EDUCATE TOGETHER APPROACHES D-DAY

THIS FRIDAY is D-Day for New Ross Educate Together NS in its fight to get sanctioned for pupils. The school received around 25 applications for pupils to enrol in September, but only 13 pupils have been accepted to date as the school has been designated half-stream.

The school was one of five designated by the Department of Education to be ‘ half stream’ in late 2017, meaning it is being deprived funding to teach a full Junior Infants class of 26, despite the fact that there are that number of pupils enrolled.

Educate Together management is meeting with senior Department

of Education officials in Dublin this Friday and hopes are high that agreement can be reached to facilitate the remaining pupils in not only New Ross, but also in Educate Together schools in Tramore, Tuam, Castlebar and Trim.

More than 1,200 people signed a petition over recent weeks to secure the places at the New Ross school.

Principal Aoife Mahon said the school staff and parents are eagerly awaiting the outcome of the meeting. ‘We have made our 13 offers and we have 13 places accepted. We still have a number of people on a waiting list. Some people have chosen to remove their child. We are just shy of 26 pupils.’

The school has provisionally been sanctioned for funding for a pre-fab for September providing the pupils are allowed to be schooled at the Barrett’s park premises.

More than 100 people packed into New Ross Educate NS for a meeting in February about the Department of Education’s decision to limit the number of pupils who can attend the school’s Junior Infants class.

Parents of prospective pupils said their children were being discriminated against by being deprived an education in a non- Catholic school.

The grounds upon which the school was denied full stream status was that it is adversely affecting existing primary schools in the area, in terms of enrolment, something New Ross Educate Together school management disagrees with.