Call for longer-term view of staffing in small schools

Primary teachers have called for longer-term thinking on staffing for small schools after it emerged the Department of Education is supporting the opening of a Dublin primary school with just one pupil.

The Irish Examiner revealed yesterday just one girl was enrolled when Scoil Aoife opened in Tallaght this week under the management of Dublin and Dun Laoghaire Education and Training Board.

The department said on Wednesday that it is not unusual for new schools to grow from low numbers in the beginning, and that the school’s enrolment is expected to grow in the coming weeks.

The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation acknowledged this can be the case, saying it is important to look at enrolment figures for start-up schools over a reasonable period and not just on a single day. But, it said, similar arguments can be made for retaining small but long-established schools in rural Ireland.

Almost 40 small schools have lost a teacher this year due to increases in the minimum pupil numbers needed for maintaining staffing levels, in the third phase of changes first announced in the department’s budget for 2012.

“Projections of enrolment need to be looked at over time in these schools and not on the basis of one year’s enrolment alone,” an INTO spokesman said.

He said year-on-year changes introduced by previous education minister Ruairi Quinn have led to annual enrolment figures being seen as target figures to be met each year, but those targets move further away each year.

“These schools face the loss of a teacher where enrolment dips below a certain figure in any one year. A longer-term perspective would be more helpful.”

Dublin and Dun Laoghaire ETB is understood to be reviewing enrolment at Scoil Aoife late next week, and will be in discussions with the department over the school’s short-term and long-term position. It is currently operating from a youth and community centre in the Brookfield area, with another adult required to be in the class with the pupil and teaching principal for normal child protection reasons.

The department said that evidence of demand for 22 junior infants in their first year of operation when Co Dublin Vocational Education Committee (which merged last year with Dun Laoghaire) applied for patronage of a new school in this area in 2011.

The ETB opened another multi-denominational community national school just over a mile away in Citywest two years ago, while a multi-denominational Educate Together also opened in the same area. Both have enrolled two junior infants classes each since then.