Sir, – Seán Cottrell (Opinion, December 29th), raises some interesting points about the management of small national schools and particularly their social context in today’s society. He is right when he asserts that closure will have minimal impact on expenditure savings for Government but will have significant impact on the socio-economics of many rural towns and villages.
However, he proposes that we explore an alternative management solution and suggests school clusters or a federal type solution. I suggest such a model that already exists – namely that utilised by the VECs, which manage large and small second-level schools throughout the State and are now developing and establishing a new model of national school, the community national school.
Now that the Government has determined that these statutory bodies amalgamate into 16 Local Education and Training Boards, (LETBs), surely these new statutory bodies could be charged with the task of managing those small rural national schools that are in danger of closure. By managing I do not mean controlling, but rather providing the management support services that these schools require and leaving the delivery of the educational experience to the teachers employed in these schools.
The existing VECs already provide various support services to many national schools, ranging from Information Communications Technology (ICT) support and procurement, installing energy-saving solutions, to providing HR support to boards of managements. These supports have emerged as a result of “lateral” thinking by the VECs involved, and feedback suggests that the national schools which have engaged are delighted with the outcomes. Likewise LETBs which have developed centralised procurement frameworks for ICT, energy and consumables, resulting in significant savings to the sector, could, with some “lateral” strategies, deliver these savings to the national schools.
If the view, as outlined by Mr Cottrell, is that the closure of these schools will have a negative impact on the communities affected, then I suggest that there are viable solutions that should be considered. Maybe the time has come for the LETBs to go back to their roots, when they delivered courses to rural communities that met the needs of the communities at the time.
With the establishment of the LETBs as the proposed deliverers of education and training courses under SOLAS, should these small rural schools not also be utilised as the locations for these courses outside of school hours? This would ensure that local communities have local access to education and training programmes, and the local national school has added functionality.
These schools are community assets and can have tremendous potential as a key resource in tackling the country’s economic difficulties. In short, we need to view the small rural school as a real asset and not a liability. – Yours, etc,