Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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Question 67: To ask the Minister for Education and Science the specific action she will take following an audit of school enrolment policies carried out by her Department; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [13374/08]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I have spoken on a number of occasions about the responsibility of all schools to welcome and include children of every background and need. The audit of school enrolment policies conducted at my request considered the enrolment of Traveller children, newcomers and children with special educational needs in almost 2,000 schools at primary and post-primary level. The audit also considered the written enrolment policies of a proportion of these schools and, more tellingly, how these policies translate into practice in terms of actual enrolment patterns.

At a general level, the audit found no evidence of any system-wide enrolment practices that give rise to concern. However, there are geographic pockets where, within a cluster of schools, the evidence points to certain schools' assuming a greater or lesser share of the responsibility for meeting the full range of community needs. While local factors can have an influence and an element of self-selection can also come into play, important questions remain about how seemingly inclusive written enrolment policies can translate into less inclusive practices on the ground.

At a basic level, there is now a need to empower parents by giving them a greater understanding of their rights. As a first measure, I will be taking practical steps to achieve this. The audit gives rise to wider policy questions, such as the effectiveness of the current system of appealing against non-enrolment; the consequences for newcomer families of practices such as retaining pre-enrolment waiting lists of several years or favouring children of past pupils; the potential for improved co-operation between schools in a given area with a view to meeting the full needs of their local community; and how identified problems can best be addressed. Over the coming weeks I will be consulting with each of the education partners on the policy options available, based on related specific questions but not precluding any wider inputs or ideas that people wish to contribute.

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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Why is the Minister not prepared to publish the audit and release the information into the public domain? Segregation will always thrive where there is a lack of information, and there is a lack of information in this area. This does not concern only newcomers, although it is an important issue for new communities, but also indigenous communities, Travellers and children with learning difficulties. It is fundamentally important in the context of the debate on the management of schools, enrolment and so forth that all information is put into the public domain so that we can deal with this issue based on the information available rather than in a void as at present.

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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I do not intend to publish the individual findings about schools for two reasons. First, the results are simply figures and do not give any background information. For example, did parents actually apply to a certain school? If a particular school in an area has a reputation for being good for children with special needs, parents may automatically enrol their children there. We do not have such background information. Second, I can foresee some of the less inclusive schools using the survey to demonstrate how good they are academically as they do not take anyone with special educational needs. They may use it to promote an exclusionary position. I will shortly be sending the audit to each of the partners with the names of the schools blotted out so that they can see the problems that pertain in certain areas.

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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Why not publish it with the names blotted out?

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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Once it becomes available to the partners it will then be available publicly if people want it. I do not want it to be used to formulate a league table on the basis of schools that accept many pupils with special needs and those that do not.

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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The Minister should blot out the names and publish it.

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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It is too sensitive an issue. In addition, it is something that must be dealt with at a local rather than a national level. People had the impression that there was a whole sector of schools that did not take particular children, but this is not evident from the audit. Significantly, there does not seem to be any problem at primary level. For the most part, children go to their local national schools. That is a good basis on which to work.

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fine Gael)
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What about west Dublin?

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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Generally, if we consider three or four schools within a town, it is far more telling. It will tell us that people from a disadvantaged area are going to one school, newcomers are going to another, and children with special needs are going somewhere else. Or, indeed, all three might be going to one of the schools.

Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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The Minister has been going over this for the last two years and the audit has been getting headlines for the last two years at the TUI conference. We have asked the Minister to publish it. If she chooses not to do so, will she at the very least publish the details of the geographic pockets, as she called them, in which this form of selection is taking place? She said nearly 2,000 schools were included in the audit. How many were primary and how many were post-primary schools? The Minister also stated that she had come across examples of specific schools with selective enrolment policies. That is a dangerous thing to say because it raises the question of what sanctions she will impose on these schools. She is the person responsible to the House for the public funds that go to these schools, yet she admitted in public that she has come across schools with selective admission policies. What sanctions will she take against them?

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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First of all, I did not say the schools had specific enrolment policies. What I said was that if one looks at figures for individual schools in a specific area, one can see where there has been a gravitation of special needs pupils towards them. That might mean that the parents of those children, recognising that a school is particularly good or has got a name of being good for these children, opt to send them there in the first place. I will be giving the details to the partners and can make them available then. However, I will not be highlighting the particular findings in towns such as, for example, Swords, Navan or Wexford because then it would be easy to identify the schools involved.

Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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South Dublin, for instance.

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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No. It is important to work through it with people because we need a more localised dynamic. If we had principals and schools talking and working more with each other on a localised region then one could solve the matter on a community level. I am not going to introduce financial sanctions against schools. We cannot stand up here one minute saying "Give the schools more money", and then turn around and penalise the rest of those schools.

Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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If they had a selective enrolment policy, would the Minister stand over it?

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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No, but nobody has said that they have a selective enrolment policy.

Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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So what was the whole objective of doing it?

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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There is prima facie evidence that they have.

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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We are saying that, looking at the figures, people might have gravitated towards it. We must see how we can have that localised dynamic. Can we perhaps have more peer monitoring? I want to answer the Deputy's question on the numbers. There must also be information for parents on their rights because so many parents do not appeal or do not know they can do so. That is important. There are plenty of ways one can introduce sanctions on schools concerning their enrolment policies for example, which might hit some of them far more than by looking at finances. All those issues should be examined and I will be examining them with the partners.

Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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What was the breakdown?

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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The survey was of 1,995 schools, of which 1,572 were primary and 426 post-primary. That is more than half the primary schools and two-thirds of post-primary ones.

Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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I agree with the Minister that post-primary is the issue here, not primary.

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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I call the Minister on Question No. 68.

Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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Yet only a quarter of the examples were post-primary in the Minister's audit.

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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Hold on. There are 750 post-primary schools, of which 426 — that is more than half of them — were audited. We took ten different counties and 17 local authority areas.

Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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The vast majority were primary schools.

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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We know that there is not a problem in the primary schools because we——

Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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Why did the Minister not audit them?

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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So that we could show that there was not.

Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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The vast majority of the audit related to primary schools.

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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It would have defeated the whole argument if we had only audited schools where we thought there was a problem. We needed to get a picture in an individual area. We got it for the individual areas and also got it for the national area.

Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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The number of post-primary audits was very small.