Is your school fit to teach? [Irish Times]
- Published: 05 May 2009
Source: Irish Times
SHEILA WAYMAN
Physical activity is as important as reading and writing so why are Irish schools at the bottom of the European league for time given to PE?
WHEN DID you last ask your child's teacher how he or she was doing in PE? No, I've never asked either. Instead, conversations with primary school teachers are nearly always about reading, writing, maths and behaviour.
"We have to move minds to see physical activity, PE, sport, as a fundamental part of any child's development," says the chairman of the Irish Sports Council, John Treacy. "It is as important as the reading, the writing and the maths."
Treacy chaired a high-level Government taskforce on obesity, which four years ago made 93 recommendations to tackle the escalating problems of overweight adults and, increasingly, children. Research shows that 26 per cent of seven-year-old girls and 18 per cent of boys are now overweight or obese.
A recent progress review of the National Obesity Taskforce's recommendations revealed that less than one-fifth have been fully implemented.
Treacy is particularly disappointed that the recommendation for a minimum of 30 minutes dedicated to physical activity, every day, in all educational settings, has been rejected.
Integrating physical activity in the education sector helps to integrate it in the minds of parents, he points out. "This recommendation is very important in terms of this cultural shift and that's why there is disappointment around it."
Irish schools are bottom of the European league for time given to PE.
In response to queries about the rejection of this recommendation, a spokesman for the Department of Education and Science says while schools can encourage pupils to take physical exercise during breaks, a dedicated period of physical activity would have to be supervised by a teacher.
"There are no plans to extend the length of time for PE in schools. This is not feasible in terms of the range of curricular options which must be facilitated, or the industrial relations and cost implications.
"It should be noted that schools in Ireland have a strong and proud tradition of developing sport outside the school timetable," the spokesman adds.
However, optional, organised sport is not the whole answer. "What we are finding from our research is that kids are involved more than ever in organised sport," says Treacy. "It is the unorganised sport that has gone."
For example, an hour's football training once or twice a week and a match at the weekends does not compensate for all those lost hours of kicking a ball around the street or in the park, which children used to do. The challenge facing both schools and parents is to inject physical activity into the sedentary daily lives we have created for our children.
That's why some parents were out stretching and jogging with the 400 pupils and teachers in Mount Anville Primary School in Stillorgan, Co Dublin at 8.50am each day last week, as they marked Active School Week. Daily warm-ups, extra PE classes, tennis, yoga and dance sessions, an evening family walk and educational packs for parents were just some of the activities.
The theme of the week-long programme was "Energy In, Energy Out", and teachers encouraged children to keep "energy diaries" logging what food they were putting into their bodies and the activities they were doing. There was a focus on the scientific rationale behind healthy eating messages, explains one of the parents who helped co-ordinate the week, Sheena Horgan.
The all-girls school did its own form of Olympics, in which pupils earned points for participating in five different activities, including swimming and skipping. Parents also went in to lead active games in the school yard during break times.
"We seem to have lost our drive to be physically active," says Horgan, a mother of four girls aged three to 10. "There are lots of reasons: schools have lost playing fields; we have more sedentary lifestyles in terms of new media and technology; there's the fear factor of letting our kids walk to school on their own; and we are obsessed with our cars."
Targeting primary school children is crucial because up to the age of 11, the influence of parents and teachers is supreme, points out Horgan. It's the best time for embedding good habits in children for life. Not surprisingly, research shows that children whose parents are active are more than five times as likely to be active than those whose parents are not.
She was adamant that all teachers at their school had to wear tracksuits and trainers for Active Week. "After the parents, they are the biggest role models. If you see the headmistress and the teachers dancing their hearts out, and having fun with it, that's what the kids are watching.
"The simple initiative of Active School Week has been 'massively under-promoted'," suggests Horgan, who is a youth and ethical marketing specialist. But its current transition to an Active Flag programme, modelled on the highly successful Green Flag scheme, may help to achieve longer-lasting benefits.
Exercise physiologist David Egan, who founded the RedBranch charity to promote healthy lifestyles for children, encounters a lot of barriers to physical activities in schools.
"Six out of 10 primary schools do not have the facilities or equipment for PE, which is a major issue," he points out. "You can talk about Active School Week, but if a school does not have a GP room, or even a playground in the case of some city schools, it's a bit of a joke.
"Another issue which we encounter is that we allocate less time to PE in Ireland than in almost any other European country. The minimum curriculum guideline for PE at national school level is only 30 minutes a week."
In addition , an estimated 40 per cent of national schools have a "no run" policy governing time in the playground. "It may prevent a few broken bones, but it is setting children up for a life of chronic ill health," says Egan.
While most people are aware that being physically active reduces the risk of heart disease, strokes, certain cancers and type II diabetes, many people do not realise that exercise also plays a major role in reducing stress levels and helping to prevent depression, he says. It can also boost academic performance.
A recent US study found that children who participate in vigorous physical activity tend to have higher academic grades than children who are less active. The most physically active students performed on average 10 per cent better on maths, science and English tests than their sedentary counterparts.
However, the study found that simply doing PE did not by itself raise grades, and that taking part in vigorous activity at least three times per week was associated with the best academic performance.
At secondary level, there is the big issue of lack of specialist PE teachers, Egan says. "Most of the schools I work with are trying very hard to do the right thing, but they are working in very difficult circumstances."
As any parent of a miserable participant in compulsory school rugby or hockey knows, there is a tendency "to keep hammering the square peg into the round hole", he suggests, which is likely to put children off physical activity for life.
RedBranch ran focus groups with teenage girls to try to identify why they have such a high drop-out rate from school sports. The reasons coming back included a dislike of competition and complaints that the activities offered, such as GAA, soccer, basketball, were too masculine.
The 20 to 30 per cent of girls who were not into traditional sports wanted activities such as yoga, salsa or hip-hop dance. "We work with the schools to get those activities on the menu and all of a sudden you see a big increase in uptake."
In Scotland, it was found that schoolgirls were dropping out of sport because they were not being given enough time to fix their make-up afterwards. It might sound laughable, says Egan, but if giving them an extra 10 minutes to tidy themselves up is what it takes to keep them involved, it should be done.
Aura, which runs 10 leisure centres on behalf of local authorities, looks for ways to involve teenage girls. It is piloting a new group activity on dance mats called Zig-Zag, in Tullamore, Co Offaly, which, if successful, will be introduced at other centres, says Aura's managing director, Emma Killeen.
Aura's philosophy is making fitness fun for the whole family. The pay-as-you-go centres include pools and gyms; some have playgrounds, soccer pitches, running tracks and skateboard parks.
"Swimming is the big thing," she explains. A total of 40,000 children take weekly lessons at its centres each year.
Having trained and worked in leisure management for some years, Killeen saw that swimming classes tended to be regimented and she wanted to make them much more fun for children.
There is too much emphasis on "making the grade" in other swimming centres, she suggests. "Our lessons are much more positive and flexible and the children don't even realise they are learning. We are more focused on the needs and abilities of the individuals."
Children are assigned to small classes on the basis of ability rather than age, which helps to reduce competitiveness, as does the naming of groups "ducklings", "turtles", "star fish", etc rather than levels one, two, three. The quality of teachers is also important, Killeen stresses, and they often go into the pool and demonstrate to the children, rather than being the imposing figure standing on the deck.
Teenagers aged 13 up are allowed to use the gyms, which is popular with boys. Aura centres cater for girls with tailored activities, such as Zig Zag, or even by running craft courses, which finish up with a session in the pool.
It takes innovation to lure children away from the television these days. Egan is struck by the amount of time Irish children spend watching television. The average child watches three hours a day and if such a child lives to be 70 years old, he or she will have spent nine years passively watching the box, he points out.
Some young children's lives are so sedentary that they are not mastering the ABC of physical activity through unstructured play, according to Egan. (A stands for agility, B for balance and C for co-ordination.) Sports trainers say that some children are coming into clubs, unable to run properly or catch a ball easily.
It's time we all realised that there is more than one ABC in a child's life that matters.
Useful websites:
Redbranch.com;
Auraleisurecentres.ie;
Activeschoolflag.ie;
Irishsportscouncil.ie
Steps to get you moving
Think of all those short trips in the car ; to the school, to the shops, to friends' houses, to the park ; and start doing some of them by foot, or with children on scooters.
These longer evenings are perfect for a walk around the block straight after dinner instead of everybody dispersing to their screen of choice, be it the TV, the computer or a games console.
Go out and play with your children, whether it's kicking or throwing a ball, hitting a tennis ball, playing Frisbee or flying a kite.
For the next child's birthday, think of buying an active toy such as a trampoline, Frisbee, soccer ball, kite, tennis racquet, badminton set.
Look for opportunities to cycle together, even if it means transporting bikes to a safer place.
Try going swimming regularly as a family; why should it be just the children who get into the pool?
Meet up with another family or two for active outings, such as forest walks or a game of rounders in the park, and it can make it more enjoyable for all.
Switch on music and start impromptu dance sessions at home.
Encourage your child to try new activities or sports.
Turn off the TV.
This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times
North's selection crisis raises issues of class, justice and religion in bitter dipute [Irish Times]
- Published: 05 May 2009
Source: Irish Times
CAITRIONA RUANE'S supporters claim the North's minister for education has abolished a form of educational apartheid and is reforming the Northern post-primary schools system basing on equality and inclusion. Her detractors accuse her of arrogantly destroying everything that was good about second-level schools, sacrificing decades of excellence on an altar of political dogma.
Two years after the restoration of devolved government in Belfast, it has become the issue, more than any other, which fires the most heated exchanges in the Northern Ireland Assembly and lays bare the most glaring division in the four-party powersharing Executive.
The re-emergence of dissident republican violence, arguably designed in part to split the Executive along traditional lines, provoked a strong and united response from Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness, the political parties and the churches.
It has been the education row, however, which is testing the Executive's mettle and ability to address complex issues with any sense of a progressive spirit.
The row over school reform has widened beyond the merely educational and now embraces wider competing notions of social justice, class and (of course) religion.
For the past two years, the Stormont education minister has doggedly stuck to her aim of scrapping what she claims is the out-dated and counter-productive 11-plus schools transfer test.
The exam has no pass mark, no re-sits are possible, and has been used since the 1940s to separate the supposedly top 25 per cent or so more academic 10- and 11-year-old children from the majority, filtering them into the grammar schools. The rest are destined for the so-called "secondary" schools.
Highly controversial and widely disputed, the 11-plus forms the basis of the current mode of schools transfer in Northern Ireland and consequently the shape of second-level schools' provision.
It has proved effective, but at a price. While Northern grammar schools have performed admirably in terms of top-end excellence at GCSE (the near equivalent of the Junior Cert) and at A-level (the nearest thing to the Leaving Cert), the schools system is diminished by an alarming rate of failure at the other end of the scale.
Thousands of children, more working-class than middle-class, leave school at age 16 under-qualified for the modern world with its new emphasis on the "knowledge" economy. Data for 2007 shows around 1,100 of these young people left with no formal qualifications whatsoever, while around 12,000 entered the labour market without five GCSE passes including English and maths ; the education department's definition of "basic" qualifications.
The need for reform is evident and made all the more pressing by demographic trends which have led to some 50,000 empty school desks ; a figure projected to rise to 80,000.
The fall-off in the birthrate has prompted the grammar schools to accept pupils with lower 11-plus grades to fill their classrooms, thus leaving it to the secondary schools to deal with the falling registers and the resulting sense of decay.
The Sinn Féin minister, however, has gone much further than simple abolition of the 11-plus, the last of which was taken by around 15,000 children last November. Ruane has declared an end to the principle of "academic selection" and advocated a new system whereby children decide at age 14 what form their continuing education will take and whether it will be more academic or vocational.
In doing so, she has begun what is potentially the most momentous shake-up in Northern education since 1947 and the advent of free education itself.
However, Ruane's reforming zeal is being held in check. Her Executive colleagues, principally those in the DUP and the Ulster Unionist Party, do not have the power to stop her abolishing the 11-plus. But they do, and are, blocking her capacity to regulate the new transfer process she has in mind and to place it on a statutory footing.
The result is that those children on course to transfer to second level in 2010 are entering a new, untried and unregulated system.
Unable to legislate, the minister can only issue recommendations and guidelines as to how she would like to see the new transfer process evolve. The unexpected scope now afforded second-level schools to determine how they select the 2010 pupil intake has led to something of a free-for-all. As a result, parents say they are confused and anxious, school governors are seeking legal advice, law firms are drawing up new advertisements to attract the litigious and the Catholic church is diplomatically calling for clarity.
All the while, the atmosphere surrounding the controversy has soured.
The political exchanges between the parties is growing ever more bitter and even the comments of the minister about the grammar schools have grown more strident.
Last month, restating her claims that there is simply no need for schools to set academic tests to select suitable entrants, she accused them of compromising children.
"No child should be tested at 10 or 11, it's wrong," she said. "It shouldn't be happening and it's an abuse of their human rights," she told BBC Radio Ulster.
The grammar school sector is divided among its component parts. The Catholic grammars are drawing up their own transfer tests, as are those in the State sector (wrongly referred to as Protestant schools).
The two groups have gone their separate ways, opting for differing forms of testing. The Catholic sector is planning two tests in English and maths, monitored by the tried and tested British National Foundation for Educational Research. The recently-formed Association for Quality Education (AQE), an umbrella organisation in the State sector, is planning three one-hour Common Entrance Assessment tests using its own separate system which is still being devised. Its chairman, Sir Ken Bloomfield, talks of a "shared understanding" between Catholic and State grammars, but while the two groups have met, there is still no common approach.
As a result, children who apply for grammar schools in both sectors may have multiple tests to take.
Ruane, unable to stop academic testing by force of legislation, can only issue warnings.
She has said grammar schools that set academic entrance tests are entering a "legal minefield" and will be forced to finance their own legal defences in the event of challenges from parents resorting to the law to get their children into the "best" schools.
This week, the grammar schools issued competing sets of guidelines to ensure the identity of those children who opt to sit their entrance examinations. The old 11-plus was taken in the child's primary school, where their ID was confirmed by their teacher.
The new tests will be taken in the unfamiliar surroundings of the grammar schools themselves and supervised by those with no knowledge of the candidates.
As a result, demands for up to three photo-ID documents, signed parental declarations and birth certificates are being issued ; all adding to the sense of parental confusion and alarm.
All the while, parents are wondering how best to prepare their children for the various tests they may sit next November. The minister has called on primary school teachers to stick to teaching the primary school curriculum and not be tempted to help coach children for any of the new forms of testing.
Aware of this, the Catholic grammars, along with two religiously integrated and four non-denominational schools ; calling themselves the Post-Primary Transfer Consortium ; have drawn up test papers which they will issue to parents when they register their children as candidates.
The AQE has a sample paper, based on the primary curriculum, and has insisted it will not produce any more in an effort to help prevent coaching they said they would not issue any more, in line with the aim to stop schools coaching pupils.
Meanwhile, some law firms have taken to internet advertising, confident that parents will be going down the legal route at this stage next year.
One advert sounds what to many is a prophetic note.
"Consider the following," it advises. "Has your child lost out on a place in the school of their choice? Do you feel that the process or criteria are unfair or disadvantage your child in some way? Do you feel that there has been a flaw in the decision-making process, or with the criteria that the school has adopted or with the way those criteria have been applied? Has there been a failure to take proper account or your child's special educational needs or special circumstances or other factors affecting your child's performance? Or maybe some element of unfairness, ill-treatment or discrimination ; whether conscious or unconscious ; has crept into the decision-making process?"
It concludes: "If you have answered Yes to any of these questions, you may well be able to mount a legal challenge to the transfer arrangements to ensure that your child's educational needs are properly met."
The freefone number follows. It could be an option many parents will feel compelled to follow.
Divided we stand: what they say
Statement by 37 Catholic primary school principals
"The tests in format and structure are alien to work carried out in our school. Sample test material presented to us is completely inappropriate in terms of content, structure and format."
Statement by Sinn Féin education spokesman John O'Dowd
"Those grammar schools' boards of governors, who have announced that it is their intention to set their own, unregulated, legally precarious test are attempting to continue a system of exclusion rather inclusion and should, in the interests of a new beginning to education, abandon their bid to replace the 11-plus."
Statement by Cardinal Seán Brady
"Agreement on this issue is urgent and would signal that politics in Northern Ireland has come of age and is hard at work. [Parents should] not to buy into the idea that only one type of school provides quality education."
Statement by Tony Gallagher, Prof of Education, Queen's University Belfast
"Partnership government should be about saying: This is what we would like, so lets talk about what we can agree to put in place. That's what they should be doing and they're not. They are sitting with their fixed positions shouting at one another.
Statement by Sir Kenneth Bloomfield of the Association for Quality education (AQE)
"The whole situation is unsatisfactory. We never wanted to have an unregulated situation. We have consistently said that we bring our proposals forward in difference to consensual agreement. It would be much better for everybody if we had agreement and a state-sponsored exam."
Public jobs ban hurting second-chance students [independent.ie]
- Published: 05 May 2009
Source: independent.ie
By Katherine Donnelly
Wednesday May 06 2009
SECOND-CHANCE education courses for early school-leavers and other marginalised students are taking a bigger hit than mainstream schools under the Government's public service jobs embargo.
The Department of Finance is blocking key appointments to the Vocational Education Committee (VEC) alternative education programmes.
Already, it has forced the suspension of the interview process for three Adult Education Officers -- a position comparable to a school principal -- and is refusing to approve the appointment of teachers on VEC programmes such as Youthreach, an alternative programme for 15-20 year olds who have quit school.
- Katherine Donnelly
Schools face early retirement surge as teachers flee taxes [independent.ie]
- Published: 05 May 2009
Source: independent.ie
By Katherine Donnelly
Tuesday May 05 2009
Schools are bracing themselves for a surge in early retirements as teachers try to avoid costly Exchequer attacks on their pay packets and pensions.
The Department of Education has confirmed that there has been an increase in interest from teachers about their retirement options compared with previous years.
The department has not put figures on the rise but sources say officials have been swamped by enquiries.
Officials said it was too early to know whether the deluge of enquiries would be followed by retirements in August.
Teachers are required to give three months' notice of retirement, and the end of May is the deadline for applications from those who want to opt out of teaching by September.
The belief is that that current interest will translate into departures. Teachers may work until they are 65, but may retire if they have 40 years of service, or after 35 years on a reduced pension.
The public service pension levy and higher health and income levies are slicing about 10pc off the average teacher's salary of €60,000.
Senior teachers close to retirement are facing a bigger hit because higher levies apply on salaries above €75,000.
Finance Minister Brian Lenihan has also warned that that retirement lump sums may become a target for taxation.
The levies have narrowed the gap between salary and pensions, and teachers who retire now will avoid both the pension levy and any future taxation of their lump sum.
A teacher on an average salary gets a lump sum of about €100,000 under the current tax-free regime.
Exodus
An exodus from teaching would be welcomed by teacher training graduates and non-permanent teachers, whose employment prospects have been hit by a squeeze on teacher recruitment.
The Government has announced a cap on teacher numbers and has increased class sizes. Teacher unions say about 1,000 jobs are set to disappear at primary level, and a further 1,000 at second-level as a result.
The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) estimates that schools will lose an average of 2.6 teaching posts each from September.
ASTI's membership of 18,000 secondary teachers includes 3,000 temporary/part-time teachers.
The union is holding a conference later this month for non-permanent teachers, which will examine the issue of job opportunities, including the impact of the recent increase in the pupil-teacher ratio.
The conference will also cover contracts, rights and entitlements, what newly or recently appointed teachers can expect, and future employment trends in teaching.
ASTI general secretary John White attacked the "short-sighted" decision to increase class sizes. "Our economic recovery depends upon young people having access to quality education in adequately staffed schools," he said.
"Squeezing recently qualified, talented, and motivated second-level teachers out of the education service represents the squandering of a national resource," he added.
"It will damage young people's education and hinder Ireland's ability to recover from recession."
- Katherine Donnelly
Reversal on appeal of enrolment decision is incorrect [Irish Times]
- Published: 04 May 2009
Source: Irish Times
Board of management of St Molaga's School -v- the secretary general of the Department Education and Science. High Court Judgment was delivered by Ms Justice Mary Irvine on February 17th, 2009.
Judgment
An appeals committee, set up under S 29 of the 1998 Education Act, acted ultra vires its powers in overturning a decision of the board of management of St Molaga's national school to refuse to enrol two girls on the grounds that it lacked the capacity to accommodate them. Even if it had not, the decision should be quashed on the basis that it either failed to consider matters it should have, or it gave consideration to irrelevant matters. Further, its decision was not supported by any credible evidence and was irrational.
Background
The case arose from a decision of St Molaga's school in Balbriggan to refuse to enrol two girls into third and fourth class respectively in February 2008. This followed the refusal of the board of management to accept 41 other pupils earlier that school year, on the grounds that the school lacked the capacity for them.
The parents of the girls, notice parties in this application, appealed that decision to a committee. Such a committee can be set up under section 29 of the 1998 Education Act to hear an appeal against a decision not to enrol a student. That committee reports to the Department of Education.
St Molaga's is a Catholic school in Balbriggan catering for pupils from third to sixth class and run by a board of management representing the patron, staff, parents and the wider community.
For almost 100 years until 1987, it shared a campus with St Peter and Paul's junior primary school, which was a feeder school for St Molaga's. In 1987 it moved to a new site about a kilometre away.
Between 1997 and 2007, St Molaga's almost doubled in size, to 457 pupils. For many years it had been seeking assistance from the Department of Education to provide additional permanent accommodation. In September 2007 it was using 12 prefabricated classrooms.
In March 2007 it considered the deteriorating physical conditions in the school and their implications for the health and safety of staff and pupils and the educational welfare of the pupils.
Accordingly, the board decided it would have to confine enrolment to students who were leaving second class in St Peter and Paul's school.
It advised the department of its decision, explaining that conditions in the school were a danger to pupils and staff alike.
Its enrolment policy gave priority to the pupils leaving St Peter and Paul's, followed by those who already had siblings in the school.
The family in this case moved to Balbriggan knowing that they would have difficulties getting their two daughters into local schools. They sought places in St Molaga's in February 2008, on the basis that it was a Catholic school and the one closest to their home. They were told it was full. It had already rejected 41 other applications since September 2007.
Among the reasons outlined were the fact that the school already had 457 pupils, nine more than the number that would have entitled it to another teacher, but it had not sought another teacher because it did not have a classroom he or she could teach in; the physical conditions of the school were not satisfactory for the education of students; there were health and safety issues as a result of the overloading of the ESB supply in the prefabricated classrooms; it already had 25 more pupils than was thought desirable by the department, according to its own circular, and the school had applied its enrolment policy, drawn up the previous March, to deal with these problems.
The families appealed the decision to a committee set up to hear it. This committee overturned the decision of the board of management, on the grounds that the school had capacity for the two additional pupils.
They gave reasons including that this was the choice of the parents and the one closest to their home; the expressed willingness of St Molaga's to facilitate all pupils if it had enough permanent accommodation, and its implementation of a departmental circular concerning the integration of pupils from the dyslexia unit.
The school challenged this decision by judicial review, seeking the quashing of the decision as ultra vires in that the committee exceeded its jurisdiction; that it took into account matters that were irrelevant; that it failed to take into account matters that were material; and that its decision was irrational in all the circumstances.
Decision
Ms Justice Irvine examined the school's enrolment policy and section 29 of the 1998 Act in order to establish the jurisdiction of the committee set up under it. The respondents had claimed in their affidavits that the appeals procedure provided for in section 29 of the Act was not in any way confined or constrained in the manner alleged by the school, which had argued that an appeal was limited to a review of the lawfulness of the decision to refuse enrolment.
Ms Justice Irvine said that a decision made as to a school's capacity "is a sophisticated decision" which must involve the consideration of a wide range of issues, including the health and safety of all in the school, the school's obligations as an employer, its obligations regarding the standard of education, and the requirements of the department.
If the court were to accept the respondent's contention that the committee had wide powers to overturn such a decision, it "would make it very difficult for a board of management to plan with any degree of certainty for the school's future", the judge said.
She said the interpretation of section 29 should be made in the context of the Act as a whole and the relationship between the State and national schools.
She cited the Supreme Court decision in O'Keeffe -v- Hickey, where the State had argued that it was excluded from the running of the school and that that function had been conferred on the religious authorities by long-standing legal arrangements. The Supreme Court had found that the Minister and the State authorities were distanced from the management of the school in question in this case.
The 1998 Act did not alter these arrangements and there was nothing in section 29 to suggest that any committee set up under it could either make or reverse management decisions lawfully made.
The legislation, when taken as a whole, suggested that it was solely the right of the board of management to make all management decisions, including a decision as to the school's capacity.
Ms Justice Irvine rejected the contention that section 29 provided for a broad and flexible remedy, enabling the committee to substitute its decision for that of the board, when lawfully made.
It was far more likely that the legislature intended this section of the Act to provide for an appeals procedure for parents who might complain about the lawfulness of the decision.
The committee had acted ultra vires in substituting its opinion for that of the board of management.
In the event the court was wrong on this, she considered whether the committee had regard to all the material considerations, and whether it had regard to considerations which were irrelevant.
"The desire of the notice parties to send their children to St Molaga's or the fact that it was the school nearest to their family home were not matters which should have engaged the committee. Either the school had the capacity to accept them or it did not," she said.
The committee had also discounted special needs students in calculating the numbers of pupils in each year, she said, contrary to the department's own circular on how school numbers should be calculated, making the classes appear smaller.
The committee had cited the siblings rule in support of its decision, notwithstanding the fact that neither child was yet enrolled in the school.
It also cited the "higher than average" academic ability of the girls, which was impermissible, as using this as a basis for enrolment policy could be invidious and/or discriminatory.
For all these reasons, the decision of the appeals committee should be quashed as based on considerations which were irrelevant. In relation to relevant considerations, the committee "appeared to avoid considering issues which had been material to the board's decision as to the school's capacity".
Thus the decision of the committee was irrational and should, for all these reasons, be quashed.
