Enrolment Schemes - Secretary's Guidelines for Integrated Schools
Guidelines issued by the Secretary for Education to assist 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.
Directed enrolment under Section 11P
Under Section 11P(1) the Secretary has the ability to direct a school to enrol a student in a situation where the Secretary upholds a parent's appeal against an annulment.
The provision for directed enrolment under Section 11P(2)(b) has existed in legislation for some time and has rarely been exercised. This section provides for the Secretary to direct a board to enrol a student if satisfied that "the consequences of not giving the direction would be so disadvantageous to the applicant that overriding the enrolment scheme in this case is justified". The Ministry regards this provision as being for exceptional cases only. The Ministry will provide a standard application form which will require parents to supply specialist medical or psychological or other expert opinion in support of their application and will not make a direction on the basis of unsupported statements such as "All his friends have been accepted for enrolment at School X". The application form will state that the Ministry will share the specialist opinion with the board of the school concerned (unless there are special privacy issues), to give the board every opportunity to consider all the relevant facts. Only after doing this would the Ministry make a direction, if this is considered to be the appropriate course of action.
The Ministry would not direct the board of a State integrated school to enrol a student unless the person's parents agree with the direction and accept the special character of the school.