Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, has asked me to reply on his behalf to Deputy Eoghan Murphy's query. He said that he spoke about the need for a fair and transparent enrolment process at the teacher union conferences that were held at Easter. I will quote from the Minister's speech in responding to the points raised by the Deputy:

The Education Act of 1998 set out quite clearly that schools are required to operate admissions policies that provide for maximum accessibility to the school. Put simply, schools should be inclusive.


Most schools in Ireland, most of the time, are inclusive and welcoming of all children. The Education Act, however, is light touch in terms of providing ways and means of ensuring that all schools welcome all children.


Other than Section 29, which has become cumbersome for schools and parents, the current legislation does not include provisions for resolving problems when they arise. At present in legislation we do not have any tailored measures that deal with different admission issues that can arise. For example, there is a difference between dealing with oversubscription which means that all simply cannot be accommodated in the school of first choice, and a situation where an individual child can find no place at all.

The Minister said that he will shortly bring to Government draft heads of the Education (Admission to School) Bill 2013. He said he will be publishing the Bill in draft form to allow a full public discussion, including inputs from the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Education and Social Protection and the education partners. He also plans to publish alongside the Bill the draft regulations that he plans to make when it is enacted. We do not want to intrude unnecessarily into how schools do business. The only policy objective is to ensure that the way in which schools decide on applications is more structured, fair and transparent.

The draft legislation will make it clear that some methods of controlling admissions will no longer be permitted. For example, the first-come, first-served basis for selecting students might look reasonable to some but it can mean that children who move to an area from other parts of the country, or from other countries, can be effectively excluded from schools that have more applicants than places. That situation, according to the Minister, cannot be allowed. The draft regulations will radically alter the operation of waiting lists, while accepting that schools need time to implement such change.

Schools will no longer be permitted to charge parents simply to apply for a place in a school. We have seen an over-use of preferential treatment for the children of past pupils, or more insidiously, the requirement for children and their parents to attend compulsory open days or be interviewed. These practices will be curtailed.

Any school that is faithful to the Education Act in providing maximum access will have nothing to fear from these proposals. He also wishes to clarify the point that schools will still be able to give priority to applicants whose siblings attend the school.

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. It is the Minister’s intention to publish the heads of a Bill and accompanying draft regulations to cover this area. These will then be referred to the Joint Committee on Education and Social Protection, while the various interest groups will be invited to make submissions on the Minister’s proposals. We are at the start of the process and the Minister has set down the main tracks along which he hopes the discussion will run.

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