Almost 600 schools with fewer than 50 pupils are under threat of closure because of budget cuts. Can you put an economic value on a school?
RURAL SCHOOLS are an emotive subject. Unsurprisingly, the communities they serve tend to value them highly, particularly those that have already lost other community anchors, such as a shop, post office or pub.
Almost 600 of our primary schools – about one in five – have fewer than 50 pupils, most of them two-teacher schools. Since October last year they have been the subject of an ongoing value-for-money review by the Department of Education. Two years ago, in his Report of the Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure Programmes – aka An Bord Snip Nua – the economist Colm McCarthy identified savings of €18 million by merging some of these schools. The department accepted lobbying submissions from teachers, parents and community members until March 18th. It has received more than 1,000. The review is due to be completed by the end of this year, with any recommendations following next year.
Some of the schools are truly tiny. The Irish Timescontacted several with between five and 14 pupils. None agreed to speak to a reporter. "We don't want to draw attention to ourselves," was the typical explanation. Two schools that did agree were St Theresa's National School in Cashel, Co Galway, which has 41 pupils, and Coolbock National School, near Riverstown in Co Sligo, which has 27.
Co Galway has 72 small schools, the highest number of any county. Established in 1949, St Theresa’s has 26 boys and 15 girls. Last year Eamon Ó Cuív opened a €476,000 extension that the Department of Education had funded. The school, which overlooks Cashel Bay, now has a large assembly hall, new toilets, an office and a lot of additional classroom space.
Its principal, Cepta Stephens, has been teaching there for 26 years. There is one other teacher, Sorcha Bolger. The school in Recess, 12km away, closed several years ago, although the town still has a playschool. After playschool, depending on where the children live, their primary-school catchment area is either north to the Irish-language school in Maum or south to the English-speaking Cashel school. The other school nearest to Cashel is at Roundstone, also 12km away.
Bernard Lee, a sports teacher, comes one day a week to the Cashel and Roundstone schools. “The one constant in the community has been the schools,” he says. “They are the heartbeat of the community. We have adapted to losing the post office, the shop and the pub in Cashel, but there are certain things we can’t adapt to. Losing a school is one extra pressure you don’t want in 2011.”
“I don’t think we can put a monetary value on the place of the school in the community,” says Rosie Joyce, who has two children at Cashel. “The school is a gathering place for the community. Even people who don’t have children here come to the plays and the cake sales, and whatever is going on. You see every generation here.
“Closing this school would amount to uprooting the community again, and plundering it by putting children into other schools further away. We have seen, when the school closed in Recess, how separated a community becomes. The school is a focal point in any small community.”
For Jacqueline Boulger, who has two daughters at Cashel, the school’s smallness is what she values. “Parents are more involved in a smaller school,” she says. “There are 35 kids in the infant class in the school in Clifden, and the small numbers here just don’t compare. There’s more individual help available for the children.”
Boulger, who is looking for work, worries that if her children move to another school the longer commute and changes to the family schedule would affect her work flexibility.
COOLBOCK NATIONAL SCHOOL, in Co Sligo, is in the Riverstown parish, down a narrow road that requires careful driving. Established in 1928, it has nine boys and 18 girls on the roll. The parish has five schools, including one Church of Ireland school.
Its principal, Martin Enright, has been teaching there for 20 years; his colleague, Suzanne Donnelly, has been there for 10 years. Coolbock is one of the Co Sligo schools involved in the Save Our Schools campaign, which was launched on Monday with a meeting in Sligo town that attracted 300 people. Twelve parents showed up at the school this week to talk about their concerns about a possible closure.
“One of the main reasons we built a house here is because the school is only 500yd away,” says Fiona Mullen Brown, who has two children at Coolbock. “The children here are in classes with children of different ages, and they all learn from each other. They’re a little unit, a little family. Why change something that isn’t broken? If they moved the children into Riverstown they’d have to build another extension and spend more money, because the children there are already using prefabs.”
Another parent, Susie Carr, who has one child at the school and one due to join in September, also built recently close by. “We live 100yd from the school, and we built there specifically because it was close to the school.”
Coolbock is not geographically the closest school for all the children who attend it. Some parents, such as Maura O’Connor, have chosen it because it is small, although this involves a daily commute for her (only children who live in a catchment area are automatically entitled to a place on a school bus). Other parents chose Coolbock because they themselves attended it, such as Jacqueline Callaghan’s husband, and have a personal attachment.
“Children should be able to finish their schooling where they started it,” says Jimmy O’Regan, who has three children at Coolbock. “It’s very damaging for a child to be moved.”
Several parents, including Maura O’Connor, express fears that their children would be bullied at a larger school. “Small is beautiful,” she says.
Jackie de Bruin, who is originally from South Africa, says she chose the school for her child because it was small. “We don’t have any family here, so the school and the other parents have become our family. We wouldn’t get the same in a bigger school.”
It is now widely known that small schools are under review. “Parents and children are asking us, ‘Where are we going to have to send our children next year, or the year after?’ ” says teacher Suzanne Donnelly.
What about the fact that money needs to be saved in this sector, in common with other public services that are being cut? “There are other ways to rationalise and be more cost- efficient, such as pooling resources, sharing secretaries and admin duties, and operating in clusters,” says the St Theresa’s principal, Cepta Stephens. “We’re open to all of those possibilities. Besides, we’ve just had an investment of almost €500,000 in the school. What financial sense would it make to close it?”
No parent at either school accepts that cuts have to be made.
THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE view about the value of small schools, where up to four classes of children share a teacher. It is that children are losing out by not learning exclusively with their peers. Peter Mullan of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation admits that the situation in some schools, where a child may be the only one in his or her year group, is not ideal.
“Parents want their children to mix and socialise with children of their own age,” he says, but “there is no evidence that children lose out, socially or academically, by attending a smaller school”.
Tom Collins is a former professor of education at NIU Maynooth and the university’s current interim president. “I’d hate to see small schools go just because they are that bit more expensive to run,” he says. “There are many things to recommend them, including avoiding the dangers of anonymity, but there are also disadvantages in a school of 50 or under.
“By definition a school of that size cannot offer the same developmental range of activities. For instance, if a child is not into the more traditional team sports, and preferred to do cycling, or dance, or gymnastics, would it be possible to respond to that? A bigger school has a greater possibility of delivering that, and is more open to the possibilities of the world at large. They also have access to newer learning technologies and have a bigger set of teaching resources.”
The department has said that, in carrying out its review, it is “conscious that there is a wider dimension, in addition to the cost of maintaining small schools, to be considered. Among the issues that will need to be taken into account are the impact of school closures on dispersed rural communities, parental choice, the availability of diversity of school provision and the additional cost of school transport.”
“You have to look at every case on its individual merits,” agrees Enright. But neither Enright nor Stephens is clear about whether the review included a visit to their school. “How else can they judge us as value for money?” asks Enright.
The Department of Education confirmed this week that the review does not involve a visit to each school. When contacted for comment about his recommendations in the Bord Snip Nua report, Colm McCarthy said he “had nothing to add to what’s in the report”.
Small schools
Ireland’s one- and two-teacher schools by county in the 2009-10 academic year
Carlow 7
Cavan 12
Clare 40
Cork 47
Donegal 60
Dublin 5
Galway 72
Kerry 39
Kildare 4
Kilkenny 12
Laois 14
Leitrim 16
Limerick 21
Longford 9
Louth 3
Mayo 68
Meath 7
Monaghan 15
Offaly 7
Roscommon 41
Sligo 20
Tipperary 34
Waterford 9
Westmeath 10
Wexford 11
Wicklow 6
