'Patently elitist': Labour blasts school admission rules
Current laws which allow up to a quarter of school places to held for students whose parents or grandparents were past pupils was described as concerning, offensive and discriminatory during pre-legislative scrutiny of a bill that seeks to abolish the practice.
Current laws which allow up to a quarter of school places to held for students whose parents or grandparents were past pupils was described as concerning, offensive and discriminatory during pre-legislative scrutiny of a bill that seeks to abolish the practice.
However, other stakeholders said schools were “like families”, and the criteria was important in upholding cohesion, values, and loyalties built up over generations.
Section 62(10)(b) of the Education Act currently allows a school to give up to 25% of available places to students based on the criterion that their parent or grandparent attended the school.
Labour’s Education (Admissions to School) Bill 2020, which has now moved to pre-legislative scrutiny, seeks to abolish this provision.
Speaking before the Oireachtas committee on education, Labour education spokesperson Aodhán Ó Ríordáin said the admission criterion was “absolutely offensive”.
“It's completely offensive to the equality agenda of a Republic that you would take into consideration the school that your father or mother went to, or the school that your grandfather or grandmother went to,” he said.
“It is so patently elitist, it is so patently wrong, that I can't believe anybody who tries to defend it on any level whatsoever,” he added.
Paul Crone, director of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD) said every student must be given equality of opportunity.
“The operation of this criterion with the potential to reserve 25% of places can have the consequence of excluding newcomers to the area, international children, members of the Travelling community and parents who may not have completed their own education yet value education for their children,” he said.
Pat McKelvey, director of schools for Cork Education and Training Board (ETB), said the parent or grandparent criterion is a “cause of concern”, and it should not be permitted as a criteria. He said only two of 16 ETB’s actually applied the criterion for the 2021 cohort, it was rarely used as it came fourth or fifth on the list of criteria, and it would therefore be no cause of great concern to remove it.
The Joint Managerial Body Secretariat of Secondary Schools (JMB) similarly said very few schools reach the 25% maximum when applying the criterion.
However Dr Michael Redmond, director of research and development with JMB, said the criterion should be retained, to maintain the “continuity of family experience” and respect the primacy of parental choice.
“Schools, like families, are not solely operational entities; they thrive on relationships, values, continuity, local community cohesion and loyalties built up over time and, indeed, over generations,” he said.
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