Education Minister Richard Bruton hints at boost to secular schools

A move towards more State-controlled primary schools, as part of Government plans for the creation of 20 new non-religious schools a year, has been welcomed by Educate Together.

Under ambitious programme for government plans to get the number of multi-denominational primary schools up to 400 by 2020, Education Minister Richard Bruton will soon set annual targets for the next five years. However, in order to add impetus to flagging efforts to cater for wider parental preferences, an emphasis may be put on the model of community national schools run by education and training boards (ETBs).

These have been opened in 11 of the areas where new schools were needed to match local population increases, but the Educate Together model was more popular among parents in 28 areas where demand for more choice emerged from surveys in 2012 and 2013.