The decision by the former Education Minister to merge three schools in Downpatrick has been branded a "disgrace" by angry parents at one of the schools.
The go-ahead to merge De La Salle High School, St Mary's High School and St Patrick's Grammar School was given by Michelle McIlveen last month.
But parents from St Patrick's, known locally as Red High, have voiced their anger at the decision and say they feel opposition has been ignored.
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The Red High PFA is an independent body which represents around 500 parents of pupils at St Patrick's Grammar, said the Minister's decision was an “irresponsible eleventh-hour call”.
It pointed to a 2018 consultation in which it said 106 out of 120 primary schools who submitted responses were opposed to the merger.
It also claims that the new provisions would exclude pupils from rural areas and would lead to the new school being over-subscribed, causing problems for children in local primary schools.
The Red High PFA said that primary schools in the area have been divided into two categories - Category A and Category B - depending on their proximity, with pupils from the 13 Category A schools automatically eligible.
It went on to claim that in the first four years alone, Category A will be oversubscribed each year, meaning the current cohort of P6 children from the local area would not all be provided a place, and no spaces would be available for the 40 plus feeder schools allocated to Category B.
Red High PFA Member Colin Bell, whose sons aged 13 and 15 attend the school, said: "We are speaking out against the approval of a decision, made out of the blue by a caretaker Minister due to depart her role only weeks later, to remove our right and our children’s right to choose where they complete their education.
"Our opposition as a community was ignored in 2018 and we are left with no choice but to launch a campaign and call out this irresponsible, uninformed, and reckless decision made by the caretaker Education Minister.”
PFA member Sheila Reynolds, whose 15-year-old son also attends Red High said the decision was "unacceptable".
"Minister McIlveen failed to engage with us, the parents of Red High, the local primary schools, or the pupils before green lighting a potentially catastrophic overhaul of schooling in the area," she added.
"The proposed school will have less funding, will be oversubscribed, will have a female population of only 30%, will have less SEN provision and will be taught over split sites.
"This is simply unacceptable, and we implore Mark Browne as the Permanent Secretary of the Department of Education to step in and halt this fanciful plan.”
St. Patrick’s Grammar School Principal Joe McCann voiced his concern that educational performance in the area would suffer as a result.
“We are at a loss to understand how a Minister could approve this merger with objections from right across the community stacked against it," he said.
"It is our firm belief that an amalgamated school simply could not cope with demand and would result in an inevitable drop in educational outcomes in the area.
"The lack of engagement from a Minister, whose own constituency will be impacted by the decision to exclude primary school pupils from the wider Ards Peninsula area, is beyond disappointing.
"We are yet to see evidence of how the merger will be implemented; how the school will operate with no capacity to bring everyone together; and how we can plan for a school that has no practical details laid out regarding the delivery of education which is our paramount concern.”
The Department of Education said that the proposals were brought forward by the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools and that its role was to assess those proposals once they had been published.
“Any decision in relation to the discontinuance of a school is not taken lightly and it is recognised that closures are emotive and unsettling for parents and children," a department spokesperson said.
"It is in that context that the Minister must balance all information and evidence presented to her to ensure that the decision is the right one in the circumstances and the one that will deliver in the long-term interests of children and young people (and in the case of these proposals, in the interests of the children and young people of all three schools).
"Whenever a decision is taken on any development proposal, the over-riding consideration is the educational well-being of pupils.
“All evidence on which the decisions were taken has been published to the Department’s website.
"This includes a detailed assessment of both the body of representation made to the Department during the statutory objection period and that issued in response to the Education Authority’s (EA’s) pre-publication consultation.
“Once decisions are taken on development proposals they are required to be implemented.”
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