank the witnesses for coming before us. It is interesting to hear their views and opinions. While they differ slightly, addressing the balance of rights within a community and the ability of every child to have an opportunity to go to school in his or her community is uppermost.

Some 20% of schools have a problem with oversubscription. The inference may be taken from the Bill tabled by my colleague, Deputy Ó Ríordáin, that this is an elitist issue and impacts on fee-paying schools. However, my experience as a public representative, and having been a teacher, is that oversubscription was not an issue in fee-paying schools in terms of parents wishing to send their children to the schools they went to. Rather, it was quite the opposite. There are fee-paying schools in my area.

Without a shadow of a doubt, we have to address the situation whereby parents make a number of applications to a number of schools and, in some cases, accept all of the offers and decide at the last minute which school to go to. That leads to huge problems, in particular in areas where the Department of Education is trying to define the need for a new school. In south Kildare it was hard to crunch the numbers. I contacted sixth class children in primary schools to try to determine how many children were leaving primary school and how many were on waiting lists for different secondary schools.

The one-year timeframe is not sufficient, a point that was well made in the submission. Applications need to be made from fifth class onwards.

There has to be some type of central enrolment policy, which most primary schools within catchment areas already have. That is key. In some cases, principals get together informally. The Department should take a lead on this. It is doing that in south Kildare at the moment, in particular in the areas I outlined and because there is an agreement for a new school. I would be interested in hearing the views of the witnesses as to how that could work. It is crucial for the future.

The balance of rights has been mentioned. That is important in terms of solidarity in a community. As new families, be they new Irish or from different parts of Ireland, move to towns they need to be able to become part of a school community. We cannot have a situation where they are, in effect, not allowed to become part of the community. That is the key issue.

The timeline is important in terms of applications for schools. In Newbridge, there are ninth and tenth round offers being made right into August, sometimes two weeks before school is due to start. That is difficult for parents and students, in particular. I would like to hear the views of the witnesses on that.

Dr. Michael Redmond:

I thank the Senator and Deputy for their nuanced characterisations of what is happening at school level. At school and board of management level, there is not a school in the country that is oversubscribed which likes to impose criteria on incoming applicants. Criteria are, by definition, exclusionary and inclusionary. The hierarchy of criteria is down to the local board of management.

In our experience, schools do not ring fence 25% of their places for the children of parents or grandparents. In a survey we carried out in preparation for this meeting, 250 schools responded. Of those that responded, 60% of schools of all types have this provision in their criteria, including many DEIS schools. St. Kevin's College, Ballygall, New Cross College, Finglas, Mercy Secondary School, Inchicore, St. Paul's, North Brunswick Street, and St. Vincent's, Glasnevin, all have this criteria in their admissions policies. Whether they apply it depends on the degree of oversubscription.

Of the respondents that have this criterion in their admissions policies, 60% are oversubscribed. In the final shake up, only 15 of the 250 schools that responded to the survey brought in 25% of their enrolment under that criterion. A further 25 brought in single figures. From our trawl of the voluntary secondary sector, 40 schools applied the criterion. The majority of those only brought in single figures in terms of students. In practice, the criterion is not at the apex of the selection criteria schools employ.

Far from being an elitist provision that is designed to be exclusionary of local children, quite the opposite is the case in the schools our sectors represent here today. Nationally, our schools are extraordinarily inclusive and welcoming of all students, in particular students in their local communities. The simple fact is that capacity is the problem. In many parts of the country, our schools do not have sufficient places to cater for all applicants. That is where the problem lies. Schools are not applying this criterion in an exclusionary way.

In terms of special educational needs and enrolment, schools seem to be managing reasonably well with the current one-year provision, except for two situations.

The first concerns boarding schools, and the second, which is more universal, concerns students with special educational needs for whom the installation of certain infrastructure, such as lifts and ramps, requires a lead-in time. As members have heard from my ETBI colleague, Mr. McKelvey, there may be circumstances in which a SENO presents a late assessment of need for a student. That can be problematic, too. However, that can be solved fairly straightforwardly. What cannot be solved through universal provision is the fact that, in many parts of our country, schools are heavily oversubscribed and need to apply criteria. They do not want to be in that position but they must apply the criteria. When they do, they follow the law.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I am positively disposed to this legislation. The two tests that apply to any legislation concern whether it solves a problem and whether it will result in unexpected consequences. Interestingly, I played the admissions game on the way up on the train today. Tramore is quite a good place to run this tote experiment. It is an old town with an expanding young population that is creating demographic pressure on the school system. There are schools of varying ages. One is more than 100 years old, another is 50 years old and yet another is 30 years old. There is also a newer school, which started up in the past decade or so. It boils down to the questions of whether the right of those whose families have lived in the town for a longer period to access one of the two older schools trumps that of others living in the town and whether the right of access of someone living in the city of Waterford trumps that of a person living locally. I find myself in that situation in that I am not from Tramore but from the neighbouring parish. My team played Tramore in Gaelic games. I would have lost out on the admissions game because there is pressure on places. I do not believe the criterion under discussion is being applied to remove the pressure on cases, but I would have lost out because I am new to the parish, as the saying goes. There is a legitimate question to be asked about the balance of rights because there is a genuine tradition in the case of the school that has been in existence for more than 150 years. The school has serviced the town of Tramore for that period, and people have a deep and emotional connection with it, which I understand. That is what we have to weigh up. In weighing it up, I come back to the first test, that of whether we are solving a problem that exists.

I read the admissions policies of the schools in question. There are four primary schools and one post-primary school in the town. Two of the schools have the provision under discussion and three do not. It is interesting that all the schools have their admissions policies online, but the admissions statements are not as easy to access. Therefore, I could not see in black and white how often the provision had been applied and how many people it had applied to. Do we have reliable figures on this?

Dr. Redmond talked about running a school survey. A school survey is self-selecting in that whoever will gain access to the school will reply to it. Do we have hard and fast figures on how many schools have the provision in question and the number of children it has been applied to on the State-wide level? Can anyone provide me with a picture of the problem we are trying to solve?

Dr. Michael Redmond:

I could not agree more that we may be working on unchecked assumptions regarding the data. I am referring to the gross data indicating the number of schools that actually have the provision in question, the number of those schools that are oversubscribed, the number of those that apply the criterion, and the outcomes. We encourage the Department, with its warrant and authority, to produce a definitive survey and a final tranche of figures that reflect the contemporary position in schools across the country. It is difficult.

Of course, 250 out of 380 involve self-selection. By and large, the headline numbers may be at variance. We carried out the survey following a request from the Department to find out how the data reflected the current situation. It was at the height of a pandemic, when school principals were suffering an existential crisis in their schools. Survey fatigue is a serious problem.

The Department recently carried out a survey on unmet need regarding teacher supply. With the support of all the management bodies, it got a response rate of more than 90%. I encourage the Department to replicate that exercise because that kind of response rate is very difficult for a management body to come by. We encourage the production of data.

Working with unchecked assumptions carries the risk of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. We need to see how big the issue is. However, I need to keep coming back to the straightforward fact that school capacity is the problem. Schools do not want to apply criteria that are exclusionary, but any criterion they apply will, by definition, include some and exclude others. Every parent wants the criterion to be the one that will benefit his or her child. That is how I felt about my children, and that is the way members and everybody else in the country will feel. The crisis is not of the schools' making; it is an infrastructure and investment problem that really needs to be addressed as a matter of national priority.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I accept that, and I also accept the difference between being child-focused and my-child-focused. We have to make the child-focused decision here. It comes down to a value judgment on the difference between someone who lives within the community and someone with a longer-standing connection with the community.

Am I correct that admissions policies have to be published on school websites?

Dr. Michael Redmond:

Yes.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Is admissions reporting laid out statutorily? What happens to the data produced in that regard?

Dr. Michael Redmond:

They should be published on the school website.

Ms Áine O'Sullivan:

The admissions notice should be published. As a management body, we would advise our schools to ensure it is available and published on the website. That gives the detail for the previous year and the various criteria applied.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Does it go somewhere? Is there a responsibility to report up the chain, for example, to the Department of Education, to provide the data we are talking about and that we need to underpin?

Dr. Michael Redmond:

We would be much happier if that were the case. The schools must comply with the law. None of us here will stand over schools that do not publish their admissions statements or admissions policies, or make them difficult to find, for one reason or another. Such behaviour is not democratic. It is against both the spirit and letter of the law, as well as being unfair to families. Of course, we do not stand over that. Where we discover it, we will challenge it. However, it is time for us to get the national picture on this.

Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

There is much merit in talking in a wider sense about combined admissions policies. They are relatively standardised, but further standardisation is required. Combined admissions policies should be applied in areas where there is pressure. The problem could be resolved across the school spectrum. We do not have that opportunity to focus on this in this discussion but maybe the committee will agree to considering it in the future.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their attendance. This is my legislation.

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I neglected to say that. We will give the Deputy a little longer because the legislation is his own.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I am just grateful to the Houses of the Oireachtas for facilitating a Bill like this. It was chosen through the random-selection process as a Private Members' Bill on a Thursday evening and the Minister gave 12 months for it to be assessed, and here we are. It is a great credit to the Oireachtas that a Bill like this can get to this point.

I will start with a point of agreement. All of us agree that it is better that children should access a local school and that no criteria should ever have to be needed to differentiate between children.

However, if I were to ask any of the people here, whether the members, the witnesses or the secretariat, what school their fathers and mothers or grandfathers and grandmothers went to, they would probably feel that was an irrelevant question and would perhaps be slightly insulted by it because I might be perceived as trying to paint a picture of who there are. I understand that this provision in the legislation was included because of the lobbying by the fee-paying sector, which wanted to maintain some sort of royal line of succession within their school communities. It is up to them to undertake that lobbying and for them to answer as to why they wanted to do it. The argument that this approach is one that not many schools adopt does not stand up. To suggest, based on experience, that only about 15 schools are adhering to or enforcing this approach, then that is still 15 schools too many. For people living in the communities around those 15 schools, it is irrelevant to them if they are on the rough side of this discussion.

Everyone should enter the school admissions process as equal citizens in this republic. It should not matter where someone’s father went to school or who he was. It is completely offensive to the equality agenda of a republic for consideration to be given to the school that someone’s father or mother went to, or, indeed, the school that someone’s grandfather or grandmother went to. It is absolutely offensive. How is anybody expected to compete for a place in those circumstances?

I accept that we should not have a situation where young people are competing for places, but how are they supposed to compete for a place or try to access a place on an equal basis, if they are not from the area or the country or if their parents or grandparents did not attend secondary school? What if this were to be the only opportunity that someone’s family has ever had to break out of a cycle of educational disadvantage, attend secondary school and in that way break out of disadvantage? Yet a person in that situation could be disadvantaged in trying to enter that school because his or her father or grandfather did not go to it. It is so patently elitist and wrong that I cannot believe that anyone would try to defend it on any level whatsoever.

Eileen Flynn (Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Hear, hear.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

This provision was included in the legislation because of lobbying from a certain cohort that wanted it to be put under the radar. When the 2018 Act was passed, it was progressive legislation and most attention was paid to the abolition of the baptism barrier. We all felt it was progressive legislation, but I made these arguments in the Seanad when it went through. I was voted down and that is what happens. We are now in a position, however, where we are asking people to defend it. I cannot, for the life of me, understand how the best argument that people can come up with is that not many schools actually use this criterion now. Other schools could use it and all schools could use it, if they wanted to do so. Every school could say to child A versus child B that the father of child A went to the school.

A great deal of inequality in Ireland is based on education. Nothing perpetuates inequality more than the Irish education system. Much of it comes down to what schools people have gone to, the advantages they have had, the area they have come from, etc. The committee will have to tackle the issue. To enshrine inequality in legislation, however, and to give more rights to those families who have had the advantage of attending secondary school, because their parents or grandparents did, is offensive to the idea of a republic. It is offensive to the idea of an education system that lifts everybody. Therefore, the argument that this type of approach does not really happen very often is a ridiculous one to my mind. I return to the situation of those children who need education more than anybody else. The possibility that such children would be asked even once in any process where their parents or grandparents went to school or that such a situation could arise in any circumstances in any school is something that should not be in any legislation and especially not in a proposed Bill on school admissions.

Those are my views. I will be interested to hear what the witnesses have to say.

Mr. Paul Crone:

As I said in my opening statement, education in Ireland should be about enabling and empowering people, and that requires access. I agree with what Deputy Ó Ríordáin said. It is important to combined that with the point that everybody should have access to education at every level. This is an issue we have to deal with in certain areas where there is oversubscription for schools and then schools are put in an awkward position. Do they go with those living in the local area and attending the local feeder schools?

Everything is open to abuse, and as part of our connection with the wider European educational community, through the European School Heads Association, ESHA, we have explored how this issue is handled in other jurisdictions. I refer to local educational authorities assigning students to schools. In Ireland, however, this process is concerned with respecting the parental right to choose. Frequently, parents choose what is perceived to be the better school and they put the names of their children down for admission. As an example, two schools could be 500 m apart, with one getting 800 applicants and the other 30 applicants because of a perception of one being the better school or because one has DEIS status and the other does not.

Therefore, this is a wider issue. As a society, we must examine our vision for the Irish education system. What is it that we want it to do? The answer to that question will frame our admissions policy and how we tackle senior cycle reform. Is our vision for Irish education based on equality? Is it a vision for a system that is fair, open, transparent and to which everybody has access? If we decide as a society and a nation that we do want such a system, then everything else under that theme becomes an easier decision. The perspective of the NADP, then, is that we support the Bill.

Mr. Pat McKelvey:

I endorse what Mr. Crone said. The ETBI believes that publicly-funded schools should serve their local communities first and foremost. It is then necessary to ask several questions. I respect and understand the need for schools to have continuity and tradition, and to maintain those aspects. Schools that do not use this clause, however, and which have never done so, have also maintained their traditions and continuity and been very successful. Therefore, the idea that this clause is needed to do achieve that aim seems to be somewhat of a stretch, given that we have serious evidence that other schools that do not use the clause managed to do exactly the same.

Another aspect concerns the value this clause has in the legislation. If the clause is not being used, then why is it there? I agree with Deputy Ó Ríordáin. My comment for the legislators in response is that what is important regarding this clause is not a measure of how many, but of if any. This cannot be a case of needing to reach a threshold regarding the number of children adversely affected before we decide. In a republic like ours, we should be saying that every child counts. We do say that, so if every child counts, then even one child affected in this way is one child too many.

Ms Eileen O'Rourke:

I agree with several of the points made so far concerning equality of access and opportunity. We feel that must be a central tenet of all aspects of what we do in schools. I echo a point made earlier about the length of the enrolment process for students with additional and special needs. Currently, the cut-off date has been moved forward for the application for extra resources for these children. It has been moved to February, which is unworkable. We have had a great deal of communication from NABMSE members recently regarding this difficulty. It is an onerous task to pull together the necessary meetings, documentation and perhaps the reassessments of the children applying.

It is quite an onerous task to pull together the meetings, documentation, perhaps the reassessments of children who are applying. We also have to fit into our schedule many out-of-school visits and opportunities to photograph key people, meet people repeatedly, come to school at busier times, quieter times and so on. It is quite a complex process because we are enrolling children with extra needs. We would really support looking at the length of the enrolment process. Currently with the cut-off dates in place one year is not enough for our members.

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Does the Deputy want to come back in before we move on?

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I am happy with the response. I would again like to point out that even if this only affects a small number of people, for them it is overwhelmingly significant. The defence is that this is not normally utilised within the school experience. If someone is on the rough end of this it does not matter how many schools across the country use it or not. The school that person wanted to attend did use it and the fact that his or her parent or grandparent did not attend the school was the reason he or she did not get in. That potentially has a life-forming impact. While we may say it is only a handful of schools, it could grow and grow. The fact it is there in legislation gives it legitimacy. There is legitimacy from the Houses of the Oireachtas to discriminate on the basis of what school someone's parents or grandparents went to. I know I might be using strong language here but I do find it offensive.

There is a middle Ireland assumption that everybody's grandparents went to secondary school or that everybody's parents went to secondary school but not everybody's did, including those from outside the area or the country or from a tradition where their grandparents or parents were not afforded that opportunity. This goes to the core of what inequality really feels like. Middle Ireland needs to understand that. Those overseeing the management of our schools and our education system need to understand that too.

Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses and the Deputy. It is very welcome that people are positive. I would like to address the challenges around oversubscription. It is critical and it is somewhat related. In a city like Galway, where I am from, we have massive oversubscription and a small number of schools. Part of the difficulty is the patronage system. People's number one choice is a school where the ethos matches their family's ethos. The majority are not going to get in there so they have a second tier of those that may be more accommodating of different beliefs. There are different reasons they might decide to go to a school. It is to do with local schools but it is also to do with ethos. According to CSO figures, of those who are Catholic, only 27% are going to mass yet 90% of the schools are Catholic. It is inevitable that people are not getting the schools that match their family's traditions. Tradition is important to those families as well.

This has to be addressed in the entire conversation about oversubscription. Even where we have oversubscription, the criteria applied to determine who goes to those schools has to be just and fair. Whether a school is oversubscribed or not is kind of irrelevant in that conversation. If a school can just apply anything because it is oversubscribed, where is the equality in that? Justice must not only be done but it must be seen to be done when it comes to the numbers who are actually affected.

In the same way when it comes to equality it is not just that there are not that many people affected. Do people feel like the system is equal for everyone? At the moment they just do not. This is part of what creates that.

I very much agree with a lot of what Deputy Ó Ríordáin has said. This is about elites although I do not think many people intended it to be that way. When I go to doors people ask if I can get them into X school. I am sure a lot of members get the same thing; we cannot get somebody in. In the same way, if it was my child, I would be looking for whatever is out there that I could possibly use. I do not know that it is always to do with tradition. It is to do with what people can do to get their child into a school that is fundamentally compatible with their system of beliefs, whatever that might be. I would like the witnesses to address that point. I think the two things are being conflated, the oversubscription and what we apply.

A lot of people have mentioned the fact that there are new people moving to the area. I know many people who cannot afford to live or get a house in the county where their parents went to school. There are people who travel from county to county as members of the Traveller community do. Quite apart from that, we have lots of new people coming into the country. It is simply not something we can stand over. We cannot say we have an equal Ireland for everyone and still have some of these things applied to the conditions in which people can join schools. I understand that people will use whatever means they can. It is our job to legislate for a better system that is fairer.

Dr. Michael Redmond:

I could not agree more that we need a fair system and a universally applied system, one that is democratic and reflective of our values as a republic where every citizen is equal. On Catholic schools, since the Senator mentioned them, every school has an ethos right across the board. Every school has a characteristic spirit.

Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I do not want to cut across Dr. Redmond but I just want to say I am not picking out one school over another. I think it is an example from the statistics. I did not want to pick on one religion over another.

Dr. Michael Redmond:

Schools do not apply a faith criterion for entry in our sector or in any of the other post-primary sectors. Faith, the faith of the family or one's religion have no bearing on admissions, oversubscription or other inclusionary or exclusionary criteria. That said, schools are not for Catholics only where they are Catholic in ethos. They all must and do welcome students of all faiths and none. Whereas there may have been historical issues around that particular challenge, they are no longer in place and they are quite rightly illegal and are not practised in any school in our sector or in any of the other sectors.

Deputy Ó Ríordáin rightly used the phrase "the rough end" of a criterion. We will keep coming back to this time and time again. The rough end of the grandparent criterion is one that it is up to the Oireachtas to legislate for and to consider in terms of the values of the State. At the same time, there are rough ends of the other criteria that will apply. They could be geographical. We could have the same anomalies where we have somebody who does not get a place in a particular school, who lives in a house a short distance away from another person who does get a place, because the catchment boundary had been drawn in a particular way. There are other ones to do with gender and whatever else. Certainly I can assure the members that no board of management draws up or applies its criteria lightly. They feel the pain of the families who are on the rough end of every single criterion that must be applied. That is universal across all our sectors.

Not only does the State have a duty to legislate in terms of admissions criteria and enrolment frameworks but also in terms of infrastructure provision, removing some of the rocks in the river of parents and families who quite rightly want to have their child receive the best education they can.

Parental choice will never be removed from the Constitution. The flow down from that is quite different from other jurisdictions in Europe and elsewhere. Parental choice reflects the values of those who originally drafted the Constitution and in contemporary society they are still very well accepted and affirmed by people, irrespective of whether they have religious faith. At the same time in the end there will be rough ends of every single criterion and it is the privilege of Oireachtas Members to draw those up and to give schools clarity. Sometimes the removal of one criterion for example, will simply allow the others to expand where they are applied. We have seen that they are not applied universally or even extensively. Therefore, the removal of this one will allow a certain levelling of the water. The water will still hit a bulkhead at some point and there will be a rough end of the next one and subsequent criteria. The State, as opposed to the Oireachtas, has a real duty to invest in as many places and to enrich the calibre, quality and inclusion policies of every school in the State.

Ms Áine O'Sullivan:

We mentioned oversubscription. It is important to highlight how in some areas schools are hopelessly oversubscribed, not just in Dublin and other urban areas. In one school three years ago, 120 places were available for first year and now 232 places are available in the same school. Over a short course of time, we are seeing the numbers increase because there is a bulge.

Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

That point is well made and I absolutely accept it. There is a crisis in those schools. I am just making the point that it is down to different policies.

Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for appearing before the committee. I also thank Deputy Ó Ríordáin for his work on the legislation. There is a rather unusual provision in the legislation. Section 62(7)(e) lists the categorisations or issues a school is not entitled to take into account when admitting a child into school. Section 62(7)(e)(vi) states: "a student’s connection to the school by virtue of a member of his or her family attending or having previously attended the school". It is surprising that section 62(10) seems to contradict that. It is an unusual form of legislative drafting. It may have some evidence about the provenance of the rule as to how it came in.

I have been very interested to listen to what the witnesses have said. I usually go directly to questions but in this instance, it is also important to listen to what the members have to say. We bring considerable knowledge from our constituencies in respect of this issue. I represent Dublin Bay South, a slightly unusual constituency educationally. I receive an enormous number of questions from parents about their children applying to schools. In general, most of them are in respect of national schools. Particularly with the first child, parents do not know what school their child will get into because the national schools in my area are significantly oversubscribed. The most distressful and pressing issue I face - this may be of interest to Ms O'Rourke - is the number of parents who cannot get access for children with special educational needs in the area.

My constituency is unusual because within it there are, by my count, 12 fee-paying secondary schools. The reason for so many fee-paying secondary schools is obviously down to history. It is probably where the middle classes in Dublin lived predominantly in the earlier part of the last century.

There was very limited choice there, and there is very limited choice for parents in Dublin 6 and Dublin 4 with regard to where to send their children to secondary school other than to fee-paying secondary schools because of their dominance in those areas. I welcome that we recently have had a new Educate Together secondary school in Sandymount, and we have a new Educate Together secondary school in Harold's Cross. I hope that in time the 12 second level fee-paying schools there would no longer need to be fee paying. I do realise that it gives rise to issues. I have listened to Deputy Ó Ríordáin, and he makes a valid point about why should there be preferential treatment given to students whose father or grandfather went to a particular school. I believe that the answer I am hearing back from the witnesses is that while this is an issue, it is not the biggest issue we are facing in the context of admissions. If it is the case that this criterion is not really being used, what is the necessity of it? What benefit is it serving to the schools?

Dr. Michael Redmond:

When it was first drafted it was definitely due to a concern for family continuity and the relationships between families and schools. We have repeated many times that whatever weight the committee members wish to give to it, as legislators, is up to them. That family continuity and the relationships between families and schools is a very real phenomenon in Irish life. We have not been the most mobile population in the world and we do tend to settle and stay in places, but of course this is changing in many ways now. We need to be conscious also of not commodifying education and saying that one gets the same product; it is not like McDonald's where one would get the same product in every location around the country or around the world. Education is laden with values, and it is something where parents wish to make sure there is the closest possible alignment with their family values and their educational values, which essentially is the in loco parentis function. The parents are the primary educators and this is the constitutional protection for their choice around the placement of their children, and schools are obliged, quite rightly, to take them. We will not keep rehashing the arguments about the capacity issue but certainly this is as much about the values-based piece, and a shared value between schools and families, as it is about any other element of this very important and wide-ranging conversation.

Mr. Paul Crone:

It also comes back to the vision piece as to what we see and want from our education system. As my colleague, Mr. McKelvey said, it is around schools being reflective of the community in which they are situated. The school should be a mirror image of the community it serves and it should be available for the students who live locally. It builds that sense of community and sense of spirit. As children grow up they will know children who live near them. If our vision is very clearly that we want to create equality of opportunity, then this criterion has very little relevance to that. The local children will gain access to the local school through other criteria such as living locally or attending feeder schools.

Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Does the ACCS believe that this rule is necessary still?

Ms Áine O'Sullivan:

In the survey we carried out there was one school doing it. What really strikes me about this is that schools do not do this lightly. Having been a school principal for 20 years, we spent a lot of time on this whenever we were oversubscribed. Schools must have something in terms of priorities, and this was one criterion that this particular school had chosen. At the same time, obviously as community schools we would say that the schools should be for the children of the community. When a school is in a position of being oversubscribed and the school board finds itself having to prioritise, it is not an easy place for a school to be. In this one instance, therefore, we have a situation where there are children living within the school catchment area, and the school must try to prioritise in some way who gets a place over another child. This is what this school has chosen to do. The lottery system applies in all of our schools also when there is oversubscription. I have been at the other end of that when there can be an unintended consequence of the parent who had attended the school saying, "We want to be part of the school for our child, and now that is not there." They do not like the lottery system and find it difficult.

This is not something that is done lightly. The work that we did with schools over the past couple of years when this Bill was introduced, and the work we did around what it is now to have an admissions policy, was very meaningful. With these policies, we now have a mechanism whereby they can be reviewed every year following the process. Schools can actually look at this each year. There is a lot that is positive in this Bill, although it is not an easy one.

Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

My own assessment of it from my own constituency, and I say this with all due respect to Deputy Ó Ríordáin, is that I do not believe there is a desire on the part of parents to perpetuate an elitism by getting their child into the school they went to. The issue is that parents want to get their child into what they perceive as the best local school, and it can irritate them if others are gaining access to that school because of their family connection.

Ms Eileen O'Rourke:

We need to look a little bit further down the line to look at some of the unintended consequences if this clause is maintained. Is there a possibility that we will end up with all- white schools or schools with very few Traveller children, or with very few children from families whose parents were not able to go school because of economic circumstances? I am sure that members are all aware that we already have many schools with almost no special needs children at all. We do not want to make an argument at step one that may actually have discriminatory impacts further down the line.

Eileen Flynn (Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

This is probably the hardest committee that I have had to sit on since coming into the role of Senator. Until Deputy Ó Ríordáin spoke I was thinking that this conversation was based on white and middle-class students with opportunities. The education system does not have equal access for all students, and that must be our starting point here today. In 2011 and 2012 when I was the education worker in the Irish Traveller Movement I remember the Stokes case in Tipperary where a child could not get access to school because the parents did not go to that school. I remember in 2012 my own nephew did not get access to a local school in Ballyfermot. It was all over the news. Again, it is very tough.

I remember doing an interview after my nomination to become a Senator and the interviewer said to me: "So, you can be anything that you want to be." No, you cannot: you cannot be anything you want to be if you are from the outside. Could anyone in this room answer one question for me today? What is the local community and who are they? Are they white Irish people or are they settlers within the community? Does this include members of the Traveller community? Does it include Black people? Does it include Roma people? Does it include the child in the wheelchair? Even the term "we tend to settle" suggests that we must look at our language here today. Until Deputy Ó Ríordáin made the point on that, which I did not have to make, it appeared that we are okay with it and that we are okay with being here trying to defend it, even if it is only two schools in the whole of Ireland. It is still discriminating against the others. My grandfather never went to secondary school, my father never went to secondary school and none of my brothers and sisters went to secondary school. People think that I am here because I was the Taoiseach's nominee. That is not the reason. I am here because I was allowed to go to my local schools in Ballyfermot and to university. I was lucky because I got equality of opportunity that I had to push through. That is just talking about me as a person. Now I am fearful here and I am thinking about my two girls: my four-month-old baby and my two-year-old girl. I live in Donegal now and now I am wondering how does that school operate. Will Billie be allowed to go to that local school? I have not even checked the admissions policy, how I would access it, or if I need to put her name down now because she is also a member of the Traveller community. What about refugee children? This clause is discriminatory and we cannot sit here and define it and say "well actually it is only one school". No school should have such a policy where it is about the child's grandparent, sisters and brothers.

It should not be about that.

We are speaking here today about boards of management. I do not mean to say to people, "Answer me this question now", but it is something going forward if not the case. Do members of boards of management ever ask themselves the question is there a member of the Traveller community on the board of management? Is there somebody within the local community on the board of management who is different, who represents the other children in the school? That is something we should look at going forward and I will leave that with our witnesses to answer for the future. That is also inclusion. Always look around the room at the people who are not there and invite them in.

I have one other question - sorry I got a little sidetracked - on special education needs, SEN, students and the facilitation of spaces for people with special needs. I cannot even believe we are speaking about equal access to education in 2022, and I support Deputy Ó Ríordáin 150% in his Bill as it goes forward, but we really need to tease this out. This conversation is only starting today. I thank our witnesses so much for coming in to us.

Mr. Paul Crone:

It is refreshing to hear Senator Flynn’s passion, and as someone who has worked 27 years in a school in Tallaght and who operated a very inclusive environment of members from the Travelling community and local areas, it speaks to our vision piece. As someone who lives in a very diverse community, where my children attended the local school in a diverse community, it is my core belief that we as a society need to look at and have that discussion around what our vision is and how we can promote and support inclusion. How can we encourage people to be more inclusive and welcoming? It is very difficult.

Speaking to the Senator’s point, we had a number of Traveller families in the school I was in and we did endeavour to make it very welcoming in engaging with the school, and in fairness to the school, it did. That is something we need to replicate as a society. We do not and should not want anybody to feel as if he or she is on the outside, is being excluded or is being treated differently in any way. I welcome the Senator’s passion here today and thank her for it.

Dr. Michael Redmond:

I completely agree with what the Senator has said. I was born and raised in Ballyfermot also and I know the transformative power of education and what it can do in a person’s life. I have worked in education all my life and have led two DEIS schools, one in Finglas and one in Loughlinstown, and they have both been extraordinarily inclusive. The work we did around including Traveller children, not just in those two schools but in schools right across all three sectors represented here today, was outstanding. There are forces at play that are to some extent profoundly cultural, while some are historical and some are societal, but none of these gives us any excuse for exclusionary practices. It is illegal for a school to refuse to enrol a Traveller child, a child with special educational needs, or for a school to use anything other than the criteria set out in law to deal with the oversubscription crisis that exists both at primary and post-primary level in our country. I am so happy to say that because it makes things easy for boards of management.

Since the Senator has raised the issue of the composition of boards of management, that too is set out in the Education Act and in the articles of management under which schools need to work.

There is the capacity there to open this conversation and I am delighted to see the Senator opening it here as opposed to coming to a quick and easy solution that would not be reflective of reality. This should not just involve all of the various stakeholders and members of our community and the wonderful diversity that is emerging but young people’s voices also.

We really need to reflect on the incredible amount of voluntarism that is demanded of the citizens of this State in acting as members of boards of management in 4,000 schools throughout the country.

In other words, our boards of management and governance are based on a volunteer model. The legislative, administrative, regulatory and health and safety demands that have been imposed on boards of management over recent years, all of which are very valid, are now on the shoulders of local people who are not trained for it and are not invested in it other than by virtue of the fact that their children happen to go to the school, they are a member of the staff or they are a nominee of the trustees in our sector.

Ms Áine O'Sullivan:

I will follow on from Dr. Redmond’s point by way of response to Senator Flynn. She raised a very valid point on the board of management which is, as we know, the point of oversight and power in many schools. It is enshrined in our deed of trust that there are two parent nominees on all of our boards, one of whom must be a mother. The work we have to do on the ground goes beyond that. It is there in the legislation and in the deed. It is open to all the parents. It is up to the parent body to nominate people to go forward. As Dr. Redmond said earlier, we have not got that right in our schools at second level because, for some reason, parents tend to step away. We have a great deal of work to do to ensure the diverse communities in our schools are reflected on the boards of management. The Senator is absolutely right on that point.

Mr. Pat McKelvey:

Senator Flynn has asked some important questions that we are having to give the answers to. The ETBI considers that her question about who the school serves has a simple answer. Our schools should primarily serve their local community, and every child in that local community should be served. That is the simple answer. In looking at this and other pieces of legislation, that should be the primary motivation. I understand that choices have to be made in cases where there is oversubscription, but they are choices and the nature of those choices decides how equitable the process is. That is a consideration.

The Senator is completely right on her other point, which I take. I share the view of my colleague that most of our boards of management are staffed by people who do a great job in very difficult circumstances and make very difficult choices with great goodwill. I also suspect it is true to say that they represent a fairly narrow spectrum of our society. I would like to make a further point in this regard, which is relevant as we take the next step on the journey. I am reminded of the phrase "if you can't see it, you can't be it". The children who sit in our classrooms, certainly in ETB schools, come from very diverse backgrounds. The person they look at in the room, generally speaking, comes from a very narrow spectrum of society. In other words there is a job of work in respect of the teaching population that we have here. How many children from other backgrounds are represented in that population and how many times do children see such people? There is also a job of work to be done around that too.

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I agree with Mr. McKelvey. Once upon a time, all of the teachers in the ETB schools would have come from a certain background. I will not say it was a privileged background. In the past ten years, I have seen that mould being broken in a big way. People whose parents often did not have the opportunity to go to secondary school now have the opportunity to teach in ETB schools. Perhaps that is where they went to school as children. I would like to see those teachers breaking the mould and going into what I will not describe as the “other” schools. That is a greater challenge for us. The mould is being broken big time, specifically in ETB schools. I see it in my local ETB schools. It is absolutely fantastic. In families where only one person finished the leaving certificate, that person is now teaching very difficult subjects such as maths, Irish and English in ETB schools. I will bring Senator Flynn back in.

Eileen Flynn (Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I want to be clear that every single child, no matter what their background or class, deserves equal access to education. I will never say that I want to put upper-class people down or anything of the sort.

It is actually about giving all the children a hand up. That is something I say a lot in having that equal access. It is good that schools and the education system around teacher training is changing somewhat. They are moving in St. Patrick's teacher training college to include the Yellow Flag programme, educating people around the Traveller community, the Roma community, refugees, migrants and so on. It is for all children but we need to include all those children. That is my point.

Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I apologise again for being delayed coming up from Cork this morning. Mr. McKelvey is here in front of me and managed to arrive on time from Cork; I will not be able to use that excuse any longer. I welcome the witnesses. I read their statements last night. I agree with Deputy Ó Ríordáin's Bill and the proposition he presented to us. In a republic everybody should be treated equally. Unfortunately there is inherent discrimination in our enrolment policy. There has to be because one way or another we have to discriminate. It is often the most contentious period of the year for us as public representatives. We get phone calls from parents not understanding and finding it difficult to accept they have been placed on a waiting list or whatever the case might be. It is quite a stressful period.

While I am in agreement with Deputy Ó Ríordáin's Bill I would like to focus on one or two other areas. Dr. Redmond said a while ago that we do not discriminate against Travellers or people from minorities. While that is technically true there is inherent discrimination built into the process. If a child with a special educational need applies to a certain school, he or she might often be told that the school does not have an ASD class. It happens. They might be told that there is an ASD class but it is oversubscribed. The difficulty is that the greater population does not know it is up to the school and the board of management to apply for further ASD classes or whatever the case may be. In a way there is a bit of discrimination there, I find, when certain families or children are told the school just does not have room for them this year or that they will have to wait until the school builds a new class or adds on to the facility. I would appreciate Dr. Redmond's feedback on that.

Mr. McKelvey and I spoke a couple of weeks ago about the issue we are having with twins applying for school places. He mentioned it in his statement today. I spoke with a principal in east Cork last night who has eight sets of twins in her application round this year and only four sets have been accepted. She is hopeful as the competition continues that more will be accepted. There is this strange situation where we have kids travelling, possibly from the same rural village, into a town and going in completely different directions for their schooling. Mr. McKelvey has spoken to me previously but perhaps he could expand on it on the record. It is presenting us with a difficulty in my own area.

Dr. Michael Redmond:

The provision of special classes for students with autism, which is what the majority of them are, is a collaborative process between the National Council for Special Education, typically via the special educational needs organiser, SENO, and the school's board of management. There is provision in legislation for designating a school to take a class. It is not used because the ethos of the NCSE as well as the ethos of boards of management across the country have been collaborative as opposed to something that is more directive.

The provision of an ASD class is a major undertaking for a school. It does not just convert a room and hire some additional staff. It is a piece of work that demands serious planning. We need a minimum threshold of six students for each class, as the Deputy knows. In situations where there are fewer than six, we are not permitted and will not be resourced to open a special class. Conversations between parents and schools around provision generally quite rightly centre on the needs of the child and the best care that a school can provide for the needs of the child.

Schools would much rather have ASD special classes in place to cater for fewer than six. I refer to classes of five, four and so on. The population of students who have ASD-type conditions is expanding. There is also the matter of mobility. There is a lot of fluidity around that. My point is that there is a degree of complexity involved and that it is not all based on exclusionary practices or soft barriers to enrolment. It is still illegal for a school to refuse to enrol such students if it has a place for them. It does not have to be a place in a special class. Our schools typically want these students. If I may make a strange point, there is also an anomaly in that fee-charging schools are not allowed to have special classes. This particular piece of work could also focus on that. Conversations have recently happened in Limerick and schools massively expanded their provision of ASD classes following a single conversation with their local senior special educational needs officer, SENO. It is about to happen again in Cork, where there is a bottleneck. We will see the same willingness on the part of schools to open special classes. It cannot happen overnight but, where it does happen, significant resourcing will be needed.

Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

To follow up on that before I ask anything about the twins, Dr. Redmond has said that most schools are willing and quite open. In my experience they are, but there is a bottleneck in Cork. Deputy Ó Laoghaire, who was here a while ago, can attest to that issue. Particularly on his side of the constituency, there is a large suburban area with a population of 30,000 people but there is no ASD provision whatsoever. That is criminal. That has gone on for years. I have named that area publicly in the past, although I will not do it here today. There must be more to the issue in that particular area. I understand that most schools are quite open to it but, in my experience, that is unfortunately not true in every case. I will pass over to Mr. McKelvey on the matter of twins.

Mr. Pat McKelvey:

I am talking about twins, triplets or even siblings who are what they call "Irish twins", two siblings who were born very close to one another and who may be in the same primary school class and transferring to secondary in the same year. The difficulty here relates to a clash between legal entitlement and common sense. Common sense would suggest that, if a twin gets a place, the other twin should also get a place because of transport issues and so on. The difficulty is that, if you treat both applications as a single unit and the applicants do not get a place, a parent can make the case that they should have been treated as a single entity and that the chances of one of the children getting in were halved because their applications were treated as a single case. If the applicants do get in, there is no difficulty for those twins but others may have a difficulty. If the twins' applications are tied together, if there are 120 places, if one twin gets in having been placed 118th and if the other twin is given the 119th place because the other twin is in, the person who finishes 121st can make the case that the second twin got a place not on the basis of a reasonable lottery but on the basis of their application having been attached to another. Legally, each individual must be treated individually. I am not a legal expert in any way but it is my understanding that the legal position is a bit like the tax treatment of couples in that each person must be treated as an individual and must, therefore, go into the lottery on their own. However, there have been several situations in my own ETB in which one twin has got in and the other has not. That is a nightmare for parents from an organisational point of view. Some twins or triplets want to be apart but it is very often the case that they want to be together. They do not grow out of that need to be together until they get close to adulthood. That needs to be looked at from a legislative perspective. It is certainly a real difficulty being experienced on the ground.

Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. McKelvey. I will follow up on my initial question to Dr. Redmond. He mentioned that there is a bottleneck in Cork. I believe 36 ASD classes are due to come to Cork between now and September. Many of these have already been announced but many are yet to be announced. I was speaking to the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, about this only last week.

These classes are not always announced for various reasons, including the fear that the project might be kicked out to the following year and so on. The issue for parents who have applied for enrolment for the academic year beginning this September is that, if an ASD class has not been announced, the school will plan on the basis of what exists now and not on what may exist because any new ASD class may be kicked into the following year. The parents of people with special educational needs are finding that, even if a class has been committed to, although it may not be committed to for 2022 but rather for 2023 or 2024, it is difficult to decide where to apply to. They wonder whether they should go on a waiting list. A myriad of things pop into their heads.

Dr. Michael Redmond:

This is an agonising systemic bottleneck. It is not down to schools' or boards of management's refusal to enrol children. It is down to the system not being forward-looking enough to put ASD classes in place before demographic bubbles - if I can use that term - of children with particular special needs arrive into post-primary education. These children are well flagged. They are well known to the system and well identified locally. The special educational needs officers, SENOs, are well aware not only of the number of children in these situations but of their names. We are absolutely at a loss to understand how that forward provision, that is, establishing school places, cannot be made.

Much of the school stock in all three sectors, but particularly in the voluntary secondary sector, if I may say so, is quite old. It is on tight old sites with little scope for expansion. Very often, an additional building is needed rather than just putting up a prefab and ghettoising these children when they should be part of the real school community. Real, pre-planned and forward-looking infrastructural investment is needed. It is not only the National Council for Special Education and the school system that need to engage in this. The planning and building unit also needs to be well ahead of the curve on all of these provisions because not only does this unit provide for additional spaces, it also provides for conversion or merging of rooms and for quiet spaces for children who need that resource.

The matter of staffing is straightforward, as is the enrolment. Local provision where bottlenecks exist and the lack of forward planning are the issues. This should have been seen in Cork and Limerick years ago. The solution in Limerick was simply to gather everybody together and, virtually and straightforwardly, to look school patrons and boards of management in the eye and ask if and when they would take these students and where they would put them in their schools. I was present for one of those conversations and it took quite a long time to work through the significant number of schools in the Limerick area. There was no resistance in principle to these classes. One or two schools cited problems and constrictions but no school had an issue with its values, enrolment policy or intention to comply with the law. No school refused an ASD class. There are a whole lot of little anomalies but it is possible to work around all of them if given time. To come in very late in a year, and it is now late in the year for school planning, and seek to put ASD special classes into schools that are not prepared for them is not good for the children. However, neither is it good for them to be left out or to have a year of no schooling.

Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank all of our speakers for coming before us today. I got to listen to quite a little bit here and I have a few questions. It is funny; it was mentioned that this may not be the utmost priority in many minds in many schools and for many principals. In my area, my priority is building schools and getting space. There is a special needs school in Ballinasloe that is literally fighting for additional accommodation. It has now got a site to build a new school. Children literally do not have space in a classroom, especially during the lockdown. There is a primary school in our area, which is a deprived area according to Pobal and based on the most recent census, and this school has been waiting 25 or 30 years for a new building. That is what we are fighting for. I understand about the priorities. The speakers have mentioned the different priorities of teachers, principals and their own organisations.

I will just pull up a document with some of the questions I wanted to ask. We are here to carry out pre-legislative scrutiny of the Education (Admission to Schools) Bill 2020.

I know I have heard a few comments arising from the previous few contributions from colleagues. An area of priority for me is the roll-out of the delivering equality of opportunity in schools, DEIS, identification models so secondary schools can apply to be part of DEIS and get extra supports put in place to do things like having special needs classes. Again, that must happen and money has been allocated in the budget this year. It is more than €18 million and that should be happening very soon. It should have happened ages ago but anyway.

There is an oversubscription crisis now and the census is due this year. There will be data from that relating to areas of population, where we will have demand and so on. When it comes to oversubscription, what about areas of deprivation and how do we encourage and support parents that come from deprived areas in getting more involved in the likes of boards of management and the application process? How do we engage with them at an early stage and whose role is it to engage with parents at an early stage? Those are three questions in one. There has been a bit about involving boards of management. Do the witnesses have any comments on the census to be done this year? I am posing that question to Mr. Crone and Mr. McKelvey or if anybody else has time to come in, they can. If they want to comment on special needs schools as well, I would appreciate it.

Mr. Paul Crone:

I thank the Senator. The census data are very welcome. In my previous role, before working with the NAPD, I worked with the City of Dublin Education and Training Board and was very involved with looking at school places and buildings and considering the demographic needs of the particular areas. Again, I do not have the figures in front of me but the anticipated cap in numbers is around 2024 in the post-primary sector. That may be contradicted in this census and that is why the process will be very interesting. We are in the middle of a teacher supply and school building crisis and we must know, as we come out of Covid-19, where there is light at the end of the tunnel. The census will provide that information for us. As stakeholders in education, we have a responsibility to get involved and drive that debate to ensure schools are supported. It is very difficult for communities and parents not to understand why there are delays in that area.

The Senator asked about engaging parents, which is a major concern coming out of the pandemic. The DEIS programme has been phenomenally successful and looking at our international scores in the PISA studies has indicated it has been very successful. It is being looked at internationally as a success. Through the home school liaison scheme, the DEIS schools have managed to connect parents with schools. They have actively sought that and done much work in improving attendance, attainment, retention and transition. Despite all of those, there was big fear during the pandemic with remote teaching and schools, which were inclusive environments and a hive of activity until 5 p.m., 5.30 p.m. or 6 p.m., when the caretakers locked the door, are now empty by 3.30 p.m. because of Covid-19. There is a huge job to be done and a real fear that the work that has been done in DEIS over the past ten years has perhaps lost some ground. It will have to be a priority. We are waiting on the review of DEIS.

Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

How does Mr. Crone see us encouraging engagement by parents, particularly in deprived areas and maybe with low literacy levels? How can we get them more involved? How do we do it even before primary school and how can we ensure they will be ready when their children should be going to secondary school?

Mr. Paul Crone:

We represent school leaders and principals and deputies at post-primary level. I genuinely believe this is a major concern for principals and deputies. They actively seek the involvement of parents. They get involved with parents' associations and with sending the home school liaison teacher out. They also want to link with community groups. Most of the school leaders really engage with the idea that the school is in the community and for the community.

It is at times very difficult and this is something that must be high on the agenda. It continues to be high on the agenda. There are elements we can embrace going forward, such as remote parent-teacher meetings, as they tended to have a slightly higher attendance rate than face-to-face meetings. That is the effect of having to come out on cold evenings, perhaps.

The remote connection is sometimes easier to maintain with a parent, and that is something we recommend should be embraced going forward.

Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

We should look forward to using technology. If English is not the native language of a parent, for example, we might see how we can use visual supports and simplify admission procedures.

Mr. Pat McKelvey:

To take up what my colleague has said, the DEIS programme has been very beneficial for the schools, including the home school liaison and bringing people into the building. Very often the people that we are trying to target may have had a negative experience of going to school or they may have had no experience of coming to school. The very act of physically bringing those people into a building can be a major step.

Schools become DEIS schools based on Pobal percentages. There are many children and families in non-DEIS schools who suffer equal levels of deprivation and who, unfortunately, do not have that access to home school liaison, etc. That may be problematic in itself. In our experience, schools are very proactive in bringing in parents with purpose. Where it has worked well, there are training programmes for parents. Some of those are around parenting and some are around understanding.

The Senator made a really good point about parents who may not be au fait with the education system and how it operates, and for whom the current enrolment process can be quite daunting, for example. Which pieces do they have to do, when do they come in and how do they know about the different elements? There is work to be done in that respect. In fairness, our schools are getting better but rather than the school deciding what they think the parents need, we must go to the parents and ask what they need.

Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

If a child is to go to primary school, who engages with the parents and children when they are aged two or three?

Mr. Pat McKelvey:

Right now, to be frank, it is probably No. 240 on the principal's list. We need a more system-wide approach in collecting that data and going to people to ask them those questions. It is really a resources issue in many schools.

Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Who does it? Do the schools engage with parents in their catchment area? I am talking about parents who do not even have children in the school yet. Who would take that step?

Mr. Pat McKelvey:

It must be the schools, to be honest.

Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The schools should engage with those groups prior to children coming in at primary school.

Mr. Pat McKelvey:

Absolutely.

Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. McKelvey.

Ms Áine O'Sullivan:

Both of the gentlemen have said much of what I wanted to say. There are issues around getting parents on boards of management, a parents' association or any organisation in a school as we must get them into the school first. A parent may have been very involved with a child's education in primary school but coming to second level, parents sometimes tend to step away. That is a job of work for our schools and some of our schools do that very successfully, even through the community education programme, which we can use to bring in parents. As Mr. McKelvey points out, many parents do not come into the school because they have had a negative experience. It is about changing this around.

Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Time is tight but I want to bring in Ms O'Rourke as a representative of special needs schools. Does she have any comments on how to support parents?

Ms Eileen O'Rourke:

If I could, I will echo a point made by Dr. Redmond a while ago. The census data could be incredibly useful to the special needs sector and I fully support Dr. Redmond's comment about pre-planning and pre-training in good time before children start in school. As I mentioned, the enrolment and familiarisation process is lengthy and quite complex, depending on a child's needs.

I really welcome his comment that JMB schools are very open to opening special classes and I suggest those principals or boards of management make contact with SENOs and the National Council for Special Education straight away.

It is our experience in the National Association of Boards of Management in Special Education, NABMSE, that special needs children in some instances travel very long distances on school buses every day, sharing those buses with children from several other schools, which can lead to a commute sometimes of an hour to an hour and a half each way. That brings us back to the issue of the right of a child to access education in his or her area in order that the child can make friends in his or her area and is not subjected to those very long commutes. In my experience in a school which had autistic spectrum disorder, ASD, classes, we did not have to wait until we had a full enrolment before we opened those classes. We opened the class with two children and very quickly we had two full classes and waiting lists.

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms O’Rourke for that response. I have a number of questions from Senator Mullen who had to leave early. One of his questions is for the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals, NAPD. The NAPD presumably represents principals and deputy principals of some of the schools that would be affected. Did it consult those principles and deputy principals?

Mr. Paul Crone:

There are approximately 1,700 school leaders in Ireland of which our membership comprises just slightly fewer than 1,300. We operate a national executive which is representative of our regions and sectors. In preparation for today, we would have consulted extensively with our executive committee to form an opinion. Equally, as part of our strategic review, which has been ongoing since September, we have consulted widely with our full membership to gain their views on many issues related to education. I would argue I would be hard pushed to find a school whose ethos and mission statement does not promote equality and equality of access to education. On that basis, I would be confident we are representing the school leaders in that we are promoting equality and equality of access.

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

What about the fee-paying schools, which get less resources from the State? Is it fair to impose the same rules on them? Which of the witnesses would like to take that question?

Dr. Michael Redmond:

Charging schools was an example of a public private partnership that was in place since the foundation of the State, and those schools remained in the fee-charging sector after free education was introduced by Donogh O’Malley. I would point out the anomaly that schools in the fee-charging sector are not permitted by the Department to open special classes or classes for students with autism. That anomaly needs to be addressed. I do not think the schools in that sector are seeking anything particularly special other than equitable treatment.

What the Senator may be referring to is the inequitable treatment in terms of resourcing. For example, around the Covid reopening, the schools in the fee-charging sector were specifically excluded from Covid reopening resources and then, following advocacy from ourselves, it was opened on an application basis only. One grant type after another is denied to them or reduced down to 50%. That is a policy the Department has evolved from but it is one that has never been tested.

In terms of equity, even though there could be an ideological civic discourse on the rights of parents to send students to fee-charging schools, first, that is still constitutionally protected and, second, it would go against the diversity argument if we were to eliminate one particular tranche schools in favour of another or to try to homogenise an educational system that is working, by and large, at post-primary level to serve the needs of students and families of all types.

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Is there a danger of an anti-rural bias, for example, where a person from rural Ireland who attended a boarding school based in a heavily populated urban area would like to do the same for his or her children? Why should those who happen to live in the city, possibly in a very affluent area, take precedence?

Which of the witnesses would like to take that question? They need not all rush to answer it.

Dr. Michael Redmond:

Ní thuigim an cheist, as we used to say in the past. The boarding school provision is one that every single country in the world has to provide for students who are not domiciled during their education for a whole range of reasons. In Ireland we have a particular situation, first, the minority faith population is dispersed and for them to achieve access to the school of their choice, that is a school with their particular family’s ethos, they need to have boarding provision and that boarding provision is not a luxury and is certainly not elitist. It is as inclusive as anything in any other aspect of the State’s provision of education. Although I do not fully comprehend the question, and it is not for the want of trying, the boarding school provision demands a fairly honest and frank consideration by the system at large, the Legislature and the Department in terms of its provision and supports, and, in particular, the challenges it faces that are quite unique in the school setting in terms of childcare and, for example, even holiday provision. The movement of the oral examinations leaving certificate to Easter has not been unproblematic for boarding school children. There are many anomalies that require to be addressed. It is probably high time we had a good system level conversation that is frank and honest about the needs of boarding schools in this State because they serve a distinct need.

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Before I wind up the meeting, I would say there has been a great deal of discussion. Senator Flynn brought a totally different dimension to the meeting than what we might normally have had and the question she asked was a very good one.

I have a further question for Mr. Crone. Would many of the members of the NAPD who down the years would have been totally opposed to the policy we are discussing now have come around to changing their thoughts on the issue?

Mr. Paul Crone:

I would say there is not a school leader in the country who does not want equality and the best for their students. As described by Ms O’Sullivan, schools that are oversubscribed are put in an untenable position and they have to make decisions to categorise students. This is one such consideration. A number of schools I am aware of, as we spoke about it at our executive, discussed this point and whether to include it. Some of them decided they would include and it ended up not being used. Some of them decided they would not use it because they felt it was unfair, but it depends on the level of oversubscription. With some schools, they would be arguing over something but they will never be oversubscribed. Therefore, it does not make any difference. If we view that this point is potentially discriminatory, then it should not be there. That would be my point. Perhaps we need to work with the provision of school places to prevent those pinch points in particular areas where oversubscription is a significant problem. If I was put to the pin of my collar over the next 20 minutes I could probably identify the ten or 20 areas in the country where that is a problem. In general, school leaders want the best for their students. They want education to be the best enabler, for it to be available for everybody and for nobody to be discommoded.

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Before I call Ms O'Sullivan, and I am not sure if she has evidence of this issue but it runs very deep, even to often getting the best GAA players into the school in order that the school can continue to have a very strong tradition of hurling, football, soccer or whatever the sport may be.

If there one issue that comes up in my office, starting in February every year, it is the lottery system and wanting to get into schools. In my constituency people in Wexford town travel to New Ross and Enniscorthy. People travel from Rosslare to Enniscorthy to get secondary school place. It is wrong. When a new secondary school is built in any town there is consultation with the local authority. It would be better if there was consultation with the local politicians. They might be able to give a lot more information. We get evidence on the ground every year. I know people want to keep politics out of this.

Ms Áine O'Sullivan:

I want to go back to a point made by Mr. Crone, which was raised earlier. This is a complicated complex area for schools when they are over subscribed. We know this. Schools have spent a lot of time on the 2018 Bill putting together their admissions policies, including all the stakeholders from the patrons down. They have also spent a lot of time working together on trying to deal with oversubscription at local level. They have also spent a lot of time in board meetings looking at reviews. Now there is a facility for parents to appeal to the board and look at the whole procedure. This has been useful. There are many positive elements in the Bill. I am thinking back to my time as a principal. A lot of time is spent at board level looking at the issue of admissions and to see whether a school has discriminated. A school will know this from the correspondence from those who did not get places. Schools spend a lot of time reviewing the process each year. A question was asked as to whether schools have changed from being firmly on one side or the other. Most likely they have. Schools are very mindful of all of the unintended consequences.

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

If the witnesses do not want to answer my next question they do not have to. Are they aware of many legal cases?

Mr. Paul Crone:

With regard to admissions?

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Yes.

Mr. Paul Crone:

Not that I am aware of. I am aware of quite a number of freedom of information requests through which people want to get the data to make sure the procedures were followed with the view to potentially appealing. There have been quite a few appeals. I am not aware of anything going forward to a High Court review.

Ms Áine O'Sullivan:

The number of section 29 appeals has reduced significantly because of the board review.

Mr. Pat McKelvey:

A great positive about the legislation is that such is the clarity and the fact that all schools, by and large, apart from some issues which we are discussing, have an identical process to follow. It is easy for parents to become aware of what the process is because anyone they speak to about it will have gone through the same process in other schools. The legislation has been very good in this way. It has kept everybody singing off the same hymn sheet with regard to process at least, even if the criteria used are different in different schools. This has been a great advantage of the legislation.

Mr. Crone was asked about principals and deputy principals. Very often they may very strongly want to go in a particular direction but the board of management, parent representatives and teacher representatives may want to go in a different direction. Ultimately it is the board of management, with the permission of patron, who decides on the policy of the school. This is an important part of the constituency. The vast majority of people are very open about this. Human nature being what it is sometimes people think they need to get into the tent. This is definitely an influencing factor.

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

If the witnesses had a message for the Department and the Minister on this specific issue what would it be?

Dr. Michael Redmond:

Build more schools.

Ms Áine O'Sullivan:

Plan further in advance.

Even the conversation we had about special needs was all about planning. In our conversations with the Department, that is happening more and more.

Dr. Michael Redmond:

It is happening in the area of special educational needs, SEN, as well as in general mainstream provision and in schools of all types. The post-primary sector stands out in respect of its diversity of provision. It is a beacon internationally. Long may that continue and long may the diversity of provision become even more diverse, including and specifically for students with special educational needs. This reflects the contemporary values of the State and that is what we want as a people

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Regarding special education, undoubtedly the Deputy and the Senator will have plenty of evidence of situations where parents are travelling many miles in the morning and evening. They may be getting some travel subsidy for doing it, but that is all they get for spending hours in the car every week to get the best education for their sons and daughters. A new special education unit has opened in St. Aidan's primary school in Enniscorthy. From talking to one family there, I know the great feeling of relief that has brought to them, because major pressures are faced by all families whose children have special needs.

Mr. Pat McKelvey:

Regarding diversity, and especially in the primary sector, we have a way to go with it. If we consider the number of schools in Catholic patronage compared with the number of people now professing themselves to be followers of that denomination, it is evident that diversity at primary level seriously lags behind that to be found in society.

I agree completely with my colleagues about the need to build more provision. That is fundamental. In addition, however, from a legislative perspective, we must ask if the fundamental purpose of schools subvented and paid for by the State is to serve their local communities. If that is the fundamental purpose, then that must be reflected in the legislation.

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Deputy Pádraig O'Sullivan has one more question.

Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

We are trying to facilitate people working from home, but at the same time we do not seem to have a problem, yet, with sending Johnny or Mary on a bus for possibly two hours a day. We must have a discussion about this topic as well.

I have one more question that requires just a one-word answer. My query stems from the conversation that Dr. Redmond and I had earlier, and concerns a collaborative approach versus a directed approach regarding ASD class designation for a school. I could phrase this two ways, but is it a case that the current system of collaboration, as Dr. Redmond put it, is going to get us to where we need to be, or, as I think, is a more intrusive or directed approach needed by the Department, the NCSE or whatever body it may be? Where are we with this? Is it a case of collaboration or of a directed model?

Dr. Michael Redmond:

The State needs to hold the directive model as one of its cards. The whole tradition and culture and partnership model of schools and the State working together has always been a collaborative one, right up to this morning's conversation around the leaving certificate, for example. Every aspect of Irish education is collaboratively determined. One Minister after another has stood over and maintained that approach. I would argue, as my colleague Ms O'Sullivan said, for better planning. Why are we having fire brigade meetings in Limerick and about to have another one in Cork? Why will we have the next one in Wexford and the one after that in Tipperary? I ask that in the context of planning and making provision for students with particular special needs and undertaking the required investment locally to allow the necessary building, classroom set-ups and hiring of staff. Therefore, this is really a question of planning and of the State not just leaving this issue totally up to the well-meaning and hardworking boards of management. Other than the teachers on boards, their members are not professional educators. In governance terms, boards of management are carrying a workload, a worry load and a responsibility load well beyond their capacity to cope with in future. That is where the State, at planning level, must come in to offer support and provide the required resources to reflect the needs of its people is so far as possible.

Mr. Paul Crone:

The collaborative approach is the only way to move forward.

We need to be careful that we end up working with a coalition of the willing. One school can end up with three special classes and another with none. Ultimately, the decision has to rest with the Department of Education. There has to be a collaborative element because a school needs to own the decision. That brings me back to the vision piece, namely what we want from Irish education and whether there is a richness in that diversity in every school community. The Department needs to plan for that with schools in plenty of time, in order to give them opportunities to be involved collaboratively and feel they have ownership of the decision.

Mr. Pat McKelvey:

I agree with my colleague so I will not repeat what he said. We need a collaborative approach, but in a small number of cases we reach a point where such an approach is not yielding any result over a protracted period and then a more directive approach needs to be taken.

Ms Áine O'Sullivan:

None of us is good at single word answers. I would again suggest that a collaborative approach is what works best and it has certainly been part of the way the system operates. We have plenty of examples of where it works well. The system behind it needs to be well resourced. We talked about special needs. The SENO piece needs to be well resourced. That is really important. I would suggest that collaboration always wins through.

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Does Mr. Redmond want to come in before we wrap up?

Dr. Michael Redmond:

No, thank you.

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Does Ms O'Rourke wish to come in?

Ms Eileen O'Rourke:

I understand that schools can sometimes be daunted and a little intimidated by the idea of opening one or two new classrooms. It is perfectly normal for them to question whether they will be able to meet needs effectively. I agree with the collaborative approach, but sometimes schools made need a little nudge. If the support and time are there, most schools will be willing.

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank Dr. Redmond, Mr. Crone, Ms O'Rourke, Mr. McKelvey and Ms O'Sullivan for coming before the committee today to discuss this important issues. It has been a very productive conversation and debate.