Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 10 July 2018
235. Deputy Thomas Byrne asked the Minister for Education and Skills the townlands and district electoral divisions included in each of the school planning areas in which a second-level school patronage competition is under way. [30526/18]
Amharc ar fhreagraIn order to plan for school provision and analyse the relevant demographic data in a way that takes account of the significant local and regional variations in demographic trends and enrolment projections, my Department divides the country into 314 school planning areas, of which some 40 are in Dublin.
Using school planning area boundaries within my Department’s Geographic Information System (GIS) allows data within those boundaries, including data for enrolments in schools, child benefit and other relevant data to be added to the mapping information, grouped and analysed. The GIS records the number of primary and post-primary schools within each planning area, the combined enrolments for all of the schools within each area, including total enrolment and enrolment in each class group, together with child benefit data for the 0-4 age group relevant to the area.
In most areas, school planning areas were based on traditional school catchment areas where all primary schools were assigned to a post-primary feeder area (typically a population centre or town), containing one or more post-primary schools. The school planning areas were developed for use with the GIS in 2008 and with the introduction of Small Areas in Census 2011, these areas were amended to align with Census Small Areas. The current school planning areas take account not only of local groupings of schools, but also of natural boundaries, Census Small Areas and other local conditions. These school planning areas are used in the demographic exercise as a basis for the assessment of areas of growth and to inform recommendations on the establishment of any new schools required in that school planning area.
As the school planning areas were aligned with the Census Small Areas and a townland or electoral division can fall into more than one school planning area, the information is not readily available in the format requested by the Deputy.
A patronage process is currently under way in respect of four post-primary schools announced to be established in 2019 for the following school planning areas:
- Laytown and Drogheda (Regional Solution),
- Galway City and Oranmore (Regional Solution),
- Donaghmede_Howth_D13; and
- Wicklow.
A list of the Census Small Areas which are located within each of the above school planning areas are outlined in the following link for the Deputy's information.
