Children should not pay for bankers’ debts

THE Irish education system is limping from crisis to crisis.

Overcrowded classrooms in prefab units unfit for purpose. Children with special needs denied support, third-level education fast becoming unattainable for many. Now the Government’s ‘value-for-money audit’ threatens the survival of small rural schools.

This is a false economy. Finland was in a similar economic situation to Ireland in the 1990s. Rather than react with short-term panic measures, they invested in education as a tool for recovery.

Finland quickly rebuilt their economy and their country thanks largely to generous spending on education, which accounts for 7% of GDP.

We spend less that 5% of GDP on education. Yet under the Small Primary Schools Value For Money Review, schools with less than 50 pupils face the threat of closure and amalgamation with larger schools as part of a plan to save €20m — €80,000 per school amalgamated.

€80,000 for what? Higher transport charges; children spending longer on the school bus morning and evening; those from closed smaller schools sent to, in many cases, already overcrowded classes in schools requiring new investment.

Closing small schools and cutting resources will have one certain outcome — children’s quality of education will suffer.

Our children won’t be top of the smart economy or leaders in literacy and numeracy.

We will, once more, raise our young like cattle for export.

This Government act as if Ireland amounts to nothing more than an economy. They forget we are a rural country, almost half our population being rural dwellers. 20% of all our primary schools have fewer than 50 students — 37 of those being in west Cork.

These small schools are at the heart of our communities. They are the bedrock of our future and our culture. Yet the heart of rural Ireland is being ripped out by short-sighted ‘value-for-money’ policies, which don’t make long-term economic sense.

Creameries, post-offices, hospitals, rural transport and Garda stations have all disappeared. Punishing our children to pay the debts of bankers is stooping to a new low.

Short-sightedness, driven by greed, destroyed our economy in just 10 years. The same lack of vision, driven by panic, threatens our whole society for decades to come. Our children are our future. Education is our tool for economic recovery.

It is time we finally honour the words of our Proclamation, and ‘Cherish all the Children of the Nation equally’.

Sam Simpson

West Cork Sinn Féin