SECOND-LEVEL schools which engage in the "educational apartheid" should be named and shamed, according to a confidential submission from the Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI) to the Department of Education.
The union also wants public funding withdrawn from schools who exclude any category of pupils including those with learning needs, foreign nationals and Travellers. It also wants a ban on waiting lists for schools and on entrance tests.
The TUI document was made in response to the recent Department of Education audit of enrolment policies. This found pro-vision for special needs and newcomer pupils often concentrated in vocational, community and comprehensive schools.
The union, whose membership includes many teachers in vocational and comprehensive schools, criticises the department's audit which specifically excluded fee-paying schools.
The TUI, which has set the agenda on enrolment policies, regards fee-paying schools as the most serious offenders when it comes to "educational apartheid".
In the submission, general secretary Peter MacMenamin says he regrets that the published department audit did not name and shame those schools which engage in this "odious practice of educational apartheid. We call for this as a future step in this process."
The TUI says it concludes from the audit that there are schools which carry out overt and covert selection practices, in effect practise educational apartheid. Such practices take many forms and are designed to exclude those pupils perceived as difficult.
The union backs the proposed new enrolment admissions officer but says he/she must enjoy strong statutory powers to monitor enrolment policies of schools, ensuring that acceptable policies exist and are adhered to.
Other key proposals include:
• Any child living within a catchment area must have the right - but not the obligation - to enrol in the school, subject only to the limitation in size of the school;
• a new enrolment day where all admissions are received and a complete restriction on any enrolment before enrolment day;
• the elimination of the selective processes by which siblings are guaranteed a place in the event of one family member gaining access to a school, and
• a ban on the practice of putting a child's name down for a school many years before the date of enrolment.
In the event of there being an excess of pupils seeking to enrol in a given year, admission, it says, would be on the basis of an independent lottery. It would also prohibit entrance tests on the basis that schools should not be in a position to select on the basis of perceived academic ability. Schools which evade their responsibilities should suffer in terms of funding while those which meet their obligations should be rewarded.
