Tusla Education Support Service, which includes the statutory Educational Welfare Service (EWS), is under the remit of my department and operates under the Education (Welfare) Act, 2000. The primary role of the EWS is to ensure that every child either attends school regularly or otherwise receives a certain minimum education to ensure and secure every child’s entitlement to education.
Educational welfare officers (EWOs) are based throughout the country to offer advice and guidance to parents who need support in ensuring that their child attends schools regularly. They work with children, young people and their families who are experiencing difficulty with school attendance; this is done through, home visits, educational welfare conferences and collaboratively working with different agencies. EWOs also support parents and guardians who are experiencing difficulty in securing a school placement for their child.
All referrals received by the EWS are screened and assessed by a senior educational welfare officer. Referrals may be made throughout the school year. A referral for a child without a school place is prioritised by the EWS and an EWO is assigned immediately to support families who are in this situation. It will remain an open case until such time as a school place is offered and accepted.
It is important to state that availability of school places can fluctuate throughout the school year due to factors such as student mobility, last-minute enrolments, or changes in school capacity. Currently in the region of 400 'no school place' cases are open to the EWS and to date in this school year the EWS has closed 1,267 'no school place' cases.
The provision of school places and the operation of admissions processes are matters for individual school authorities, in line with their published admissions policies and relevant legislation. Schools determine their own intake numbers and maintain their own enrolment and waiting list information.
My department does not centrally collate or hold a definitive dataset of available places or waiting lists by school planning area. Information on first-year intake numbers for individual schools is published in each school’s Admissions Notice on their respective websites. National enrolment data is available on gov.ie at the following link: www.gov.ie/en/department-of-education/collections/data-on-individual-schools/
Regarding specialist places, close to 4,000 places were made available for the 2025/26 school year. This was made up of 2,700 new places and 1,200 places through the natural movement of students from primary to post-primary or out of education.
For the 2025/26 school year, the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) has advised my department just under 3,300 valid notifications were received by mid-February 2025 via the new parent notify service. While parents were asked to notify the NCSE by mid-February the NCSE received further notifications after this date. The NCSE advise that a number of school places for children with special educational needs exist in many counties in the country in the current school year.
