Emer Currie (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We woke up to the news in yesterday's edition of The Irish Times that parents of children in commuter belt areas like Castleknock and Carpenterstown are being written to and advised by education authorities to apply to multiple secondary schools because of the level of oversubscription to schools in areas of high enrolment pressure. Almost half of all secondary schools across the State are set to be oversubscribed in the coming year. The authorities have also said there is excess capacity in the system, but particular areas are under pressure. I simply do not understand this approach. There are ways to deal with the problem and ways not to deal with it. In solving one problem, the Minister will create a larger problem elsewhere.

It is not as if there are not other proven effective ways to deal with this which I have already flagged with the Minister. Her solution is to ask parents to swamp schools with applications, including schools I imagine will be outside of a given catchment area. That only leads to oversubscription, bulging waiting lists and worry and panic for parents who do not believe that there will be a school place at the end of a waiting list of 300 or more. Parents will wait for months and make multiple phone calls to schools in order to secure places. This requires the use of resources on the part of schools and results in last-minute phone calls in August, on the eve of school starting, when parents may have taken places in other schools, to say that places are now available in their preferred school.

I do not understand this approach. The Department could have acted to implement a common application process in the areas where there is high demand earlier this year. Common applications processes are tried and tested in other parts of the country. These processes are led by schools and patrons. They involved common application forms and an opportunity for parents and students to outline their preferences.It is managed by all the schools together so that they can strip out the duplications. They generally have a common deadline for applications as well. It means that children who want a place in a particular school have a better chance of getting it rather than what is happening, in my area in particular, where two schools, Edmund Rice College and Castleknock Community College, which are in the Carpenterstown and Castleknock areas, are both oversubscribed and children are travelling to one school in another part of Castleknock even though they would prefer to go to the local school and vice versa. A common applications process would sort that out. In addition, I have talked to other schools that have seen a huge increase in applications but, at the end of it, have not necessarily got the children living in their locality into the school. By the time they have filled all of their places, they are actually catering to children outside the catchment area because of the bulge involved in this approach.

I got a commitment from the Minister in April that she would review a common applications process and that actions were being advanced with schools and education partners for 2025 admissions to better align timeframes for applications and strengthen data-sharing arrangements. What has happened to that promise of reform for a system that is not working and is the opposite of child-centred?