Enrolment Schemes - Guidelines for Development and Operation
Guidelines issued by the Secretary for Education to assist non-integrated schools when developing enrolment schemes and to advise these schools on good practices which will enable them to manage their enrolment schemes in line with the requirements of the legislation.
Adult Students
The only people with a right to enrol at a State school are those students who are aged 5 and over and have not yet reached the first day of January after their 19th birthday. Adult students do not have a right to be enrolled at a school, but if a school has spare capacity adult students can be enrolled at the discretion of the board.
In a school with an enrolment scheme, however, there is potentially no spare capacity. Since adults do not have a right to be enrolled at any school, the fact that an adult might live in the home zone of a school with an enrolment scheme makes no difference. Nor, by extension, do adult students have any right to be included in the ballot for out-of-zone students.
At a school with an enrolment scheme, therefore, adults can be enrolled only in a situation where the availability of places at a particular level has been advertised and the number of applications is less than the number of places available.