Campaign to save small rural schools

A MOVEMENT aimed at protecting small rural schools will be launched this evening in Co Sligo, where almost one-third of primary schools are facing a Government value-for-money review.

Appealing for the support of communities throughout the county, the organisers have predicted that up to 1,000 people will attend the “Save our Schools” public meeting.

They said 21 of the 69 primary schools in the county had fewer than 50 pupils and were therefore subject to the Department of Education review.

Parents, teachers, community leaders, representatives of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation, the Gaelic Athletic Association, and the Irish Farmers’ Association, as well as Sligo-North Leitrim’s three TDs, have been invited.

June McCormack, principal of Cairns national school in Co Sligo, which has 27 pupils, said it was crucial that rural people let the Government know the important role played by schools in their communities. She said there was a danger that with the current focus on cutting costs, many small schools would be swept away in a recessionary tide, despite the damage this would do to communities.

“I don’t know if we can win the argument in terms of finances if they are talking about saving €18 million in teachers’ salaries,” she said. She said hundreds of thousands of euro had been spent in recent years on refurbishing many small schools in the county that now had the threat of closure hanging over them.

“We feel we need to make plenty of noise about this,” she said. “Many communities have already lost post offices, Garda stations and pubs and don’t want to see schools disappearing as well.”

Jim Higgins, INTO president, who has spent most of his career teaching in Co Sligo, urged the Minister for Education to reassure parents and communities that their schools would not be closed. He predicted that this issue would be very high on the agenda at the union’s national conference in Sligo later this month.

He said unions had been accused of being concerned only about teachers’ jobs but he said his view was that children’s needs must come first, before parents, teachers and boards of management. Acknowledging that there were situations where schools were operating with only a handful of pupils, Mr Higgins said the union would not argue with parents who felt such schools were not suitable for socialising children. “What we are against is some bureaucrat taking out a pencil and putting a line through a school, with for example 30 pupils, on a value-for-money basis with no reference to what that school has achieved or the quality of the building or any other factors,” he said.

He said it was important to safeguard schools with a minority ethos, and schools in remote locations such as islands. “We cannot trample on the rights of these people.”

Ms McCormack said it was important for communities to “make noise” and to let the Government know how strongly people feel. “I suppose the message we want to send out is don’t touch our schools.”