Irish Teacher: My son didn't get a place in our local secondary school

Jennifer Horgan. Pic: Larry Cummins

Well, the letter finally arrived.

It’s official. My boy has not been accepted into (sounds gentler than rejected by) his local secondary school. No surprises there. It’s a Church of Ireland secondary and minority faith schools are fully entitled to discriminate against Godless heathens. Embarrassingly, I found myself referring to him as a "gifted" boy in his application form. As if that should matter. As if any child deserves a place over another child, for things they haven’t chosen – like a parent’s faith for instance.

At least now we know. We know he won’t be within walking distance of his local school. He’s used to it – we’ve travelled beyond our community to avoid the indoctrination of local Catholic primary schools for years now.

We know he won’t drop home for lunch during his senior years with his sisters, maybe help to put a lunchtime wash on, gain some independence. We know he won’t have the same opportunities to develop friendships with neighbours in nearby estates.

No, like most young people in Cork, he’ll get up extra early and drag himself onto a bus or into a car. He’ll contribute a little less to his overall wellbeing and a little more to the destruction of our planet.

All is in order.

Granted, it’s an added inconvenience that every other secondary school within striking distance of our house discriminates by gender. A Catholic girls’ school is not the best fit for him.

So, he will attend the only other mixed secondary on our side of the city. Yes, my son will attend secondary school with his mother. Now, rest assured, I’m a cool mum. I know the ‘Tiktok’ and the ‘gram’. He won’t mind bumping into me in the corridors, or out in the school yard. And that tells you all you need to know about my poor son’s predicament.

To be fair, at least there’s only that one school on our road. A reader got in touch this week to say that they have two good-sized primary schools across the road from their house, but both, somehow, fall within a different catchment area, based on old parish lines. They will drive to the next school over. Chug-a-chug-chug. So long as we have our old parishes, right?

It’s amazing what we’re willing to put up with.

I’d a good chat with a friend living in Scotland a few weeks ago. She told me there are about 19 secondary schools in her area. They are all excellently equipped with big halls, adequate and varied PE facilities and student catering. My son will get none of those things in our school; we’re seven years into our wait for a school building.

When my Scottish friend’s two children get to his age she’ll pop their postcode into a search engine online. She will automatically get into the school closest to her. The schools are comfortable and warm she says, big enough to manage any population bubble.

Can you imagine that culture here? No more frozen prefabs. Actual schools like in the movies. No more annoying gossip about good schools and bad schools across the hockey tots pitch of a Saturday morning. No generations of private school boys locking the rest of the city out. Local children in local schools. Adequately funded, equality-based schools. A set standard across the board.

Of course, Scotland isn’t perfect. Catholic schools take on the role of private schools there, and about 10% of parents make "placing requests" to get their children transported out and up, into more salubrious institutions. "Away from the local crowd" is how she put it.

Regardless, at a very basic level, our infrastructure is not good enough and it’s impacting our children. We are not a low tax country. Our infrastructure should be better.

Children here should be able to walk to a school that will accept them regardless of their gender, religion, or ability. Those schools should also be fit for purpose.

I’m delighted to see various teacher unions and education bodies back the ‘Raise the Roof’ rally against homelessness this weekend. In a very strong joint statement, they accuse the Government of a "failed housing policy that now risks the effective delivery of education services.” Good on them. The recruitment and retention crisis in teaching is fuelled by this poor infrastructure and it means children are not learning from experts, having travelled in their cars to get to their distant classrooms, or shoddy prefabs.

We need to invest in housing, and we need to invest in adequate local school buildings for all. We need to level the system. Start again. Get the bloody basics right.