THE GOVERNMENT has no plans to close down hundreds of small rural schools, Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn will tell primary teachers this evening.
In his first address to the annual round of teacher conferences, Mr Quinn will underline the seriousness of the economic crisis and the need for the education sector, which receives close to €9 billion in funding, to do “more for less”.
His expected comments come amid growing concern about the Department of Education’s value-for-money review of smaller schools. Mr Quinn will use his address to Irish National Teachers’ Organisation members in Sligo to reassure school communities. One source said: “This speculation about the department closing hundreds of schools is wide of the mark . . . We have no policy of shutting down smaller schools.”
Almost 650 primary schools – one in five – have fewer than 50 pupils, most of them two-teacher schools. Most one- and two-teacher schools are in Galway (72), Mayo (68) Donegal (60) and Cork (47).
Since October, these have been the subject of a value-for-money review.
The McCarthy Report of the Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure proposed merging some of these schools and eliminating 300 teaching posts to achieve savings of €18 million.
The Minister’s comments today will be welcomed by the INTO, which has opposed the proposal to close schools with less than 50 pupils. The union has said the proposal made no economic sense and had put small schools under needless pressure.
Mr Quinn is expected to receive a warm welcome from delegates today; the INTO was the first teaching union to endorse the Croke Park deal. Much interest will focus on the reception the Minister receives from the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland in Cork tomorrow and the Teachers’ Union of Ireland in Tralee on Wednesday. Both rejected Croke Park before endorsing it in a reballot.
For both the volte face came after the department made threats that surplus teachers and third-level staff could be made redundant.
The Croke Park deal obliges teachers to work an extra hour per week and deliver other productivity in return for no pay cuts and no forced redundancies until 2014. Anger about it still simmers among some ASTI and TUI members. Mr Quinn, who has said “Ireland is in receivership”, has questioned whether the 90,000 people working in education appreciate the gravity of the economic crisis. INTO president Jim Higgins will raise the small schools issue at the conference. The union has termed as relatively small the projected €18 million saving from closing small schools.
