I’ll ask some locals.
The high court judgment (headlines) are damning. Yet there was an admission of an incident with a first class pupil that led to a suspension (later declared a non-incident by the pupil’s parents) as well as doctoring the enrolment figures.
@Mac - details please.
I’m doing some digging. It’s all very bizarre.
The doctoring of enrolment figures was pretty widespread and it took a circular from the department of ed to put a halt to it. It was one of those bureaucratic grey areas, not sure of the details but according to friends of mine in schools it was tolerated by the powers that be.
To what extent are non-catholic children disadvantaged when it comes to school places in a Catholic school these days. Typically they have some disclaimer about refusing admission on the grounds of maintaining the ethos of the school. Would this be done at a macro level, eg they would look to maintain a certain percentage of catholics enrol etc
Santa Sabina knocking it out of the park there in the feeder school chart today there @Juhniallio second best in the country.
Many families in Dublin’s south inner city feel they have been left behind without access to multidenominational secondary schools. The situation is very different in more affluent areas
Despite living in the heart of the capital, Jane Toolan is one of many parents in the Inchicore and wider Dublin 8 area struggling to find a school place for her daughter next September.
As a result, she is spending much of her time frantically Google mapping different routes to the few non-religious secondary schools within commuting distance. In most cases, it means navigating from one congested side of the city to the other in rush-hour traffic.
“We have a great community,” she says. “When we bought our house 13 years ago, everyone told us there were very few schools in Dublin 8. We were upbeat: surely the under-provision would be addressed quickly? Thirteen years later, with a kid in sixth class, we find ourselves questioning our original decision to buy here…
“We feel left behind and overlooked because of our postcode. Do the kids in Dublin 8 not deserve the same access to education as the children in Blackrock?”
While Toolan sent her daughter to a primary Gaelscoil with a religious patron, she is not willing to do so for the next stage of her daughter’s schooling – even if it means a long commute across the city.
Long commute Sandymount Park Educate Together is an hour away by public transport, but the bus is often full. Harold’s Cross Educate Together is about 45 minutes away, but she is not in the catchment area and is at the bottom of the waiting lists. Then there’s Clogher Road Educate Together in Dublin 12, but this is 50-plus minutes by bus, and the family is outside the catchment area here too. Gaelcholáiste an Phiarsaigh in Rathfarnham, a multidenominational school, is a 70-minute journey using two buses.
“Having walked to primary school in 10 minutes for the last decade, the next chapter is going to be daunting, stressful and tiring. I feel sorry for my kids,” she says. “We shouldn’t have to move [house] to access non-denominational education . . . We feel trapped. We are trapped: trapped by the Department of Education’s modelling system for future school planning.”
Toolan is not alone in wanting better access to a multidenominational school. The latest figures from last year’s census show that the percentage of non-Catholics living in Dublin 8 is 62 per cent, double the national average.
“The demographics of the area are not reflected by the schooling options,” says Louise Fitzpatrick, another parent and spokesperson for the Educate D8 campaign.
While Dublin 8 has a high proportion of non-Catholics, this is not reflected in the distribution of newly established multidenominational schools. Data shows Blackrock, for example, has a population that is 68 per cent Catholic, compared to 31 per cent in Dublin 8. However, Blackrock was granted the establishment of a new multidenominational school in 2021.
“The vast majority of [new] schools are in suburban areas, and this very much has to do with the planning model that has been pursued by the Department of Education,” says Dr JoAnne Mancini, associate professor of history at Maynooth University.
Mancini says this model favours suburban areas over urban when it comes to achieving educational outcomes and increasing participation in third-level education. More urban areas, she says, see less investment in education and, as a result, have fewer options.
Fitzpatrick says she would like to see the divestment of an existing school being considered, but that this is not a quick solution. “It’s a no-brainer, but it’s complicated because lands are owned by church and religious orders. There’s history and heritage there. It’s really complex,” she says.
She says the predicament around school provision and places is not restricted to those who wish to attend a non-religious school.
More choice “The schools that are [in Dublin 8], are serving a brilliant purpose, but they are not serving the needs of that 60 per cent non-Catholic population,” says Fitzpatrick; “It’s not that we want to rip up and tear apart the existing schools. We want more choice, but there’s just not enough space as well. That’s the bigger point.”
Fitzpatrick says the lack of choice, coupled with limited places, is forcing about 45 per cent of secondary school students to travel out of their locality to attend school.
Research carried out by Educate D8 has found that the area exceeds the gap of 600 places identified by the Department of Education before the establishment of a new school can be considered.
Those who wish to attend a multidenominational or Irish-medium school can apply to Sandymount, Harold’s Cross or Rathfarnham, all of which present families with school commutes that are significantly longer than the national average.
Mancini’s research on access to active travel for urban teenagers explores the barriers in place for those living in Dublin 8.
“The electoral division that had both the longest average duration of commute in Dublin city, but also the lowest take-up of active transport, was in the Dublin 8 school planning area,” says Mancini. The research shows “that there are secondary-school-aged children who live in areas that are densely populated, close to the city centre, and yet who have commutes that exceed the State average for children’s commutes by as much as 50 per cent”.
Mancini says the low level of active travel in school-going children in areas such as Dublin 8 is not a behaviour that can be changed by national campaigns or personal motivation because it is linked to lack of choice in the area.
“I would look at it from the perspective of, what are the options that are provided to them? What kind of schools are being provided to them by the State in various local areas?” says Mancini.
Long school commutes can take their toll on a student’s experience of education.
“The kids are coming to school tired; in the evening it affects the quality and the amount of homework that they can complete,” says Fitzpatrick. “A big piece would be not having friends in the area, and the Junior and Leaving Cert years in particular are extremely stressful for those kids because the quality of and their ability to study is also affected by the fact that they have a long commute every day.”
Another parent in the area, who asked not be named, said the challenges presented by her daughter commuting to school mean the only realistic option is to drive her daughter to school.
It can mean sitting in traffic for an hour-and-a-half round trip. She says this daily exodus of schoolchildren has a knock-on effect on the Dublin 8 community.
“You stand here at seven o’clock on a Monday morning and there’s trails of kids leaving, they’re leaving in the dark, they’re coming home in the dark – the only affiliation they have with the area is that’s where their house is. I feel sorry for that,” the parent says,
Come September, Toolan’s daughter will be part of that daily exodus, and it weighs heavily on her. “She has no concept of the idea of commuting, but I know the impact it has on your life . . .” she says. “As seen by the dramatic drop in traffic in Dublin come June each year, how many secondary school kids are being dropped to school by car every day?
“By not providing us with multidenominational schools in English and Irish in our area, it seems that we are being forced into our cars. Surely providing a choice of appropriate local schools would contribute dramatically to carbon reductions? A win-win for everyone. A win-win for my kids.”
If only someone on here had warned us of educational apartheid by postcode prior to this…
I suspect the most recent important factor in choosing a home in Dublin will become schools, schools, schools.
I knew a lassie with a pre school family who bought one of those new houses built on the infill site beside Suttonians RFC. She mentioned that she wanted to send her children to St Fintan’s NS. I said I think you might have a problem there. The houses on the Suttonians side of the road are in Baldoyle Parish and in the St Mary’s NS catchment and the houses on the railway station side are in St Fintan’s catchment. She sold the house shortly after and moved into the St Fintan’s parish.
What the solution here?
Imagine what it would cost if Oireland got past the RWC Quarter Final stage regularly
Childer coming home with homework on the first day back after the Christmas, I’m apoplectic with rage.
That’s just the stated fees. Once accepted, a student’s parents will be invited for a convivial chat, where they will be informed that they have been ‘assessed’ and that the school feels they might be in a position to make a further donation of a certain amount, relative to their financial health…
Dodging private school fees will go down as my greatest ever domestic win.
I pumped my fist in the air that day.
Fair fucks to you. The private school system’s loss was the making of the reformer pilates industry.
It would have been some waste of money with the quality of the public schools around you.
Getting a place in the free school for the first lad was just luck and being heavily involved in the local GAA club and having deep connections into Galway football that would pay fruit a few years later.
The last pillar remains strong
Not a fee paying school