Small rural schools are the heartbeat of the community, they must be saved [IrishTimes]
- Published: 29 March 2011
OPINION: The Government’s value-for-money audit is threatening the survival of small rural schools – but to close them would be a false economy, writes JOHN McKENNA
OUR FINANCIAL predicament in today’s Ireland is so parlous and so unpredictable that none of us can truthfully say: “We have been here before”. But other countries can say that they have been in pretty much the same mess that we find ourselves in.
We need to look at how they dug themselves out of the hole, corrected their finances and, as regards the seed bed of primary education, made sure that they were producing bright, well-educated children to help with the recovery of the economy and the recovery of the country.
Finland is one country which has been in a similar situation as Ireland is in today. In the early 1990s Finland’s economy was in tatters. Their unemployment rate was higher than ours, and their GDP plummeted.
So, what did they do? They increased spending on education and they clambered quickly out of recession, they rebuilt their economy, and their country.
Today, Finnish schoolchildren are top of European league tables in numeracy and literacy, thanks to generous spending on education, which accounts for
7 per cent of GDP. We spend less that 5 per cent of GDP on education. And the Government wants to cut back on even this low rate.
That is what is being proposed via the Small Primary Schools Value For Money Review. Primary schools with less than 50 pupils are being examined as part of a plan to save €20 million.
If small primary schools are forced to close, amalgamate and cut resources, you can be assured of one thing: children’s quality of education will suffer.
Full Story: www.irishtimes.com
