Education Law

Choice of School has been viewed as a valuable commodity in recent times with anecdotal evidence of parents moving to a school’s catchment’s area specifically so their child (or children) can attend that school of their choice. However, a child has no automatic right of enrolment to a school.

A child has a constitutional right to an education. However, there are other competing rights which can affect a child’s constitutional right to an education such as:

1. Refusal to enrol the child in a school by the Board of Management
2. Suspension of the child by the Principal / Board of Management
3. Expulsion of the child by the Principal / Board of Management

These sanctions are subject to the jurisdiction of the Secretary General of the Department of Education and Skills and the School Rules concerning same should be modelled on the National Education Welfare Board (N.E.W.B.) Guidelines for schools. (Click here for link to same)

In the event that the matter of imposing a sanction on the child or refusing to enrol him is not resolved at a local level, the child has an appeal mechanism (under Section 29 of the Education Act 1998) open to him. It must be noted at the outset that as of the 16^th of September and pending a Supreme Court ruling on the matter a policy decision taken by the Board of Management to refuse to enrol a student is very difficult to upset. Determining standards and requirements for enrolment of students is currently viewed to be outside the remit of an appeal’s process. E.g. a Board of Management can decide that a school is “full” when they have a certain number of children in the school.

Individual decisions on enrolment that do not conflict with school policy but are in breach of fair procedures may be successfully appealed.

We at Donal Reilly & Collins have had a high level of success in acting for children who have been expelled from school or suspended. We have been involved in the Appeal process and have had an article published in the Executive Report, which is the circular of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (at pages 8 and 9 which can be found here) concerning same.

In addition we have acted for college students who have been removed from their college courses for failure to pass exams again with satisfactory outcomes.

As of the 16^th of September 2010 and pending implementation of legislation by the Minister for Education and Skills any suspension of any period can be appealed using the Section 29 procedure. It had been believed that only a cumulative period of suspension of 20 days would be admissible and that a 3 day suspension was not subject to review. This is not currently the case.

Short Term Suspension of Students

Donal, Reilly, Collins have recently participated in a judicial review which has revealed that current thinking by both the Department of Education and Skills and school Principals and Boards of Management on suspension periods for children and the appeals thereof is wrong.

We recently published an article in the Secondary School Principal's circular concerning the correct view of the matter. This article on the short term suspension of students can be viewed here.