Warning over rules on school enrolment

Plans to give legal backing to new rules on enrolment will impose unnecessary restrictions on the majority of secondary schools, management representatives have warned Education Minister Ruairi Quinn.

He is to publish laws soon that would allow him to impose rules on schools’ enrolment policies, rather than just guidelines, for the first time. The regulations would, among other things, ban schools from charging fees just to apply for a school place, operating first-come first-served waiting lists that might disadvantage newcomers to an area, or giving priority to children of past pupils.

He told the conference of the Joint Managerial Body (JMB), which represents more than half the country’s 730 second-level schools, that the current system is not satisfactory.