Cabinet approves plan to make schools publish admissions criteria

The Cabinet has approved a Bill that will compel schools to publish admission policies and ban requests for deposits to secure places. The Education (Admission to Schools) Bill was brought to the yesterday’s Cabinet meeting by Minister for Education Jan O’Sullivan. It will be published in the coming days.

Oversubscribed schools will have to state they were oversubscribed in their admissions policy and explain their selection criteria. In that way, parents will be in a position to see which categories of applicants were successful in the previous year’s enrolment process.

The aim of the legislation is to address “soft barriers” which exist and may sometimes be used to exclude children from particular backgrounds, such as from the Travelling community or those with special needs. It was also as a response to a situation with immigrant children comprising a 10th of all pupils across Ireland’s primary schools.

While many schools had a substantial number of students of immigrant parents, four out of 10 schools had no newcomer pupils at all – which gave rise to the possibility of “cherrypicking”.

There was also provision in the draft Bill to prohibit schools from conducting interviews with parents and children as part of their admissions process.

Boarding schools were excluded and Gaelscoileanna and Gaelcholáistí would still to be allowed to administer a language test to prospective pupils.

The Bill also prohibits requests for deposits or payments to secure places. While many schools have said these fees, which are normally between €30 and €40, are required to meet administrative costs, the Department of Education has concluded it is not appropriate for such fees to be charged.

It is understood the legislation will also address the practice of schools giving preference to the children of past pupils. Ms O’Sullivan’s predecessor Ruairí Quinn proposed that schools could reserve no more than 25 per cent of places for children of past pupils.