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The Minister for Education and Science, Mary Hanafin T.D., published a report of a major audit of school enrolment practice on the Department of Education and Science's website. The purpose of the audit, conducted by the Department's Regional Office Service, was to examine the disparities that exist in schools in particular locations in relation to the numbers of pupils enrolled who are newcomers, have special educational needs or are from the Traveller community.  Over half the primary and second level schools in the country were surveyed under the audit.

The Minister emphasised that the statistical information presented required cautious interpretation.  This was particularly the case in the context of local factors that could be identified in many instances at primary level (e.g. a concentration of newcomer or traveller children living in a particular area impacting on enrolment in the nearest school).

The Minister said that, when interpreted in that context, the statistical information returned does not point to enrolment problems on a system wide scale.  It does, however, identify a number of school clusters where the evidence points to some schools assuming more responsibility for enrolling children of all backgrounds and needs within their local community, than others.

In order to ensure that no schools are directly identified and to ensure that "league tables" for particular areas could not be formed, the published information excludes the names and addresses of schools, but groups them within geographical clusters for comparison purposes.  

Minister Hanafin said the purpose of putting the information out in the public domain was to facilitate an informed consultation with the education partners about possible policy measures available to ensure that all schools are welcoming and inclusive to all children of all needs in their own local community.  

Minister Hanafin has written to the main partners in education setting out some areas for consideration including:

• The need for enhanced information for parents about their rights should a school refuse to enrol their child
• Those aspects of the written enrolment policies of schools which may be deemed exclusionary, e.g. pre-enrolling children from birth or providing preference to children of past pupils, thereby putting newcomers to communities at a disadvantage.
• The potential for improved inter-school co-operation in a given area in order to address enrolment anomalies.
• Possible proposals to allow the Minister or an officer appointed by the Minister to intervene in local admissions where inter-school co-operation is not achieved. 

Minister Hanafin said "while this raw statistical data needs to be interpreted with some caution given the range of local factors that come into play, it does point to important policy questions for the collective school system in ensuring shared responsibility for the inclusive and welcoming admission of all children.  The specific consultation questions that I have put to the partners around the policy options for achieving this are aimed at building a broad consensus on how we can now address this important challenge."  

The Minister has asked for the education partners to respond to the consultation request by 6 June 2008 and has given an undertaking that the responses received will also be publicly available.

Example of some clusters of schools which show a disparity regarding the number of pupils enrolled with a special educational need.

Avg enrolment per post primary school (based on initial findings):       438
Average number pupils with Special Education Needs:                          39.5
Average percentage pupils with Special Education Needs:                    9.01%
Note: SEN = Pupils with Special Education Needs 

Cluster in Mid Western Region	School Type	Pupil Type	School Enrolment	SEN as %
Cluster A	Secondary	Mixed	301-350	15.92%
Cluster A	Secondary	Girls	401-450	0.00%
Cluster A	Secondary	Boys	401-450	11.11%
Cluster A	Secondary	Boys	501-550	7.36%
Cluster A	Secondary	Girls	551-600	1.67%

Cluster in Western Region	School Type	Pupil Type	School Enrolment	SEN as %
Cluster E	Vocational Ed.	Mixed	51-100	55.84%
Cluster E	Secondary	Boys	251-300	15.04%
Cluster E	Secondary	Girls	301-350	5.26%
Cluster E	Secondary	Girls	351-400	2.53%
Cluster E	Secondary	Boys	401-450	2.44%

 Schools and issues covered by the audit

The audit covered schools at both primary and post-primary levels as follows:

(i)     Primary
     -  Educate Together
     -  Gaelscoileanna
     -  Denominational

(ii)     Post-primary
     -  Voluntary Secondary
     -  Community and Comprehensive
     -  VEC

The audit initially concentrated on 1572 primary and 426 post primary schools in 17 Local Authority areas across 10 counties.

Each school was required to provide information on the following issues in addition to a copy of its enrolment policy:

1. Overall number of pupils enrolled
2. Pupils whose first language is neither English or Irish;
3. Other international pupils whose first language is English;
4. Pupils from the Traveller community; and
5. Pupils with Special Education Needs.