AQW 21269/17-22

Ms Claire Sugden
Independent
East Londonderry

Tabled Date: 01/07/2021
Answered On Date: 07/07/2021
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Education, in the absence of AQE tests, to detail (i) the criteria used by post-primary schools to determine acceptance of a pupil; and (ii) the advice given by her Department to schools on this matter.

Answer:

Setting admissions criteria is, by law, a matter for Boards of Governors (BoGs) of individual schools and not my Department. Admissions criteria for each grant-aided school in Northern Ireland are published by the Education Authority (EA). Criteria for September 2021 admission can be found by using the ‘Search by school’ or ‘Search by location’ functions at the following link:

Search Schools | Education Authority Northern Ireland (eani.org.uk)

My Department provides guidance to schools on the post-primary admissions process, including on the admissions criteria it is recommended that schools should and should not use. BoGs have a legal duty to ‘have regard to’ this guidance. The most recent guidance, issued in October 2020, is published on my Department’s website at the following link:

Circular 2016/15 - The procedure for transfer from primary to post-primary education | Department of Education (education-ni.gov.uk)

The previous Minister wrote, in November 2020, to schools that traditionally make use of academic selection to advise them to consider alternative methods of selecting pupils for admission in the event that entrance tests could not proceed. He then wrote to all post-primary schools in January 2021 asking them to review their admissions criteria where necessary and to submit revised criteria to the EA as soon as possible to enable them to be published on the EA’s website on 2 February 2021.