‘Classrooms capped’: No room at school for Limerick children

IT’S a case of ‘no room at the school’ for five families who want to send their children to Knocknasna NS, a few miles outside Abbeyfeale but who are unable to do so, because numbers at the 41-pupil Scoil Naomh Padraig are capped.

Now the disappointed parents who have expressed shock, upset and anger at the development, have lodged appeals against the school’s decision.

Meanwhile, almost seven hundred people have signed an online petition entitled “Keep Scoil Naomh Padraig for our Rural Community.”

Just seven Junior Infants have been accepted to start in September 2022 in line with the school’s admission policy but Breeda O’Sullivan’s daughter is not among them. Breeda, who grew up next door to the school, has very happy memories of attending the school as a child and when her own daughters were born, was keen to send them there. “I was upset,” she said, when told her eldest daughter was refused enrolment. “I was mad to think I couldn’t send my daughter to the school I went to.”

“We were told we didn’t fit the criteria,” another parent Michael Scanlon explained. Michael and his family live in Knockbrack within three miles of the school and both he and his father before him attended the school. His daughter has been refused a place in the school. “We are in shock. We are upset. We didn’t expect it,” Mr Scanl0n said.

“When I was going to school they were trying to keep the numbers up,” he added. “Now it is turned the other way. We can’t get answers. We don’t know what is driving it.”

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He pointed out that children at a pre-school in the same grounds, which was intended as a feeder for the school, will now have “to scatter”.

Pádraig O’Connor’s son, who has also been refused a place, it means that his relationships with other children built up during pre-school, will end. No-one was consulted, Mr O'Connor said and he predicted the policy of capping will cause problems in the years ahead. In reality, he pointed out, that means that children from as close as 500metres to the school will have to go elsewhere. Without capping, next year’s enrolment would be 49, he explained, and the cut-off for a third teacher is 52.

Michael Lane, chairman of the board of management said the school was oversubscribed. “There are criteria to decide who would get in, in that situation,” he said.

Those criteria, according to parents, are location in Knocknasna, followed by having an existing sibling in the school and being a past pupil.

On the issue of capping, he said, the issue of expansion or taking in further numbers was looked at but “it wasn’t an option”. “It wasn’t considered to be a runner for various different reasons,” he said.

The enrolment policy had been agreed by the board of management and had been approved by the school’s patron, he said and there was an appeals procedure.