Maynooth puts faith in broad intake of students

NUI Maynooth has a very broad intake when compared to some other universities in the sector.

NUI Maynooth has a very broad intake when compared to some other universities in the sector.

Even the most cursory glance at the feeder schools reveals one thing: access to its hallowed halls is not confined simply to those who can afford a private education.

Schools such as the Maynooth Vocational School, Castleknock Community College, and Coolmine Community School continue to send a significant proportion of their students to the university.

These figures do not provide an indication of the numbers of entrants who have received after-school grinds or "intensive revision" courses.However, they do show that NUI Maynooth's progressive approach to encouraging participation from the free school sector continues to pay real dividends.

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Far from an intake which is dominated by students from the private fee-paying schools, any parent sending their child to a free school can have confidence that they stand as good a chance as anybody of getting into NUI Maynooth.

The statistics contained in today's lists by no means represent a completely accurate picture of the performance of individual schools.

However, the Labour Party's spokeswoman on education, Ms Jan O'Sullivan, yesterday pointed out that they do serve to emphasise a "growing educational apartheid in second-level schools in major Irish cities ... \ the extent of social division in the education system".

Others, such as Mr John White of the ASTI, stressed that the publication of these lists could lead parents to draw conclusions that one school is better than another, based simply on its position on the table.

Given that education is about far more than performance in the Leaving Certificate, any temptation to draw such conclusions should rightly be resisted.