The number of children enrolling in primary and secondary schools will continue to be far below the number they were built to cater for. This is despite an expected rise in population, according to Prof Patrick Clancy of UCD.
Savings to the education system from the relatively low enrolments should be used to make better provision for primary schools, he argues in a new book.
However, schools will have to close or amalgamate if the best use is to be made of the money available, he writes in a chapter on education policy in Contemporary Irish Social Policy, published by University College Dublin Press.
Prof Clancy said last week that in 1980 (when almost all today's primary schools were already in operation) 74,000 babies were born in the Republic. That fell to 48,000 annually in the early 1990s and has since risen to about 53,000. Migration into the State would add about 5,000 children a year to this figure.
However, even with these factors, the number of future schoolchildren added to the population each year would still be far below the annual figures for the 1970s. This meant savings in Exchequer spending on education and this money should be used for the benefit of the primary sector.
Spending on primary schools has been relatively low, according to Prof Clancy, who is associate professor of sociology and dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Sociology at UCD. In 1994, he writes, the State spent about the same amount per third-level student as the average OECD country. Spending on second-level education was 78 per cent of the OECD average while spending on primary education was lowest at 63 per cent.
However, he says improving provision for the primary sector is not a straightforward process.
"It will involve closures and amalgamations to achieve the optimum use of resources. An additional difficulty arises because of a growing demand for a wider choice of schools. Thus, while the national need is for fewer schools, there is an increasing demand for gaelscoileanna and multi-denominational schools."
Change would also come about through the decline in the number of religious in education.
At the end of the 1960s, members of religious orders accounted for 2,300 secondary-school teachers, a third of the total. By the middle of this decade, their number had fallen to 753, representing fewer than 6 per cent of teachers. Of those still teaching in secondary schools, 40 per cent would retire during the next decade.
Apart from being unable to provide teachers, he writes, religious congregations have acknowledged that it will be increasingly difficult for them to find enough members to discharge their responsibilities as trustees of schools.
Padraig O'Morain can be contacted at pomorain@irish-times.ie