Sir, – It is surely not beyond the capacity or imagination of the Department of Education to facilitate a system whereby parents submit a single application in which they have listed multiple schools by order of preference. These applications could be forwarded to first-preference schools who would then apply their own admission criteria.
Applications that could not be accommodated due to oversubscription would be forwarded to the second preference school, and so on until all children had a school place. There would still be oversubscribed schools and disappointed parents but such a system would, at least, address the nonsense of current arrangements which inevitably mean that some children will receive multiple offers, some children will receive none and most of the offers that are made are from schools that aren’t their parents’ first choice. – Yours, etc,
DENIS McCARTHY,
Dublin 16.