Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator for raising the matter of Muine Bheag vocational school. It is important to clarify the position.

The Education Act sets out the framework within which any school considering closure has to operate. The Act provides for the right of schools to manage their own affairs in accordance with its provisions and any charters, deeds, articles of management or other such instruments relating to their establishment or operation. That is set out in sections 8 to 11, inclusive, of the Act. That statutory provision allows the Minister to designate a school on request and also provides for a request for a school closure submitted by the patron. The initiative for a closure may come from a variety of sources such as parents, staff, boards of management or patrons. Any proposal to close a school must first involve consultation with the relevant stakeholders. A decision taken at local level follows the consultation process. In that regard, any proposed changes must be well-planned and managed in a manner that accommodates the interests of students, parents, teachers, local communities and contributes to an inclusive education system. Where a patron of a school advises the Department that it is no longer in a position to continue to operate a recognised school, the decision to close the school concerned is ultimately a matter for the patron. Any discussion to close a school requires consultation between the various stakeholders, including parents, members of staff and their representative organisations and the board of management.

Muine Bheag vocational school is a co-educational DEIS school under the patronage of the Kilkenny and Carlow ETB. There were 119 pupils enrolled as of September 2016. The figure in 2012 was 134. Following meetings on the issues concerning the school, the ETB, the patron of the school, set up a task force to consider options for the future viability of the school in view of declining pupil enrolments. The task force report was adopted by the patron and work is ongoing on the recommendations to increase enrolments at the school. The task force was constituted as a committee of the ETB and comprised ETB nominees, parent nominees, teacher nominees and an independent chairperson. A primary recommendation of the task force is to have a targeted enrolment level of 20 students into first year for the school year 2017 to 2018 and that the school would subsequently establish and grow the targeted intake each year to reach a figure of between 15% and 17% of the transfer population within a three-year period, which has now been extended. Considerable work has been done in the past year to grow the enrolments and all stakeholders are working together to keep the school viable.

Details of the roles and functions of ETB boards of management and chief executives are set out in the Education Act 1998 and in the Education and Training Boards Act 2013. The Education Act and the board of management handbook for Education and Training Boards outline that the function of the board of management is to manage the school or college on behalf of and in cooperation with the ETB and for the benefit of the students and their parents and to provide or cause to be provided an appropriate education for each student at the school for which that board has responsibility.

The special needs model is a way of allocating resource teaching having regard to the profile of the school's needs. The profile is based on the number of children in the school who have complex needs or learning difficulties. Under the provision, I have provided an assurance that no school will lose resource teaching in this allocation. The arrangement provides that no school will lose out and, indeed, the allocation will be made to the school in respect of each child and, therefore, no child will lose out under the new model.