Sixth-class students in Kildare North not guaranteed secondary school places - TD

A Fianna Fáil TD for Kildare North has raised the issue of school admissions in the north county, where he said many sixth-class students are not being guaranteed a place in local secondary schools.

Deputy Naoise Ó Cearúil was speaking in the Dáil recently, when 'Other Members' Questions' came before the House.

The Kildare North TD told the Tánaiste that similar to his own constituency of Wicklow, social infrastructure was not keeping pace with new houses being built, including schools provision.

According to the Deputy, in Maynooth, Celbridge, Leixlip, Clane, Kilcock, Naas, Prosperous and “every town in the constituency”, there are children who are not guaranteed a place in secondary school.

READ NEXT: Labour Party plan will help end motorway misery for rural commuters – Kildare TD

Children, he said, are on waiting lists for secondary schools, and this is causing “worry and fear”, particularly leading up to Christmas.

Deputy Ó Cearúil said: “It is clear to me that there is a lack of future planning and forecasting when it comes to school places in areas of high growth like north Kildare and indeed the Tánaiste's own constituency, where Greystones Community School has had a particular issue in terms of its expansion.

“I am thinking particularly of the principals who are trying to tackle this issue and find capacity. I have spoken with Siobhán McCauley, principal of Maynooth Community College, and Johnny Nevin, principal of Maynooth Post Primary, about trying to facilitate the amount of admissions they are getting.

“Naturally, it happens every single year. Time and again, the Department comes back with "increase enrolment". By increasing enrolment, we are essentially increasing class sizes when we have committed to reducing them.

“As well as that, we are looking at a capacity issue. These are two new schools, Maynooth Community College and Maynooth Post Primary. It was the largest investment by the State of €30 million at the time, with a capacity of 1,000 pupils per school, and it is far exceeding that.”

Deputy Ó Cearúil said he had welcomed a pilot scheme for admissions, as introduced by the former Minister for Education, Deputy McEntee.

However, while it was “a great idea in principle”, he said, unfortunately it did not work for Celbridge, in North Kildare.

“We have Celbridge Community School, Salesian College Celbridge and St. Wolstan's Community School. In those schools, the pilot scheme has not been working as intended. It has created extreme frustration, particularly when the ethos of the schools are different.

“Salesians' is an all-boys school, St. Wolstan's is an all-girls school and Celbridge Community School is a mixed school. We need to look at capacity planning linked to demographics, not just based on the census but particularly on cases where we know there are planning applications going through for 500 or 600 houses in locations, to ensure that we have the places at primary and secondary school.”

In his response, the Tánaiste, Deputy Simon Harris replied: “We are absolutely committed to working with the Deputy on this. We are committed to learning the lessons of the pilot and how we can actually get that to the place we all want to get it to. I will ask that the Minister for education work closely with the Deputy in relation to the specific school projects he mentioned today.”