Primary schools are struggling to stay afloat, hears national principals' conference

 Dr Patricia Mannix-McNamara, University of Limerick, IPPN CEO Páiric Clerkin, and IPPN president Louise Tobin at the donference in the Gleneagle Hotel, Killarney. Picture: Don MacMonagle

Primary schools may need an unprecedented financial bailout as soon as January, with many schools now projecting that they will “struggle to keep the lights on after Christmas”, principals have warned.

Speaking at the Irish Primary Principals' Network's (IPPN) annual conference at the INEC Killarney, Carlow principal Simon Lewis said that urgent action is now needed to plug the funding gaps suffered in many schools.

“Something has to be done,” Mr Lewis said. “Or it could be the first time that mainstream primary schools will be asking for a bailout from the Government.

“Schools have said that they have no idea how they're going to survive after Christmas.

“I've never seen it as bad as now.” 

Inflation has been fuelling the problem, with escalating energy bills and the cost of living crisis eating into school budgets which he said have not kept pace with price increases.

Cuts to funding like the covid cleaning grant, which was not resumed this school year, and the sudden dropping of the €50m ICT grant have also hurt, he said.

A recent survey found that some 70% of primary schools said they did not know if they'd be financially viable after Christmas, he said.

A school in Donegal has already had to take a €30,000 loan from the local parish to cover a funding gap after it paid for books, uniforms, and other costs when a new direct provision centre opened in the area and the school suddenly had 52 new pupils.

Mr Lewis also works with the National Principals Forum, a lobby group, which has canvassed principals on the challenges facing schools. He said primary concerns are in staffing and bills, not in 

“The biggest issues facing principals in the country are finance, staff shortages and paperwork. We know that, because we've asked them only last week after the smartphone ban was announced.

“Smartphones have been effectively banned in primary schools anyway for years."

The new free school meals and free school books schemes are also policies that sound appealing to parents and voters but appear to be about political point scoring rather than funding what is needed by schools on the ground, he said.

So parents may be getting free school books but schools will have to tell them that we can’t afford to keep the lights on in class.

Liz Scanlon of Scoil Naomh Fionán in Nohoval, Co Cork, has already had to let cleaning staff go when the Government suddenly cut the Covid cleaning grant this year.

“We’re trying to keep schools open," Íde Ní Dhubháin of Gaelscoil Mhachan in Mahon, Cork said.

"We’re trying to keep children in schools and we’re trying to keep teachers in schools because there are no subs [substitute teachers] when someone’s out sick. The cleaning grant helps with that. Covid is still here.” 

No fiscal autonomy

Schools are not given proper autonomy over their budget and to allocate resources where they’re needed, Ann-Marie Moylan, another Cork-based school principal said.

A school may not need free school meals but it may desperately need ICT, but it has no freedom to spend money allocated for one area where it does not need it and redirect it to an area starved of necessary investment, Olwen Anderson of St Luke’s primary school in Douglas, Cork, said.

“The costs of everything is going up but the money coming in has not changed," she said.

And what money is available is poorly communicated by government about when it will arrive and whether it will ever arrive again, making it impossible for schools to budget, Michéal Rea of Little Island National School said.

Money is so tight that he now turns on the heater for one hour before turning it off, rather than setting it on a timer, and many principals have had to ask children to wear more layers in class to keep warm as they cannot afford the heating bills.

He has received one €2,500 cost-of-living payment for his school so far, but the school’s cleaning bill alone is €2,000 per month. Although the €2,500 is one third of the cost-of-living payment his school is entitled to, there is no indication of when the next payment will come.

“The bottom line is there is no communication," he said.  

Diarmuid Hennessy of Scoil Mhuire na Grást in Belgooly, Co Cork said that payments to schools are now too controlled, piecemeal and insufficient to fund many schools' basic running costs.