No short term solution to waiting lists
WITH anxiety over school places in Wexford town now seemingly an annual occurrence, questions have again been raised over the wisdom of building a state of the art facility at Wexford CBS without increasing the capacity.
Labour councillor George Lawlor said that he’s had contact from several families who’ve been left on waiting lists, unclear if they will have to send their children outside of the town to attend second level education. Cllr Lawlor said that using Brendan Howlin’s influence as Minister for Public Expenditure at the time, a new 900-pupil school was built for the new Loreto at Killeens, which has significantly alleviated the issue of waiting lists among girls.
‘It beggars belief that in the middle of a schooling crisis at the time, that a brand new school was built that actually had capacity for one less student,’ Cllr Lawlor said of the CBS build. ‘How this was allowed to happen is beyond me, as this is a very real crisis for many families, which we’ve been told is to peak around 2021. An extra class per year would make a huge difference in terms of reducing waiting lists and accommodating students.’
Fine Gael councillor and Acting Principal at Wexford CBS Secondary John Hegarty said that while the school would have sought to increase the capacity at the time, the need wasn’t seen as pressing by the Department of Education.
‘At the time, the department figures said that there were adequate school places for the greater Wexford area,’ he explained. ‘There’s also some capacity in the likes of Bridgetown, Adamstown and Kilmuckridge, areas where students traditionally travel into the town schools from. We are already operating in excess of the capacity that the school was built for currently. It was built for somewhere between 580 and 600, whereas we have 670 students at the moment. Now we can handle that, but we’re not in a position to add to it.’
Long term, constraints with a tight site means that there is little prospect of the CBS expanding to cope with more demand.
‘The solution long term is for a new school to be built,’ Cllr Hegarty said. ‘Now we’ve already had our new build, so obviously that won’t be the CBS. We have a very constrained site here. From a council point of view, a commitment has been made to zone land and provide services and do anything we can to help with the construction of a new school, but ultimately it’s up to the Department.’
Cllr Hegarty said that he does feel for parents who are left in a stressful situation, but there’s little that can be done.
‘In the short term, there’s no easy solution,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t seem to be as big an issue with girls. The extra places in the Loreto seems to have taken some of the pressure off. It’s really difficult for parents and I have them every year in my office. Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer and there’s nothing you can say to them, but it’s a lottery. A certain amount of places are reserved for people whose parents attended the school or who have brothers in the school and after that it’s literally a lottery. There isn’t a better system available right now.’
It’s a system that Cllr Lawlor is critical of, however. ‘I’ve encountered situations where children who live across the road from the school haven’t been able to get a place and have had to travel to Enniscorthy. It’s ludicrous,’ he said. ‘Equally, because St Peter’s was a boarding school years ago, you could have a situation where a child from Carnew has more claim to a place than a child living down the hill from the school.’