School wins court bid to reject pupil

A SECONDARY school has thwarted the Education Minister’s bid to compel it to take in a pupil who didn’t meet its admission criteria.

The court decision follows a long-running battle by the boy’s parents who contended that they had told there would be a place for the child by a former principal of the Galway secondary school.

The claimed they had transferred the boy to a particular primary school on the understanding that it was a feeder school to the secondary school.

Initially, the school insisted that, under its enrolment policy, firstround places would go to the children of staff and past pupils – as well as the siblings of current pupils.

After that places would be decided by random lottery, and the boy had not been successful in the lottery.

The boy’s parents subsequently brought an appeal to a Department of Education committee which agreed that the child should be given a place, leading to Education Minister Richard Bruton ordering the school to enrol him.

The parents had appealed on the grounds that because they had moved their child to a feeder school based on advice they claimed to have received from the former secondary school principal, they had a reasonable expectation that the boy would be enrolled there.

Earlier this year the school’s board of management launched High Court proceedings against the Education Minister following his direction that the boy, who cannot be identified to protect the privacy of the child, be enrolled when the school re-opens next month.

The school board claimed the committee’s decision was flawed and that it significantly interfered with its enrolment policy.

The High Court ruled in favour of the school board, and the Department of Education then took the case to the Court of Appeal.

In its judgment, the Court of Appeal – consisting of Judge Seán Ryan, Judge Peter Kelly, and Judge Mary Irvine – upheld the High Court decision, while also sympathising with the boy’s parents.

Judge Ryan said it was ‘with a heavy heart’ that the court had come to its conclusion, and acknowledged that the parents’ efforts to do their best for their son’s education.

The school board had argued that there had been no evidence to support a finding that the boy had been given a guarantee of a place by the former principal. It also claimed there would be ‘utter chaos’ in the school system if the committee’s appeal was successful.

‘There would be utter chaos’