Basic Statistics of Annual Enrolments at grant-aided schools 2015/16 published

The Department of Education has today published a statistical release which details the basic provisional enrolment figures for schools and for children in funded pre-school education for 2015/16.

Labour market statistics

The data is taken from the school enrolments census, which was conducted in October 2015.

Data collected through the school census exercise is used to inform Departmental policy development, implementation and evaluation.

This first release of the basic statistics contains information which is used in the process to allocate funding to schools. A further statistical release, containing a more detailed set of tables will be published in February 2016.

Key points:

• The total number of pupils in schools in October 2015 was approximately 340,000, an increase of almost 2000 pupils compared to 2014.
• The number of children in funded pre-school education, that is reception classes, nursery schools and units, or voluntary and private pre-school centres was 24,147. This has steadily increased by around 1,000 pupils in the last four years.
• The number of pupils in compulsory primary school education (Years 1-7) was almost 169,000. This has risen by more than 3,000 pupils compared with last year. This is the highest number of primary pupils recorded since 2001.
• The number of pupils in post-primary schools was 141,110. This has decreased by more than 1500 pupils on last year.
• Special school enrolments have also gradually increased, rising by around 600 pupils in the last four years to 5,185 in 2015 /16.
• The numbers of schools continues to decrease. There are now 1,166 schools.
• 30% (100,000) of children in schools are entitled to free school meals.

Full details of this National Statistics publication can be found on the DE Website.

Notes to editors: 

Media enquiries to the Department of Education’s Communications Team on Tel: 028 9127 9207. Out of office hours contact the Duty Press Officer via pager number 07699715440 and your call will be returned.

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