MINISTER FOR Education Mary Hanafin has strongly defended her department's audit of school enrolment policies, despite criticism from Catholic second-level school managers. The Minister signalled that some schools in the audit had serious questions to address.
These include a girls' school in the west where just 0.5 per cent of students were foreign nationals and a girls' school in the midwest that had no special needs provision. In both cases, she said, the audit indicated that other schools in the respective areas had above-average provision for newcomer children and special needs students.
Addressing 400 delegates at the annual conference of the Association of Management of Catholic Secondary Schools, Ms Hanafin said: "There are principals sitting in front of me and there are schools telling how parents are being advised to send their children elsewhere."
This subtle rejection, she said, means the parents in question often have no recourse to Section 29 of the Education Act, which allows them to appeal on enrolment and other issues. She said newcomers also had to battle with enrolment policies that required parents to enrol their children at birth or where schools gave preference to pupils in primary school. Newcomers had "no hope" of enrolment in these circumstances.
The Minister said she had resisted public pressure to "name and shame" schools with restrictive admission policies.
In his address, Noel Merrick, president of the association, said the audit was based on very poor research methods that fell below the normal high standards. The worst part of the report, he said, was it allowed other conclusions that were "entirely unfair to the education system" to be drawn.
