RURAL SCHOOLS

29 January 2008

Commenting on the threat to rural schools, Steve Sinnott, General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, Europe’s largest teaching union said:

“Jim Knight is, of course, right to remind local authorities they can’t just cut a swathe through their rural schools. School closures are devastating to their communities whether rural or urban.

“But the Government needs to urgently address the underlying pressure on local authorities of falling pupil rolls. Falling rolls should not be a threat to schools but an opportunity to increase the range of the curriculum, reduce class sizes and increase individual tuition.

“It is essential that the Government develops a strategy for responding to falling rolls such that small schools do not face piecemeal and corrosive attrition.

“I urge the Government to set a target date to raise state school funding to private school funding levels. This objective, outlined by the Prime Minister, would give authorities with small schools the necessary resources to maintain them and adopt imaginative solutions which would keep those schools open”.