Places in some primary schools are now so scarce that parents are registering children before they're born, writes Louise Holden.
Who do you call when you get that little blue cross on the home pregnancy test? Your partner? Your mother? The local national school principal? Educational bottlenecks are so severe in some areas of the country that parents are trying to get children on primary school waiting lists before they have even been conceived. "Just call her Twinkle, sir. Twinkle in her Daddy's Eye." Kildare, Meath, Westmeath and parts of Dublin are the worst hit. Maurice Daly, principal of Laytown Community School in Co Meath, is coming under increased pressure every year to do the impossible.
"Every primary school in East Meath is oversubscribed," says Daly. "It's a serious problem. The amenities are simply not keeping up with the population growth. The population of this parish has grown sixfold in 15 years and only one new school has opened." Laytown National School has 123 applications for 28 Junior Infant places in September. "I have waiting lists extending to 2010," Daly reveals. "A woman came into my office in May looking to enrol her baby. The child was not born until the following January. She must have conceived only weeks previously. People are coming into my office as soon as they find out they are pregnant." Daly stops short of enrolling children who have yet to be conceived.
Opened in 1996, Lios Na nÓg in Dublin's Ranelagh is one of two Gaelscoils in the area. The school has serious accommodation problems and its sixth class is currently taking lessons in the hall of the local Seventh Day Adventist church. For the past two years the sixth and fifth classes and teachers have shared a room.
"There are 120 students on the list for 2005 and only 30 places available," says the principal, Anne Sheehy. "Children from the school's Naionra are given first dibs on places, followed by children with fluent Irish and those with brothers and sisters in the school. The school reserves a certain amount of places for international students and currently has children from Nigeria, Poland and Romania."
Sheehy will accept applications only on behalf of children who are already born. "I do come under pressure from parents with 'one on the way'," she says. "All the gaelscoileanna in the primary sector are feeling the squeeze. Irish adds to the atmosphere of the school and enhances the learning process. More and more parents want that for their children."
Brian O'Reilly, principal of Scoil Mhuire in Ballymany, Newbridge, Co Kildare, has been watching the dark clouds roll over the hill for five years now and says nothing has been done by the Department to prepare for a population explosion that everyone forecast.
"In 2001 the situation was becoming critical for all the primary schools in the area so the parish priest, Fr McDermott, brought us all together to examine the sudden upsurge in applications," says O'Reilly. The number of baptisms he had performed that year suggested that things were about to get a whole lot worse so we contacted the department about making provisions for the population boom in the area."
In 2005 a new school building was approved for Newbridge and government candidates made much of the announcement in the recent by elections. "The trouble is, it will take between seven and 10 years to get the project finished," says and exasperated O'Reilly. "Meanwhile, I have 116 places for 176 applicants. We're turning away students on the basis of age but what happens when they turn six and have a constitutional right to an education and no school to take them?"
O'Reilly is concerned that the department believes the problem to be solved. "What do we do for the next seven to 10 years? Every other primary school in the area is facing similar pressures. There are at least 100 children in Newbridge who can't get national school places in September. I've had 60 indignant parents into my office - some are angry, some are crying. My life is a nightmare."
The situation in Dublin 15 is similarly bleak. Joan Burton, Labour TD for Dublin West, contends that there are around 400 students in the area with no primary school paces available to them. Many parents have been turned away from four or five schools, she says.
"Property developers are selling houses in new estates with glossy brochures describing local schools and amenities," says Burton. "When the parents arrive into the area they discover that there are no places available in any of these schools. The developers are not required to provide sites for schools in areas where they are bringing in new populations. The Department ends up buying back sites to build schools at rezoned prices. Developers are making a killing while the Department is making no plans for population growth. Planning for education provision is five to seven years behind development."
John Carr of the Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) agrees that the planning system for schools needs a radical overhaul. "Every pupil should be able to go to school in the area where they live," he says. "One way to make sure this happens would be to make school building policy far less centralised and give a greater role local authorities. Decisions about where people live are made locally. It would make sense to have school building policy integrated with housing policy and build schools at the same time as the houses."
Dublin 15 is only one of many blackspots around the country, says Burton. Kildare, Ratoath, Kinnegad, Kilcock and Newbridge are just some of the bottlenecks for parents trying to get their children schooled. "Parents that don't know the system are getting left behind. Not everyone is aware that their first call from the maternity ward should be to the local national school."
