Special Circumstances and Special Provisions
EA portal will be open from 27th January until 19th February 2026.
Please note that these should NOT be submitted to individual schools but uploaded via the EA portal when applying to post primary schools.
How Criteria Were Applied for September 2026 Entry
School: Ballyclare High School
Total number of places available: 186
Total number of applications considered: 220
As there were more applications than places available the Board of Governors applied the published
admissions criteria.
All 220 applicants met Criterion 1.1 ‘Children who have taken the SEAG Entrance Assessments and been awarded a TSAS (or had a score assigned as a result of Special Circumstances and/or Special Provisions)’. Since oversubscription occurred at Criterion 1.1, the scores in the SEAG Entrance Assessment of these 220 applicants were used to create a rank order in accordance with Criterion 1.2, higher SEAG scores being ranked above those with lower scores.
Before a rank order could be finalised all applications for Special Provisions and/or Special Circumstances were considered by the School Improvement Committee of the Board of Governors. At these meetings the governors considered the evidence provided to decide if Special Provisions and/or Special Circumstances would be applied. For those applications where it was decided that Special Provisions and/or Special Circumstances applied, the data provided by the applicant’s primary school(s) was then considered and an educational judgement made to award a score equivalent to that which the child would have obtained in the SEAG Entrance Assessments under normal conditions. It should be noted that to maintain the integrity of the process, the governors had no knowledge of the score of the 186th applicant while making decisions to upgrade scores.
Once the rank order was established based on Criterion 1.2, there were 6 applicants with the same score tied for the 186th place. It was, therefore, necessary to apply the tie-breaker criteria 1.4.
2 of these applicants met tie-breaker criterion 1.4(i) ‘Children who have a child of the family enrolled in the School or been accepted for enrolment in 2026’. The other 4 applicants were not selected.
These 2 applicants were then considered under tie-breaker criterion 1.4(iii) ‘The age of the child, with preference being given to the eldest child’. The elder of the 2 applicants was selected for the 186th place and the younger of the 2 applicants was not selected for admission.
