Minister Foley announces two-year extension of small schools’ project to support sustainability of small schools in rural Ireland

*Minister Foley audio clip attached*

Minister for Education Norma Foley has announced that the small schools’ project supporting the sustainability of small rural schools is being extended for a further two years.

Small schools are defined as schools with four mainstream teachers or fewer. There are approximately 1,294 small schools (2022/2023 figures), accounting for 42 per cent of all primary schools and 13.3 per cent of total enrolments of all primary school pupils.

The innovative small schools’ action research project, which was first set up in 2021, has brought small schools together in local clusters, enabling them to collaborate and identify common challenges and trial innovative solutions.

The project consists of six clusters of small schools, two in Galway and one each in Donegal, Kerry, Wicklow and Waterford, consisting of between three and five schools per cluster. The clusters are supported by part-time local coordinators sponsored by the education partners, working with a national coordinator under the guidance of the steering group.

Minister Foley said:

Some examples of outcomes to date in the action research project include:

• small schools holding joint sports days, musical performances and competitions such as chess, football and so forth
• small schools working together to develop school policies jointly such as health and safety policy and curricular policies
• teachers in small schools working collaboratively to share their expertise in a particular subject or topic
• teaching principals in schools get one release day per week from the classroom to give them the opportunity to do necessary administrative work. Under the small schools project, school principals were allowed to combine the hours from their release day with the special teacher education hours allocated to their school. This provided an opportunity for small schools with enough hours to create a new full time teaching post. It is easier for schools to recruit one teacher, rather than having to recruit two separately. This option has now been rolled out nationally to all schools
• Oide, the department’s professional learning support service for teachers and school leaders, is delivering continuous professional development training in areas such as Digital Technologies, Leadership, Literacy and Gaeilge to small schools on a trialed cluster basis. This has provided high quality, innovative and responsive professional learning and has allowed Oide personnel to date to reach more small schools in a shorter space of time with increased professional collaboration and productive discourse for these schools

The feedback to date from schools includes experiencing a greater sense of collegiality and well-being along with the project being a safe place for collaboration and schools feeling less isolated.

Funding will continue in phase two of the project and schools will not be asked to make a financial contribution to take part. Participating schools have been notified of the two-year extension of the project.

This project is overseen by a steering group of school management bodies and teachers’ unions with the Department for Education, as part of the programme of work of the Primary Education Forum (PEF). The PEF comprises all primary education partners, including parent representatives, working collaboratively with the Department of Education.

The Department of Education has carried out a procurement process for an independent review of phase one of the project and that review is currently taking place. The purpose of this review will include the identification of potential areas for sustainable development, including an analysis of scalability of actions undertaken. At the end of phase two, a further final evaluation will take place.

The project is overseen and supported by a steering group including representatives of the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) Irish Primary Principals’ Network (IPPN) The General Synod Board of Education of the Church of Ireland (COI) Catholic Primary Schools Management Association (CPSMA), Gaeloideachas and the department.

Small schools are defined for statistical purposes as schools with four mainstream teachers or fewer. Schools meeting this definition constitute 43 per cent of all primary schools – approximately 1,347 individual schools (2021/2022 figures) and their enrolment figures account for 14 per cent of total enrolments of all primary schools.

Activities in phase two of the project will be driven by the participating schools, working together with their cluster coordinators. The independent review of phase one of the project will also offer an important analysis of progress in phase one, and the potential scalability of ideas currently in trial. During phase two, all existing mainstream staffing levels will be secured; for example, if enrolment levels fall, mainstream teaching post numbers in the schools involved will not be reduced.