The recent revelation that 49 children from disadvantaged areas of Limerick are unable to find a place at second level raises serious questions, writes John Downes

It must be pretty difficult to be told at the age of 11 or 12 that no secondary school in your area wants to enrol you. Yet at the recent INTO conference in Tralee, delegates heard 49 students in Limerick were faced with just such a situation.

All the students in question came from disadvantaged backgrounds, and all except two or three were male.

So how could it be that a system which claims to be inclusive could crank to a halt in such a way? Áine Cremin is principal of Corpus Christi national school in the Moyross area of Limerick. Corpus Christi is officially designated disadvantaged by the Department of Education, and currently has 10 children who do not have a place at second level.

While hers is by no means the only Limerick school to have experienced the problem, Cremin believes her own situation underlines the class bias among some schools in her area.

"Kids receive a letter saying the board of management is informing them they don't meet the criteria of the school," she says. "There is a strong opinion that Moyross wouldn't be a very popular address with some of these schools. I think the area has a negative effect on some of the kids' ability to get into the schools." This sends out an "awful message" to students who are already designated disadvantaged, she says.

In the right circumstances they would blossom, she believes.

There are a number of factors to be considered when trying to understand how such a situation has come to pass, she says.

The recent closure of the nearby Edmund Rice secondary school on the Shelbourne Road is one. The school, which has ceased taking in first year pupils, was established in 1993 in response to a need to find emergency places for 70 students who could not be catered for in other city schools. However, Edmund Rice was never intended as a long-term solution.

This year, Cremin's school has also experienced what she calls a "bubble" - there are approximately 20 more children graduating than in previous years. As a result, this puts pressure on the local secondary schools to find sufficient places to accommodate them.

But others feel the problem runs a lot deeper than this. There are certain schools in Limerick which everybody knows take only the best and brightest children, they say. Sure, they take some from disadvantaged backgrounds, but the majority of their children come from comfortable, middle-class homes.

Likewise, other schools in the area take more than their share of disadvantaged students to make up the slack. There are, they say, educational ghettoes in the city.

Ms Bríd de Brún is principal of Ard Scoil Rís second-level school in Limerick, one of the schools to which Cremin's students apply.

Located in a primarily middle-class area of Limerick, she is rightly proud of its excellent reputation. De Brún points out that schools do not have unlimited numbers of places for pupils.

"In my school we were not able to take 140 students [this year] . . . we simply had to refuse places because we simply did not have the space. Our school is operating at capacity in terms of the numbers it is taking in." She rejects any suggestion that her school discriminates against students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Its intake policy does not allow it to discriminate on an academic or socio-economic basis. As a result, every student has the same chance of securing a place, she says. However, she admits that her school does not get large numbers of students from disadvantaged backgrounds applying, suggesting that parents of children from disadvantaged backgrounds are choosing not to send them there.

Moreover, she makes no apologies for the fact that, due to its location, her schools' catchment area is primarily middle-class. But there is "nothing wrong" with the process by which this enrolment is done.

Margaret McMahon, principal of St Nessan's community school in the area, says the question of disadvantage is not an issue for her school. "We have always taken a mix of students and we've always worked with them. We've achieved very good results," she says.

So is there a suggestion that a school which is oversubscribed can use this to its favour in selecting the type of children it wants? The Department of Education and Science says no.

There are strict rules which forbid a school from discriminating against any student on the basis of socio-economic background or exam results.

Nor can a school hide its enrolment policies - they have to be openly available to anyone seeking to inspect them.

At a recent school managers' conference in Cork, the Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, seemed to acknowledge that there is a problem with some schools. "The evidence I have is that there are some schools in some places that are operating policies that to me look less than fair," he said.

There may be strict rules governing enrolment policies, but whether these are actually enforced is another matter entirely. According to Seamus Long, INTO executive member for Limerick, the fact that all the children currently awaiting a place in school come from disadvantaged backgrounds speaks for itself.

"It is difficult to get disadvantaged students into secondary schools, full stop," he believes. "Discrimination is definitely a problem. But who's being discriminated against? It is mainly affecting kids from areas with local authority housing."

Long believes some schools are discriminating in favour of students who are more likely to achieve good results.

"If you control the quality of intake, you are ensuring it is going to be a good school," he says.

For its part, the Department points out that any student has the right to appeal against a refusal to admit them to a particular school. There are currently 31 such appeals in Limerick.

It is also satisfied that there are enough post-primary places in Limerick. Schools should, it says, serve their local communities.

However, Long believes the Department is not doing enough.

"This is a national problem. There will be approximately 1,000 students who won't make the transition between primary and secondary this year. The local issue here in Limerick is highlighting a national issue. There are children always slipping into the net.

"Secondary schools have to look at their intake policies and explain why they are not serving the local community. They should explain why [local kids] can't gain access to schools in the local area."

But maybe this is the point. What do we mean by a "good school"? Is it one which does its best for a narrowly selected group of students from a particular background? Indeed, perhaps the best example of this approach is that employed by the fee-paying schools, who openly choose their student intake according to parents' ability to pay.

Or is it one which seeks to value students from all backgrounds, thereby providing a level playing-field? While such an approach admittedly might run the risk of lowering the overall academic attainment in that school, Áine Cremin, for one, believes it is a price worth paying.

There are lots of types of intelligence, not solely those linked to success in exams, she says. Many of her children display great interest in horses and technical subjects, for example. "I think it is a risk that's worth taking. Having the mix is the greater good. In primary school we do it, and we work at keeping kids in school," she says.

"I am making a plea for inclusiveness and appropriate programmes to meet the needs of all kids. [The Department] should be making sure that every child has reasonable access to the school of their choice within a reasonable distance of the school. And that's not the case in Limerick," agrees Long.

The majority of students leaving sixth class in Limerick have second-level places. However, there is a very real risk that the rest, all from disadvantaged areas, will be stigmatised by their peers unless something is done to prevent thishappening again.

A year is a very long time in the school-life of a 12-year-old child.