Searching for secondary schools in Dublin

reddy2

Hello all,

I just moved to Dublin and have two urgent and tough tasks at hand - getting my son admitted into a secondary school and finding an accommodation that is close to the school. My son is completing his 6th class currently outside Dublin.

I work in Dublin 1 but don't mind commuting upto 40 mins, so practically I'm open to all areas in Dublin. Also I don't mind paying for school if it can make my life easier. I would prefer ET schools, but I think there are very few of those.

I have the following questions:

1. My son's age - has just completed 11 years. Is he under-age to get into secondary school?
2. Am I to late for applying for admissions for 2018 ?
3. If I can't get admission this year, is that OK to skip school for an year? Will there be any legal issues etc? Will it be questioned while enrolling for next year?
4. Which schools should I be contacting?

Thanks a lot!!

shesty

Have you any indication of where you might live?Because the school choice will depend on your housing generally in Dublin, the catchment area will probably be the deciding factor.
If you live in Blackrock (for example) and commute to D1, you are unlikely to get him into most public schools outside the Blackrock area, since that's where your address would be, and many schools are oversubscribed, so they have to implement those policies.

I would suggest looking out around the city edges where schools may be slightly less over subscribed.

lazygal

Every school sets its own enrolment criteria so you'll need to narrow your criteria to location and then check with each school.
Our school is part of a common enrolment system with about 20 primary schools for the secondary schools in the area. We apply to our preferred schools in the Sept/Oct before secondary school start. But within that there are sibling and religion enrolment categories. So you will have to check every website of the schools you want to consider in an area.

Moonbeam

I would find a house then apply to all the local schools or ring them now and see what the criteria are

reddy2

Thank you very much for all the replies!!

Also I find that many secondary accept admissions from the local feeder schools. Since we are moving to Dublin from India, I wanted to find the school first and then the house in that place. I consider school admission is more important than house because we don't want to lose an academic year due to lack of admissions.

shesty

That's ok but many schools will require proof of address as part of your application.You would be best off to phone them.

Also....I don't know what your budget is like, but the price for accommodation varies greatly around Dublin, so find a few schools you think could be good, then look at rentals/house sales in the area to see what prices are like, if it is something that has to be considered.

lazygal

reddy2 wrote: »

Thank you very much for all the replies!!

Also I find that many secondary accept admissions from the local feeder schools. Since we are moving to Dublin from India, I wanted to find the school first and then the house in that place. I consider school admission is more important than house because we don't want to lose an academic year due to lack of admissions.

Then you're going to have to make a list of every school you're interested in, check the enrolment policy and see if they have a place. There are hundreds of second level schools in Dublin and the environs. What makes one school better than another will depend on your priorities.

AndrewJRenko

Many community schools have open enrolments and are not over-subscribed, so you should be able to find a place here. They would generally be considered to be more working-class than other schools. Just from watching the pupils in my area, they seem to have a fairly high percentage of immigrant families.