Moving back to Ireland: When do I need to register my child for primary school?

MusRo

Apologies if this has been asked before. I did a search and couldn't find the answer. My husband and I have been living in the UK for almost 10 years and we are planning to return to Ireland mid 2014 I need to register my daughter for primary school and was wondering when this needs to be done by? Is there a strict deadline? Can I register her in multiple schools? Do I need to live in the country to be able to register her?

I'm getting slightly anxious as all my UK friends have been looking at schools since October and putting names with preferred schools as there is a catchment area system over here. We haven't finalized where we will be living yet and we haven't had much time to look into schools, especially when working full time and living in another country...

We are hoping to move to South Tipperary or County Cork area so I am hopeful that school place demand will be less than Dublin... We are hopelessly out of touch and any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance
MusRo

byhookorbycrook

It very much depends on the individual school. Is there a particular type of school you want? Faith based/Multi-denom? Mixed/Single Sex? English/Irish speaking?

huskerdu

Also, What age is your daughter ?
Is she currently attending school, or when is she due to start.

Moonbeam

I put my girls name down at 14 months in our local school and she did not get a place but there is another local school that still had places come September.
It depends on the area and being out of Dublin or in Dublin makes no difference.
I needed my childrens pps numbers to enroll them in school and some schools that work on catchment area will want your address.
They are given PPS numbers when they are born here now so you should have no issue getting them for your child.
There are always school places but like me you may end up travelling.

MusRo

Thanks so far for the replies. Apologies, it seems I didn't give enough information. My daughter will be four in April 2014 so will be almost four and a half in September. She was born here in the UK but as both my husband and I are Irish, her nationality is Irish and she has an Irish passport. She won't have a PPS number at the moment and I guess I should add that to my ever growing "moving home to do list". We also don't have an address in Ireland yet and it's unlikely that we will have an address until July 2014 at the earliest. I wonder if I could give my parents address?

We are both Catholic but non practicing so I am not too fussy about whether it is a religious school or not. I don't have a preference for a mixed school or an all girls school as she has been in mixed nursery for the past few years and is very sociable. I think she'd cope fine with both types. The main things I care about are that the school has a good reputation, is a safe environment and that the teachers are a decent standard and they care.

Yikes.. I'm now starting to get very worried about getting her a place. Is there somewhere I can contact to get this kind of information, like a government education website?
Thanks again for all advice

huskerdu

MusRo wrote: »

Yikes.. I'm now starting to get very worried about getting her a place. Is there somewhere I can contact to get this kind of information, like a government education website?
Thanks again for all advice

Two useful sites for you are

www.citizensinformation.ie - Government website with loads of info on sll aspects on living in Ireland.
Department of Education - www.educate.i

Each school in Ireland ( even non fee paying publically funded ones)is a privately owned and run organisation which must obey Department of Education regulations, but they have lots of latitude to make their own rules within these regulation.

Each school must have an enrolment policy which must be available publically.

80-90% of all schools are run by the Catholic Church. In small towns, there may only be one school which will be Catholic.

Enrollment polices often read like this

- Siblings of current students
- Catholics in the catchment areas ( catchment areas can be vague, as its the school that defines the catchment area, not some Gove department).
- Catholics outside the catchment area
- Non-catholics in the catchment area

Sometimes the order of these is different.

Some schools are over-subscribed, some are not. If the school is over-subscribed, they may have a cut off date for entries for next year. In our school, the cut off date for entries is in Dec this year.


Once you decide where you want to live, get a list of all the schools in the area.
Ring them and tell them your situation. Ask how oversubscribed they are and when application have to be in.
Send in applications to those you are interested in.
Use your parents address for the moment.

Don't panic yet, but you should not leave it too late. Start your research now.
Plenty of information will help you control the situation.

There are loads of good schools, and loads of school places in most areas.

Moonbeam

So you want her to start in Sept 2015?
There is also a free pre school year (google ecce scheme) that she would qualify for in the Sept coming.

MusRo

Thanks huskerdu and Moonbeam. This information is very useful. I am hoping that my daughter will start school in September 2014 as she will be more than ready for it. I didn't know about that ECCE scheme so that will be very useful. If she will only be in pre school for a few months (say June to August) would she qualify for this scheme? She will be in the age range mentioned, but as we have not been resident in Ireland for over 10 years and as the pre-school period would be short, I am doubtful that we would qualify for any type of assistance. My other half is going to ring a few schools today to find out about their individual application deadlines. Fingers crossed we still have time and some still have places...

Moonbeam

There is no preschool here in the summer:)
All pre and primary schools schools run Sept to June.
She would be considered very young starting school here at 4 with an April birthday.

It totally depends on the schools enrollment policy though.