March 31, 2025 • 35 mins
In this episode, I explore the issue of underfunding in Irish primary schools, using the example of Sacred Heart Junior National School in Killinarden, Dublin, which announced it would operate remotely due to financial constraints. I delve into the history and structure of funding for primary schools, highlighting how the Department of Education's capitation grants have not kept pace with rising costs, such as electricity, gas, and wages. As usual I critique the patronage system and propose that the Department of Education should be directly responsible for the financial management of schools to address these ongoing challenges.
All shownotes and data available on: https://simonmlewis.medium.com/a-school-may-have-to-close-due-to-lack-of-funding-how-has-it-come-to-this-9392b568977b
Get my newsletter every fortnight to your inbox on: https://www.anseo.net/subscribe
- 00:43 Case Study: Sacred Heart Junior National School
- 03:01 Funding Challenges in Irish Primary Schools
- 03:48 Detailed Analysis of School Funding
- 06:31 Impact of Rising Costs on Schools
- 09:29 Historical Context and Comparisons
- 27:51 Proposed Solutions and Conclusion
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello.
Hello.
You are very welcome to If I werethe Minister for Education, a regular
podcast where I delve into the worldof the Irish Primary Education System
and let you know what I would do ifI were the Minister for education.
This is Simon Lewis.
If you are a fan of this podcastor you'd like to hear more, you can
(00:22):
subscribe to my fortnightly newsletter,which goes through all the news about
Irish primary education, and alsogives you some tips for your classroom.
You can go to on shop.net/subscribe,
and you will be first to getthe podcast into your folder.
Other than that, you can subscribe onyour favorite podcasting system as well.
(00:43):
This week I want to talk about aschool, and specifically the school
is the Sacred Heart Junior NationalSchool in Ardin, in Tala, in Dublin.
And I.
They wrote to families in March to letthem know that due to a serious lack
of funding, they would be forced tooperate remotely from the 1st of April.
(01:07):
This was because of massive underfundingfor many years due to cuts from the
Department of Education, I quote, andthey said they'd be no longer to be
able to pay the basic bills unless itreceived additional money in this episode.
I'm going to ask a very simple question.
How did it come to this?
(01:31):
Hello.
You're very welcome to If Iwere the Minister for Education.
It's Simon here, and I was fascinatedto hear about the Sacred Heart
Junior National School in Ardin.
Not just because of the topic in question.
It's a school.
It's not the school Istarted my career in.
It's the school next door to theschool I started my career in.
(01:53):
But what I was most interested.
That was how, this is not the firstprimary school by any stretch of the
imagination to be struggling with funding.
It's probably just the first schoolwho've gone very public or certainly
public enough that the media took heed.
There were a number of specialschools a number of years ago that
some people might remember whowere unable to pay their insurance
(02:18):
bills, their insurance, quadrupledlike cept, I think in some cases.
And they needed emergencyfunding to keep going.
But also there was a very smallstory on Highland Radio where a
principle said that they had to go.
To their local church toborrow 30,000 euro to pay the
(02:41):
bills and then pay that back.
At some point I think when the capitationgrant came through, I find that story
absolutely wild considering that thechurch owns that building in the first
place and the school had to borrow.
From the people that own thebuilding and pay it back.
But that is not the pointof this particular episode.
(03:01):
This particular episode is about thelack of school funding and really.
A lot of people do think andpossibly because the Department
of Education say it, is thatthey fully fund primary schools.
So I thought I would take a diveinto the figures because many people
know that during the recession,the capitation grant, which is the
(03:25):
main money that is used for bicycleschools to pay their bills, that
was cut from 200 euro per pupil.
Per per pupil per year to, Ithink it went down to as far
as 170 euro per pupil per year.
And it's just taken about almost a decade,more than a decade, I think, for it to
(03:45):
get back to 200 euro per pupil per day.
But in the meantime, prices ofeverything have gone up, I think
the best place to start really is toexplain how primary schools are funded.
I think it's probably the best placeto start because as I said people
believe that primary schools are fullyfunded by the Department of Education.
(04:06):
So I think when people say thatschools are fully funded by
the Department of Education, Iwonder what they mean by that.
And I think what most people think.
That the Department ofEducation pay for everything.
Now, some people also think the patronbodies pay some money into schools,
but that's absolutely not true.
The only official money that comesinto schools is from the Department
(04:31):
of Education and the C-P-S-M-A, whichis a Catholic primary management.
Body they claimed that works at about57% of what schools actually need to
survive, to pay all of their bills.
And I'm not sure what that figure istoday that stat was is was somewhere
from in the middle of the 2010s.
But the only other fundingthat a school gets is from.
(04:54):
Fundraising and the fundraising cancome from parents and the odd time
they might win a competition thatgives money or maybe company sponsors
something or gives some money to schools,although that's very rare indeed.
And I don't think I.
I don't think it happens really at all.
Most companies don'tgive money to schools.
I think they might give old computersat best and maybe they might do some
(05:18):
outreach programs where a group of peoplewill come and paint a classroom or help
in a garden or something like that, ormaybe give classes in something or other.
But essentially, when it comes downto it, primary schools are officially
only funded through fundraising and.
The Department of Education grants andthe grants are the capitation grant,
(05:38):
which I'm going to talk about now becausethe capitation grant is the main grant
that's used to pay for every single bill,every single resource, almost everything.
So for example, schools don'tget any extra money to pay
for a cleaner of a school.
A cleaner is not something that theDepartment of Education pay for.
Technically.
They pay for a secretary and a cleaner,and up until 2024, that was also just
(06:04):
a single grant, which didn't cover thecost of a secretary or a caretaker.
It was some money towards it.
So whatever was spare went wastaken from the capitation grant.
Currently in most, in the vast majorityof schools, secretaries are now paid by
the Department of Education, but oftenthere is no money left for a caretaker
(06:24):
or very little, even in very big schools.
So the capitation granthas to suck up that money.
I.
Just to put some numbers on this,from about 2020 to about 2023,
which is recently enough, thisequated to 183 euro per pupil.
So a 100 pupil schools entire budgetfor all of their bills and some of
(06:47):
their some of their costs for employees.
So a cleaner and a caretaker or part ofthat would've been 18,300 euro for a year.
That's to pay all.
The bills 18,300 Euro.
It's not a lot of money at all, andthe Department of Education don't care.
Neither do your patron bodyfor that matter, because they
(07:08):
don't pay for the bills either.
In case you were wondering as well, itisn't the only money that comes into
schools, so I think it's only fairto say what the money is for those.
You get a grant for standardized testbooklets every year, which basically
pays for standardized test booklets.
There's not much, if anymoney spare from that.
The wages of the school secretary arenow paid directly by the Department of
(07:31):
Education that does there's no extrasthere and it is a very, as I said, there's
a very partial payment for any school.
Lucky to have a.
A character in somecases, teachers and SNAs.
And more recently, as I said,most secretaries are paid directly
by the Department of Education,so these are things that the
Department of Education pay for.
Another thing that's fairly recent isthe school book grant, but that also
(07:54):
only partially pays for the school books.
Only partially.
Remember, and this was cut after a oneyear, the first year it came out in 2023.
It was 96 Euro per Child,which sounds like a lot.
For school books, but just rememberyour average maths book costs 26 euro.
That's a quarter of the entire budget.
(08:14):
Your average religion book, bythe way, if you're in a Catholic
school, costs about 20 euro.
So about about a fifth of the entire cost.
So you can see very quickly how 96euro didn't cover everything, and the
following year it was cut back to 80 euro.
Which again doesn't cover all costs.
Some schools that fall underdebt, that's the disa disadvantage
(08:35):
disadvantaged school, get an extra grant.
But this is only to be usedto tackle disadvantage.
And finally, there are some very smallgrants available for ICT, which are
not guaranteed, and repairs minorworks as they're called every year.
And neither of those are evera hundred percent guaranteed.
Done.
Most years they've gottenthe ICT grant just to.
(08:58):
Let you know what it is, wouldhardly buy you three laptops
in an average size school.
So again the Department of Educationwill say they fund these things.
They only partiallyfund anything in effect.
A 100 pupil school is only getting a.
18 and a half Euro foreverything else that they need.
(09:18):
And people wonder why schools seem tobe constantly fundraising and asking
for voluntary contributions with aheavy emphasis on the word voluntary.
Just to give some context by coincidenceas I said, I worked in the school
directly beside the Sacred Heart juniorNational School from 2001 to 2002.
(09:40):
I was there for a year before I wentto get qualified, funnily enough.
And again, this has nothingto do with this episode.
When I got my job in 2001, there wasalso a massive teacher shortage, and this
was before the Teaching Council exists.
So I had no trouble getting a job.
But now that the teachingCouncil exists, there's no way
unqualified teachers get jobs.
(10:01):
Oh, wait they are.
There were 9,000 unqualified teachershired in primary schools in 2023 to 2024.
Anyway, back to our funding.
In 2001 to 2002, de capitation grant wasincredibly poultry at 105 euro per pupil.
And that represented a 10euro increase from 2002, 2003.
(10:25):
And in terms of inflation,just to give that, because in
2001 you could say 105 Euro.
Oh my gosh.
How can you now it's double that.
But if you look at the, inflation.
So basically in 2001, 105 Euro is roughlythe equivalent of 167 Euro roughly.
And yes, that's obviously still very low.
And, but costs were low as well.
And I don't know relatively whatwe were, know what that meant.
(10:48):
And if we were look at a, if we lookedat a graph of capitation grants as well
as their value adjusted for inflationbased on, see, I'm using the CSO figures
and I have a link to what I'm doing.
In the show notes, we can seethat this year's allocation is
still nowhere near where we were.
Even next year's allocation whichis coming up soon is, which is a 24
(11:09):
Euro increase, still doesn't comeclose to where we were in the past.
I have this lovely graph on which I'llshare in the show notes, which shows
the capitation grant and how it'sadjusted and adjusting it for inflation.
We peaked at the in 2010 whenit came to the capitation
grant and in 2025 we are still.
(11:29):
Below that capitation grant andin 2010, the capitation grant.
Probably wasn't really enough.
Maybe it was, but costs were somuch lower in 2010, remember we
were in the depths of a recession.
Nobody had any money, andprices were all going down.
And we had our capitation grantat its highest level ever.
(11:49):
And I can't, it was just abouttwo, it was 200 euro per child per
year and adjusting for inflation.
That worked out at aboutnearly 250 euro per child.
I think it's probably easierto see this on a graph.
But for those of you who are listening,we are quite a distance away from where
we were in 2000, between 2008 to 2011,I think where things peaked and then
(12:13):
went down we're roughly where we wereduring the recession, I think, and
again, when costs were much lower, but.
I think the figures alone that showup until the recession, there was a
good progress in trying to reach alevel of sustainability for schools
in terms of finances back in 2001.
(12:35):
Even adjusting for for inflation,we were still very low in terms of
what we were doing to fund schools.
And we saw basically during the recession,it took a huge dip and we're still.
We're still catching up to there.
We're still not there, although weare making a little bit of progress.
We're still in and aroundrecessionary times.
(12:56):
However, the stats I felt when I meanit's very easy for me to do that.
I just felt those stats were probablya little bit meaningless be if we
don't compare them to how the moneyis supposed to be broken down and.
I didn't expect to get an answer to thequestion I asked which was I asked some
schools my I couldn't use my school as theto do this because my school has been, was
(13:21):
a developing school from 2008 till 2023.
So my bills, I.
Weren't very static.
So I couldn't really use 'em.
So I asked any schools out there whohad a pretty static enrollment from 2001
or any time between 2001 and 2023 ifthey were happy to send me, the cost of
heating, lighting, insurance, and so on.
(13:42):
But I didn't get any replies, I hadto try and find somewhere where I
could find examples of bills overthe last number of years, and I
found them, to be honest with you.
I found two sets of bills that two setsof bills that people have in businesses
(14:04):
over the last 20 odd years, and thatwas your electricity and your gas.
If there's data on averagebills or per kilowatt hour
from the official SEAI website.
And what the SESE and again I'm goingto show you if you're, if you obviously
can't see this, so I'll try anddescribe it, but you can go to the show.
(14:25):
It's to see it.
I've put it into a graph how muchthe commercial electricity price per
kilowatt hour was from 2007 to 2024.
And if you look at that graphit basically in 2007 this is
just before the the recession.
It worked, it was around 12.
Point seven one, something, around,around that per cent, I think.
(14:49):
And it was going up a little bit, thenthe recession came along and it gradually
it teetered around the same price allthe way until 20 22, 20 21, really?
And then it just shot up.
It's over double what it was in 2022.
In the space of two years,electricity prices, commercial
(15:12):
electricity prices have doubled.
They're starting to go down a little bit,but they're still double where they were.
And just taking that data alone, we cancompare to see how electricity costs
per unit compared to the capitationgrant, because you would expect that.
Electricity prices.
(15:33):
So every school pays an electricity bill.
You would expect the capitation grant tochange in the same way as the electricity
bills would, because generally that'sprobably not a bad way of doing things.
And however, to analyze the impactthis had with the capitation grant.
We have to make an assumption becausewe, I needed to make a baseline.
(15:54):
I didn't have a baseline, really.
Sorry.
This is maybe getting a little bit oftechnical and I'm really sorry about it.
You can ignore the next minute or so asI'm explaining the maths around this.
I was just going to, I have to makean assumption because there's no way,
other way of doing it, and it's nota, it's not an important assumption.
It doesn't mess things up.
If I, it does, it's very arbitrary.
I could, and it's essentiallyhow, what percentage of bills
(16:15):
did electricity account for?
I.
That's what I need to ask, and I'mjust going to arbitrarily pick 10%.
So 10% of our bills, it could havebeen 5%, it could have been 20%.
I'm just gonna say 10% of our capitationgrounds was going to be electricity.
And that, and let's say thatis always going to be the case.
' cause the interesting part will behow that increases and decreases based
(16:37):
on the capitation grant and hopefullywhy we're seeing how schools are
having these massive financial issues.
Even me saying that electricity priceshave doubled in the last two or three
years, should be enough to explain why.
Because you won't be surprised that mostother bills have gone up significantly
in the last two to three years.
For the mathematicians and statisticiansout there who are wanting me to
(16:58):
prove it, here is the explanationin the geekiest language you can
possibly ever hear and you can skip.
I would say the next minute no,let's say I'll do it in 30 seconds.
So here's how we calculate.
This is how I calculated it.
God, this is gonna be so boring.
I'm so sorry from the assumption.
Of 10%.
In 2007, we calculated the averageelectricity consumption per
(17:20):
pupil by dividing 10% of the 2007grand by the 2007 electricity
cut per cost per kilowatt hour.
This gives us a constant kilowatthour value that represents
a per pupil consumption.
For subsequent years, we multipliedthis constant consumption by
that year's cost per creative.
This is so boring.
Oh my gosh.
(17:41):
Chachi PT did that, by the way.
I didn't do it.
I am a bit of a geek,but I'm not that geeky.
Anyway, finally, we divided thiscost by the capitation grant for that
year and multiplied by a hundred toexpress it as percentage of the grant.
Anyway, more importantly than that geekylanguage, here is the result, and again, I
have a lovely graph in the show notes foryou to see, but essentially, if you can't
(18:02):
see it, what you will notice is that.
The so basically if we assume in 2007your electricity bill was 10% based on the
capitation grant in 2008 your electricitywent up to about 11% of your cost.
But then in 2009, 2010, 2011, allthe way to 2012 your electricity
(18:26):
bill was less than that.
In fact it went down 2010 whenwe had the most capitation.
It was around seven, or the equivalentwas about 7% of your electric,
of your bills was on electricity.
So your costs were way down.
It went above 10% to get from 2013to 2015, teetered around the 10%
(18:46):
mark until 2018 again went down.
And then in 2021 it justshot up to about 13%.
And by 2022.
Your bills had doubled so much thatover 20% of your bills were electricity.
If we base 10% on in 2007.
(19:08):
So the cost of electricityhas doubled in 2024.
It's gone down a little tiny bit to about15%, but we're still saying that your
bi your electricity bills effectivelyare 50% more than they would've
been in 2007, relatively speaking.
And as we can clearly see.
Even though things were fairly stablefrom 2007, 2020, things shot up.
(19:32):
I checked out gas as well,just just for a comparison.
And it's a very similar situation.
Again, it, again, it o over doubled.
In fact, gas went up from 10%of your co total costs to 22%.
So like more than doubled andit's still in a shocking position.
It's, I would love it.
If I could find other official datato be honest with you, because.
(19:56):
I'd love to find a insurance.
Insurance was the one I was really lookingfor because I know anecdotally that
insurance costs have doubled and maybeReed and probably even more in most cases.
I definitely remember my insurance goingup one year from, I think it was about
6,000 euro to over 14,000 euro in a year.
I just couldn't believe it, it was mad.
(20:17):
And I think a lot of schools are in thatsituation, and somehow they had to suck
this up and continue to suck this up.
I don't know about, I'd say theonly thing that's relatively
stable are your phone bills.
I don't think I've noticedthem going up particularly.
In the last couple of decades,but wages have gone up as well.
And I'll look at that in a minutebecause there's another piece
of data I need to go about.
(20:39):
But if you are interested inlooking at other official, it's
unofficial data in this case.
So this is crowd sourced data, whichI was going to include, but I thought
I'd just stick to the official data.
There's a website called mBio.
N-U-M-B-E-O and I thinkyou can register for free.
And it gives you some good, agood guideline on a number of
items over the last 15 years.
(21:00):
For example, it gives the cost of anapp, let's say in the last 15 to 20 years
if the cost of renting a three bedroomapartment in Dublin for the last 15 years.
And I think they source their datafrom people, a number of, from
people and also official figures.
So it's well worth looking at tomaybe even do some other comparisons.
I just felt.
(21:21):
People would accuse me of massagingthe figures if I didn't use official
data or just picking things to suitmy agenda as as people like me can
often be accused of, but however, onelectricity and gas prices zone, I think
it's pretty clear what's happening.
Prices of things I.
Have gone up massively, and it's nosurprise to me whatsoever that this
school can't afford to pay their billsbecause bills have gone up so much, and
(21:45):
I don't think they're alone in this.
They're just the first onesreally to go so publicly about it.
But the evidence suggests that.
As I said, insurance costshave gone up considerably.
In the last two and a half decades.
I found an article from 2004.
Now this is 2004.
So we're not talking about 2024,2004, over 20 years ago that insurance
(22:06):
costs were crippling primary schools.
And the minister for the time thereno Dempsey was told about it that they
are running up to six times higher.
That then the minister himself saidit's well worth looking at that article.
It's in the Irish Examiner from 2004.
And then in 2019, as I said,several special schools had
(22:29):
to seek emergency funding.
And again, I have to, I, I puta link to that article there.
15 special needs schools report,difficulty meeting insurance premiums.
And again, I don't thinkthey were alone Really.
Special schools obviously were hitmuch more than mainstream schools
because again, there's, there's somuch more that can go wrong in terms
of insurance cases in special schoolsdue to the nature of their work.
(22:51):
One school's insurance in the article,I feel is need to, I need to say this
white rose from 3000 euro to over 26.
Thousand Euro from 2017 to 2019.
I wrote to an insurance company to askfor some details regarding insurance
costs, but I was told back then that theinformation would not be forthcoming.
(23:12):
I was doing it for adifferent reason at the time.
I was trying to compare insurancepremiums between patron bodies.
And given that Allianz at the time is,it was around when the Pope visited.
Art at Dublin at the time, and Iwas really curious as to why Allianz
were sponsoring the event andwhere was the link between Allianz
(23:33):
and the churches and insurance.
And of course as some people know,Allianz used to be church in general.
They are responsible, Allianzare responsible, I think for all,
if not all, most church buildinginsurances and church buildings.
The question I asked was, did.
Church run schools have lower insurancethan non-church run schools, and
they would not tell me which suffice.
(23:55):
I suppose I would tell you that of course,that is the case, I don't think by much.
But anyway, again, not the point.
So I decided I'd look again.
At some other data that is absolutely,definitely that exists out there.
And it was wages and I wanted tolook at cleaning staff because
that's something that has tocome out of the capitation grant.
(24:19):
And I, what I did was Iwent with minimum wage.
Minimum wage was what I thought would bethe would be the fairest way to look at.
Whether the capitation grant is catchingup with the wages of cleaning staff or
other staff depending on who they are.
And it's interesting compare first ofall, the increase in the capitation
(24:42):
grant compared to the increase inthe wages of someone on minimum wage.
And if, again, sorry, I'm in thesorry I'm on audio here, but you can
look at the show notes to see that.
And I suppose the mostinteresting one for me in a way.
Is that the minimum wage goes upfar more than the capitation grant
(25:04):
goes up when it goes up, and evenwhen the capitation grows down, the
minimum wage can go up significantly.
And I.
Most interestingly, most recently thecapitation grants went up a little
bit for next year, but minimum wagewent up by about what went up hugely.
So I think on average since 2001,there's been a 2% increase in the
(25:24):
capitation grant compared to a9% increase in the minimum wage.
That's over four.
That's four and a half timesmore so that means the schools
have to absorb the extra cost of.
Any ancillary staff that isn'tcovered by the ancillary grants.
So with all this in mind, it's very clearto me and I hope by now to you why this
(25:44):
school, the Sacred Heart Junior NationalSchool in Ton has found themselves in
such financial trouble that they decidedthey would write to parents to say that
they were going to close their doors.
And unless they received the money,because they couldn't pay their bills,
and I would suggest that they aren't theonly school in Ireland in that situation.
(26:08):
At the beginning of the episode, I talked,told you about the school in Donal that
had to borrow money off their own theirown local church who owned their building.
I spoke to you about the insurancecosts for some 15 special schools and.
Every survey after every surveythat is done from the National
Principals Forum is that schoolfunding is one of the biggest issues.
(26:29):
Workload is used to be the single biggestissues for principals from ever since
I began being a principal and being andbeing involved in adv advocacy work.
But in the last.
Five or maybe last three or fouryears, I've noticed that whilst
workload is still terrible and it'sstill unacceptable, it's funding,
school funding has become the numberone issue for primary school leaders.
(26:54):
Special education is there inthe top three, two, just in
case people were interested.
And I suppose what I'm showing younow, really in a way, or I've been
telling you about in this podcast.
It may not be new information to you.
We've always had the anecdotal evidence.
We've always had the we've alwayssuspected that the capitation
(27:14):
grant is nowhere near enough.
And in fact, we've had a numberof studies from the representative
bodies who seem to go into this alittle bit without doing anything
about it about why we have a problem.
And here is just another bitof data to add to the mix.
And I feel.
In my personal view, what I've givenreally is showing how the capitation
(27:38):
grant isn't keeping up with the ratesof inflation, or even with the rates
of increases in all sorts of areas.
Whether that's inflation, whetherthat's just the cost of energy,
whether it's the cost of living, thecost of wages, and things like that.
So what's the solution?
I think you probably won't be surprisedto hear that my solution is rooted.
(27:59):
Patronage.
And it's yet again anothersituation where the patronage
system is causing this issue.
And let me explain, for those of you whoare going no, here he goes again, this is
nothing to do with religion particularly.
This is just to do with thesystem of patron patronage.
(28:20):
Forget religion, take religion out of it.
Just let's pretend for a moment thatevery patron body that we have is
not religious and it's just, it.
They just are different businesses andthey, just bear with me on this one.
Okay.
I.
What, how the system works isthat the patron effectively
is told by the Department ofEducation to manage their schools.
(28:43):
And the patron body gets somevolunteers to do the day-to-day
management of the schools, more orless, which, but in reality is the
principal who does that sort of work.
But the board of management effectivelyis responsible, so the Department
of Education aren't affected.
By the amount of money flowing atschools, they give some money, but they
don't care whether it's enough or not.
In some ways, the patronbody they might care.
(29:08):
It doesn't really directly affect them.
What happens in schools,because the patron body doesn't
have to suck up any of them.
Any of the financial problems of a school,they get their lack of funding as well
from the Department of Education to exist.
They are paid they get grantsfrom the Department of Education.
The only thing I would say, I supposeis that the most schools do pay a fee
(29:30):
to their patron body or managementbody, depending on their patron.
But.
That's the only impact they mighthave is one of their schools might
not be able to afford their bill.
But in, in reality, it's notmaking a huge amount of difference.
So effectively the patron level ofthis isn't particularly important.
(29:52):
And even if they do care, thereisn't very much they can do.
Like a patron body can't shut aschool down just for this, just,
they don't have the power to do that.
They don't have the power to threaten.
The Department of Education thatthey're going to shut a school down.
So in a way, there area dead duck in this.
They don't really do anything.
Their only power really is thehiring and firing of teachers.
(30:15):
Really, that's the onlything they hold over.
A community.
One, they can hire and fire teachersif they don't uphold their ethos and
they can change, they can dissolve aboard of management if they need to.
And I think they can obviouslydivest or reconfigure a school.
I mean that, I'm saying they do nothing,as it sounds like a mon python sketch
at this stage, but that's reallyall they do, but very little of use.
(30:36):
They're just there as a kind ofa buffer between the Department
of Education and Schools.
But if the patron bodies didn't exist,it would mean that the Department
of Education would be responsiblefor the schools in all aspects.
And it's not like thatdoesn't happen in Ireland.
(30:57):
Which is interesting.
Some of you may not remember this,and some of you may not know this,
but there are nine primary schoolsin Ireland whose patron body is
the Department of Education, andI'm not talking about ETBs here.
The ETBs have decided to becomepatron bodies themselves.
There are nine primary schools.
(31:17):
They're called the model schoolswho are whose patron body is
the Minister for Education.
These schools have a history as theyall do, and you can listen back to my
podcast on model schools back, gosh, Irecorded it back before Covid, I'd say.
But just in a nutshell, they receive all,they don't receive a capitation grant.
I don't think they receivean ancillary grant either.
(31:39):
What they do is.
They send their bills directly tothe Minister for Education and the
Minister for Education pays those bills.
So that is very interestingbecause it is a precedence.
It means it is being done, itcan be done, and it's interesting
why it isn't being done.
(32:01):
There is no reason why theDepartment of Education can't.
Be responsible for thefunding of schools and for the
financial management of schools.
And while I know it's not whileI know there's a big difference
between doing it for nine schoolsand doing it for over 3000 schools,
it's not something that's impossible.
(32:22):
It's not something that isn't withintheir I suppose within their remit
or within what they're able to do.
And I think that's the we need to do this.
We need to move.
To a situation where the Departmentof Education are paying the bills,
and you would find very quicklythe deals that would be done,
the things that happen in primaryschools that are absolutely shocking.
(32:44):
For example, primary schools haveto pay that on many things despite
the fact that they're completelygovernment fundings funded.
So that's two, two bits of VAT thatare paid rather than the one vat.
Things like that, stupid stuff thatwe know is happening, for example.
With school books, the Department ofEducation would fund all of the school
books, not just partially pay them.
(33:06):
The insurance company.
I can absolutely guarantee you thatinsurance would change overnight if the
Department of Education were responsiblefor paying for the insurance bills.
Every single decision, every singlething affecting money would change
overnight if the Department of Education.
Basically funded, fullyfunded primary schools.
(33:26):
And I would even suggest it might linger.
It might carry over into some otherareas which I often talk about on this
podcast, I've already mentioned it alittle bit so I won't go there again.
So there's my solution.
How it gets there mean I, I iseffectively back to my normal arguments.
(33:48):
We need to get rid of patron bodies.
I think, I dunno if I can ifyou'll agree with me on that.
I hope it's a compellingenough argument for you.
But in the meantime, we're going tosee more and more schools falling.
I.
Under huge financial pressure as thecost of living goes up and the capitation
(34:10):
grant remains much lower than it needsto be, even relatively speaking, and even
with inflation and all the rest of it.
There's just, I don't I don't thinkthis will be the last school to end up.
Financial difficulty.
I hope you've enjoyed this episode.
If you have, please subscribeto the podcast by going to
(34:32):
your favorite podcasting app.
And clicking subscribe.
And please leave a review if you'd like.
It helps some people find it more easily.
And if you'd like to subscribe to my.
Newsletter, my fortnightly newsletter,which not only tells you when the podcast
is coming out, but also gives a summaryof the last two weeks of the news in
primary education some stuff that youmight have missed and my own thoughts on
(34:53):
it, as well as my other passion, which isICT and education where I am giving free
courses to anyone who wants them on usingai for loads of different teaching uses.
I would really recommend youlook at that and you can.
Get my my newsletter by goingto on shot.net/subscribe.
(35:14):
So that's it for me.
Thank you so much for listening.
All the very, very best.
Bye bye.
Hello.
Hello.
You are very welcome to If I werethe Minister for Education, a regular
podcast where I delve into the worldof the Irish Primary Education System
and let you know what I would do ifI were the Minister for education.
This is Simon Lewis.
If you are a fan of this podcastor you'd like to hear more, you can
(00:22):
subscribe to my fortnightly newsletter,which goes through all the news about
Irish primary education, and alsogives you some tips for your classroom.
You can go to on shop.net/subscribe,
and you will be first to getthe podcast into your folder.
Other than that, you can subscribe onyour favorite podcasting system as well.
(00:43):
This week I want to talk about aschool, and specifically the school
is the Sacred Heart Junior NationalSchool in Ardin, in Tala, in Dublin.
And I.
They wrote to families in March to letthem know that due to a serious lack
of funding, they would be forced tooperate remotely from the 1st of April.
(01:07):
This was because of massive underfundingfor many years due to cuts from the
Department of Education, I quote, andthey said they'd be no longer to be
able to pay the basic bills unless itreceived additional money in this episode.
I'm going to ask a very simple question.
How did it come to this?
(01:31):
Hello.
You're very welcome to If Iwere the Minister for Education.
It's Simon here, and I was fascinatedto hear about the Sacred Heart
Junior National School in Ardin.
Not just because of the topic in question.
It's a school.
It's not the school Istarted my career in.
It's the school next door to theschool I started my career in.
(01:53):
But what I was most interested.
That was how, this is not the firstprimary school by any stretch of the
imagination to be struggling with funding.
It's probably just the first schoolwho've gone very public or certainly
public enough that the media took heed.
There were a number of specialschools a number of years ago that
some people might remember whowere unable to pay their insurance
(02:18):
bills, their insurance, quadrupledlike cept, I think in some cases.
And they needed emergencyfunding to keep going.
But also there was a very smallstory on Highland Radio where a
principle said that they had to go.
To their local church toborrow 30,000 euro to pay the
(02:41):
bills and then pay that back.
At some point I think when the capitationgrant came through, I find that story
absolutely wild considering that thechurch owns that building in the first
place and the school had to borrow.
From the people that own thebuilding and pay it back.
But that is not the pointof this particular episode.
(03:01):
This particular episode is about thelack of school funding and really.
A lot of people do think andpossibly because the Department
of Education say it, is thatthey fully fund primary schools.
So I thought I would take a diveinto the figures because many people
know that during the recession,the capitation grant, which is the
(03:25):
main money that is used for bicycleschools to pay their bills, that
was cut from 200 euro per pupil.
Per per pupil per year to, Ithink it went down to as far
as 170 euro per pupil per year.
And it's just taken about almost a decade,more than a decade, I think, for it to
(03:45):
get back to 200 euro per pupil per day.
But in the meantime, prices ofeverything have gone up, I think
the best place to start really is toexplain how primary schools are funded.
I think it's probably the best placeto start because as I said people
believe that primary schools are fullyfunded by the Department of Education.
(04:06):
So I think when people say thatschools are fully funded by
the Department of Education, Iwonder what they mean by that.
And I think what most people think.
That the Department ofEducation pay for everything.
Now, some people also think the patronbodies pay some money into schools,
but that's absolutely not true.
The only official money that comesinto schools is from the Department
(04:31):
of Education and the C-P-S-M-A, whichis a Catholic primary management.
Body they claimed that works at about57% of what schools actually need to
survive, to pay all of their bills.
And I'm not sure what that figure istoday that stat was is was somewhere
from in the middle of the 2010s.
But the only other fundingthat a school gets is from.
(04:54):
Fundraising and the fundraising cancome from parents and the odd time
they might win a competition thatgives money or maybe company sponsors
something or gives some money to schools,although that's very rare indeed.
And I don't think I.
I don't think it happens really at all.
Most companies don'tgive money to schools.
I think they might give old computersat best and maybe they might do some
(05:18):
outreach programs where a group of peoplewill come and paint a classroom or help
in a garden or something like that, ormaybe give classes in something or other.
But essentially, when it comes downto it, primary schools are officially
only funded through fundraising and.
The Department of Education grants andthe grants are the capitation grant,
(05:38):
which I'm going to talk about now becausethe capitation grant is the main grant
that's used to pay for every single bill,every single resource, almost everything.
So for example, schools don'tget any extra money to pay
for a cleaner of a school.
A cleaner is not something that theDepartment of Education pay for.
Technically.
They pay for a secretary and a cleaner,and up until 2024, that was also just
(06:04):
a single grant, which didn't cover thecost of a secretary or a caretaker.
It was some money towards it.
So whatever was spare went wastaken from the capitation grant.
Currently in most, in the vast majorityof schools, secretaries are now paid by
the Department of Education, but oftenthere is no money left for a caretaker
(06:24):
or very little, even in very big schools.
So the capitation granthas to suck up that money.
I.
Just to put some numbers on this,from about 2020 to about 2023,
which is recently enough, thisequated to 183 euro per pupil.
So a 100 pupil schools entire budgetfor all of their bills and some of
(06:47):
their some of their costs for employees.
So a cleaner and a caretaker or part ofthat would've been 18,300 euro for a year.
That's to pay all.
The bills 18,300 Euro.
It's not a lot of money at all, andthe Department of Education don't care.
Neither do your patron bodyfor that matter, because they
(07:08):
don't pay for the bills either.
In case you were wondering as well, itisn't the only money that comes into
schools, so I think it's only fairto say what the money is for those.
You get a grant for standardized testbooklets every year, which basically
pays for standardized test booklets.
There's not much, if anymoney spare from that.
The wages of the school secretary arenow paid directly by the Department of
(07:31):
Education that does there's no extrasthere and it is a very, as I said, there's
a very partial payment for any school.
Lucky to have a.
A character in somecases, teachers and SNAs.
And more recently, as I said,most secretaries are paid directly
by the Department of Education,so these are things that the
Department of Education pay for.
Another thing that's fairly recent isthe school book grant, but that also
(07:54):
only partially pays for the school books.
Only partially.
Remember, and this was cut after a oneyear, the first year it came out in 2023.
It was 96 Euro per Child,which sounds like a lot.
For school books, but just rememberyour average maths book costs 26 euro.
That's a quarter of the entire budget.
(08:14):
Your average religion book, bythe way, if you're in a Catholic
school, costs about 20 euro.
So about about a fifth of the entire cost.
So you can see very quickly how 96euro didn't cover everything, and the
following year it was cut back to 80 euro.
Which again doesn't cover all costs.
Some schools that fall underdebt, that's the disa disadvantage
(08:35):
disadvantaged school, get an extra grant.
But this is only to be usedto tackle disadvantage.
And finally, there are some very smallgrants available for ICT, which are
not guaranteed, and repairs minorworks as they're called every year.
And neither of those are evera hundred percent guaranteed.
Done.
Most years they've gottenthe ICT grant just to.
(08:58):
Let you know what it is, wouldhardly buy you three laptops
in an average size school.
So again the Department of Educationwill say they fund these things.
They only partiallyfund anything in effect.
A 100 pupil school is only getting a.
18 and a half Euro foreverything else that they need.
(09:18):
And people wonder why schools seem tobe constantly fundraising and asking
for voluntary contributions with aheavy emphasis on the word voluntary.
Just to give some context by coincidenceas I said, I worked in the school
directly beside the Sacred Heart juniorNational School from 2001 to 2002.
(09:40):
I was there for a year before I wentto get qualified, funnily enough.
And again, this has nothingto do with this episode.
When I got my job in 2001, there wasalso a massive teacher shortage, and this
was before the Teaching Council exists.
So I had no trouble getting a job.
But now that the teachingCouncil exists, there's no way
unqualified teachers get jobs.
(10:01):
Oh, wait they are.
There were 9,000 unqualified teachershired in primary schools in 2023 to 2024.
Anyway, back to our funding.
In 2001 to 2002, de capitation grant wasincredibly poultry at 105 euro per pupil.
And that represented a 10euro increase from 2002, 2003.
(10:25):
And in terms of inflation,just to give that, because in
2001 you could say 105 Euro.
Oh my gosh.
How can you now it's double that.
But if you look at the, inflation.
So basically in 2001, 105 Euro is roughlythe equivalent of 167 Euro roughly.
And yes, that's obviously still very low.
And, but costs were low as well.
And I don't know relatively whatwe were, know what that meant.
(10:48):
And if we were look at a, if we lookedat a graph of capitation grants as well
as their value adjusted for inflationbased on, see, I'm using the CSO figures
and I have a link to what I'm doing.
In the show notes, we can seethat this year's allocation is
still nowhere near where we were.
Even next year's allocation whichis coming up soon is, which is a 24
(11:09):
Euro increase, still doesn't comeclose to where we were in the past.
I have this lovely graph on which I'llshare in the show notes, which shows
the capitation grant and how it'sadjusted and adjusting it for inflation.
We peaked at the in 2010 whenit came to the capitation
grant and in 2025 we are still.
(11:29):
Below that capitation grant andin 2010, the capitation grant.
Probably wasn't really enough.
Maybe it was, but costs were somuch lower in 2010, remember we
were in the depths of a recession.
Nobody had any money, andprices were all going down.
And we had our capitation grantat its highest level ever.
(11:49):
And I can't, it was just abouttwo, it was 200 euro per child per
year and adjusting for inflation.
That worked out at aboutnearly 250 euro per child.
I think it's probably easierto see this on a graph.
But for those of you who are listening,we are quite a distance away from where
we were in 2000, between 2008 to 2011,I think where things peaked and then
(12:13):
went down we're roughly where we wereduring the recession, I think, and
again, when costs were much lower, but.
I think the figures alone that showup until the recession, there was a
good progress in trying to reach alevel of sustainability for schools
in terms of finances back in 2001.
(12:35):
Even adjusting for for inflation,we were still very low in terms of
what we were doing to fund schools.
And we saw basically during the recession,it took a huge dip and we're still.
We're still catching up to there.
We're still not there, although weare making a little bit of progress.
We're still in and aroundrecessionary times.
(12:56):
However, the stats I felt when I meanit's very easy for me to do that.
I just felt those stats were probablya little bit meaningless be if we
don't compare them to how the moneyis supposed to be broken down and.
I didn't expect to get an answer to thequestion I asked which was I asked some
schools my I couldn't use my school as theto do this because my school has been, was
(13:21):
a developing school from 2008 till 2023.
So my bills, I.
Weren't very static.
So I couldn't really use 'em.
So I asked any schools out there whohad a pretty static enrollment from 2001
or any time between 2001 and 2023 ifthey were happy to send me, the cost of
heating, lighting, insurance, and so on.
(13:42):
But I didn't get any replies, I hadto try and find somewhere where I
could find examples of bills overthe last number of years, and I
found them, to be honest with you.
I found two sets of bills that two setsof bills that people have in businesses
(14:04):
over the last 20 odd years, and thatwas your electricity and your gas.
If there's data on averagebills or per kilowatt hour
from the official SEAI website.
And what the SESE and again I'm goingto show you if you're, if you obviously
can't see this, so I'll try anddescribe it, but you can go to the show.
(14:25):
It's to see it.
I've put it into a graph how muchthe commercial electricity price per
kilowatt hour was from 2007 to 2024.
And if you look at that graphit basically in 2007 this is
just before the the recession.
It worked, it was around 12.
Point seven one, something, around,around that per cent, I think.
(14:49):
And it was going up a little bit, thenthe recession came along and it gradually
it teetered around the same price allthe way until 20 22, 20 21, really?
And then it just shot up.
It's over double what it was in 2022.
In the space of two years,electricity prices, commercial
(15:12):
electricity prices have doubled.
They're starting to go down a little bit,but they're still double where they were.
And just taking that data alone, we cancompare to see how electricity costs
per unit compared to the capitationgrant, because you would expect that.
Electricity prices.
(15:33):
So every school pays an electricity bill.
You would expect the capitation grant tochange in the same way as the electricity
bills would, because generally that'sprobably not a bad way of doing things.
And however, to analyze the impactthis had with the capitation grant.
We have to make an assumption becausewe, I needed to make a baseline.
(15:54):
I didn't have a baseline, really.
Sorry.
This is maybe getting a little bit oftechnical and I'm really sorry about it.
You can ignore the next minute or so asI'm explaining the maths around this.
I was just going to, I have to makean assumption because there's no way,
other way of doing it, and it's nota, it's not an important assumption.
It doesn't mess things up.
If I, it does, it's very arbitrary.
I could, and it's essentiallyhow, what percentage of bills
(16:15):
did electricity account for?
I.
That's what I need to ask, and I'mjust going to arbitrarily pick 10%.
So 10% of our bills, it could havebeen 5%, it could have been 20%.
I'm just gonna say 10% of our capitationgrounds was going to be electricity.
And that, and let's say thatis always going to be the case.
' cause the interesting part will behow that increases and decreases based
(16:37):
on the capitation grant and hopefullywhy we're seeing how schools are
having these massive financial issues.
Even me saying that electricity priceshave doubled in the last two or three
years, should be enough to explain why.
Because you won't be surprised that mostother bills have gone up significantly
in the last two to three years.
For the mathematicians and statisticiansout there who are wanting me to
(16:58):
prove it, here is the explanationin the geekiest language you can
possibly ever hear and you can skip.
I would say the next minute no,let's say I'll do it in 30 seconds.
So here's how we calculate.
This is how I calculated it.
God, this is gonna be so boring.
I'm so sorry from the assumption.
Of 10%.
In 2007, we calculated the averageelectricity consumption per
(17:20):
pupil by dividing 10% of the 2007grand by the 2007 electricity
cut per cost per kilowatt hour.
This gives us a constant kilowatthour value that represents
a per pupil consumption.
For subsequent years, we multipliedthis constant consumption by
that year's cost per creative.
This is so boring.
Oh my gosh.
(17:41):
Chachi PT did that, by the way.
I didn't do it.
I am a bit of a geek,but I'm not that geeky.
Anyway, finally, we divided thiscost by the capitation grant for that
year and multiplied by a hundred toexpress it as percentage of the grant.
Anyway, more importantly than that geekylanguage, here is the result, and again, I
have a lovely graph in the show notes foryou to see, but essentially, if you can't
(18:02):
see it, what you will notice is that.
The so basically if we assume in 2007your electricity bill was 10% based on the
capitation grant in 2008 your electricitywent up to about 11% of your cost.
But then in 2009, 2010, 2011, allthe way to 2012 your electricity
(18:26):
bill was less than that.
In fact it went down 2010 whenwe had the most capitation.
It was around seven, or the equivalentwas about 7% of your electric,
of your bills was on electricity.
So your costs were way down.
It went above 10% to get from 2013to 2015, teetered around the 10%
(18:46):
mark until 2018 again went down.
And then in 2021 it justshot up to about 13%.
And by 2022.
Your bills had doubled so much thatover 20% of your bills were electricity.
If we base 10% on in 2007.
(19:08):
So the cost of electricityhas doubled in 2024.
It's gone down a little tiny bit to about15%, but we're still saying that your
bi your electricity bills effectivelyare 50% more than they would've
been in 2007, relatively speaking.
And as we can clearly see.
Even though things were fairly stablefrom 2007, 2020, things shot up.
(19:32):
I checked out gas as well,just just for a comparison.
And it's a very similar situation.
Again, it, again, it o over doubled.
In fact, gas went up from 10%of your co total costs to 22%.
So like more than doubled andit's still in a shocking position.
It's, I would love it.
If I could find other official datato be honest with you, because.
(19:56):
I'd love to find a insurance.
Insurance was the one I was really lookingfor because I know anecdotally that
insurance costs have doubled and maybeReed and probably even more in most cases.
I definitely remember my insurance goingup one year from, I think it was about
6,000 euro to over 14,000 euro in a year.
I just couldn't believe it, it was mad.
(20:17):
And I think a lot of schools are in thatsituation, and somehow they had to suck
this up and continue to suck this up.
I don't know about, I'd say theonly thing that's relatively
stable are your phone bills.
I don't think I've noticedthem going up particularly.
In the last couple of decades,but wages have gone up as well.
And I'll look at that in a minutebecause there's another piece
of data I need to go about.
(20:39):
But if you are interested inlooking at other official, it's
unofficial data in this case.
So this is crowd sourced data, whichI was going to include, but I thought
I'd just stick to the official data.
There's a website called mBio.
N-U-M-B-E-O and I thinkyou can register for free.
And it gives you some good, agood guideline on a number of
items over the last 15 years.
(21:00):
For example, it gives the cost of anapp, let's say in the last 15 to 20 years
if the cost of renting a three bedroomapartment in Dublin for the last 15 years.
And I think they source their datafrom people, a number of, from
people and also official figures.
So it's well worth looking at tomaybe even do some other comparisons.
I just felt.
(21:21):
People would accuse me of massagingthe figures if I didn't use official
data or just picking things to suitmy agenda as as people like me can
often be accused of, but however, onelectricity and gas prices zone, I think
it's pretty clear what's happening.
Prices of things I.
Have gone up massively, and it's nosurprise to me whatsoever that this
school can't afford to pay their billsbecause bills have gone up so much, and
(21:45):
I don't think they're alone in this.
They're just the first onesreally to go so publicly about it.
But the evidence suggests that.
As I said, insurance costshave gone up considerably.
In the last two and a half decades.
I found an article from 2004.
Now this is 2004.
So we're not talking about 2024,2004, over 20 years ago that insurance
(22:06):
costs were crippling primary schools.
And the minister for the time thereno Dempsey was told about it that they
are running up to six times higher.
That then the minister himself saidit's well worth looking at that article.
It's in the Irish Examiner from 2004.
And then in 2019, as I said,several special schools had
(22:29):
to seek emergency funding.
And again, I have to, I, I puta link to that article there.
15 special needs schools report,difficulty meeting insurance premiums.
And again, I don't thinkthey were alone Really.
Special schools obviously were hitmuch more than mainstream schools
because again, there's, there's somuch more that can go wrong in terms
of insurance cases in special schoolsdue to the nature of their work.
(22:51):
One school's insurance in the article,I feel is need to, I need to say this
white rose from 3000 euro to over 26.
Thousand Euro from 2017 to 2019.
I wrote to an insurance company to askfor some details regarding insurance
costs, but I was told back then that theinformation would not be forthcoming.
(23:12):
I was doing it for adifferent reason at the time.
I was trying to compare insurancepremiums between patron bodies.
And given that Allianz at the time is,it was around when the Pope visited.
Art at Dublin at the time, and Iwas really curious as to why Allianz
were sponsoring the event andwhere was the link between Allianz
(23:33):
and the churches and insurance.
And of course as some people know,Allianz used to be church in general.
They are responsible, Allianzare responsible, I think for all,
if not all, most church buildinginsurances and church buildings.
The question I asked was, did.
Church run schools have lower insurancethan non-church run schools, and
they would not tell me which suffice.
(23:55):
I suppose I would tell you that of course,that is the case, I don't think by much.
But anyway, again, not the point.
So I decided I'd look again.
At some other data that is absolutely,definitely that exists out there.
And it was wages and I wanted tolook at cleaning staff because
that's something that has tocome out of the capitation grant.
(24:19):
And I, what I did was Iwent with minimum wage.
Minimum wage was what I thought would bethe would be the fairest way to look at.
Whether the capitation grant is catchingup with the wages of cleaning staff or
other staff depending on who they are.
And it's interesting compare first ofall, the increase in the capitation
(24:42):
grant compared to the increase inthe wages of someone on minimum wage.
And if, again, sorry, I'm in thesorry I'm on audio here, but you can
look at the show notes to see that.
And I suppose the mostinteresting one for me in a way.
Is that the minimum wage goes upfar more than the capitation grant
(25:04):
goes up when it goes up, and evenwhen the capitation grows down, the
minimum wage can go up significantly.
And I.
Most interestingly, most recently thecapitation grants went up a little
bit for next year, but minimum wagewent up by about what went up hugely.
So I think on average since 2001,there's been a 2% increase in the
(25:24):
capitation grant compared to a9% increase in the minimum wage.
That's over four.
That's four and a half timesmore so that means the schools
have to absorb the extra cost of.
Any ancillary staff that isn'tcovered by the ancillary grants.
So with all this in mind, it's very clearto me and I hope by now to you why this
(25:44):
school, the Sacred Heart Junior NationalSchool in Ton has found themselves in
such financial trouble that they decidedthey would write to parents to say that
they were going to close their doors.
And unless they received the money,because they couldn't pay their bills,
and I would suggest that they aren't theonly school in Ireland in that situation.
(26:08):
At the beginning of the episode, I talked,told you about the school in Donal that
had to borrow money off their own theirown local church who owned their building.
I spoke to you about the insurancecosts for some 15 special schools and.
Every survey after every surveythat is done from the National
Principals Forum is that schoolfunding is one of the biggest issues.
(26:29):
Workload is used to be the single biggestissues for principals from ever since
I began being a principal and being andbeing involved in adv advocacy work.
But in the last.
Five or maybe last three or fouryears, I've noticed that whilst
workload is still terrible and it'sstill unacceptable, it's funding,
school funding has become the numberone issue for primary school leaders.
(26:54):
Special education is there inthe top three, two, just in
case people were interested.
And I suppose what I'm showing younow, really in a way, or I've been
telling you about in this podcast.
It may not be new information to you.
We've always had the anecdotal evidence.
We've always had the we've alwayssuspected that the capitation
(27:14):
grant is nowhere near enough.
And in fact, we've had a numberof studies from the representative
bodies who seem to go into this alittle bit without doing anything
about it about why we have a problem.
And here is just another bitof data to add to the mix.
And I feel.
In my personal view, what I've givenreally is showing how the capitation
(27:38):
grant isn't keeping up with the ratesof inflation, or even with the rates
of increases in all sorts of areas.
Whether that's inflation, whetherthat's just the cost of energy,
whether it's the cost of living, thecost of wages, and things like that.
So what's the solution?
I think you probably won't be surprisedto hear that my solution is rooted.
(27:59):
Patronage.
And it's yet again anothersituation where the patronage
system is causing this issue.
And let me explain, for those of you whoare going no, here he goes again, this is
nothing to do with religion particularly.
This is just to do with thesystem of patron patronage.
(28:20):
Forget religion, take religion out of it.
Just let's pretend for a moment thatevery patron body that we have is
not religious and it's just, it.
They just are different businesses andthey, just bear with me on this one.
Okay.
I.
What, how the system works isthat the patron effectively
is told by the Department ofEducation to manage their schools.
(28:43):
And the patron body gets somevolunteers to do the day-to-day
management of the schools, more orless, which, but in reality is the
principal who does that sort of work.
But the board of management effectivelyis responsible, so the Department
of Education aren't affected.
By the amount of money flowing atschools, they give some money, but they
don't care whether it's enough or not.
In some ways, the patronbody they might care.
(29:08):
It doesn't really directly affect them.
What happens in schools,because the patron body doesn't
have to suck up any of them.
Any of the financial problems of a school,they get their lack of funding as well
from the Department of Education to exist.
They are paid they get grantsfrom the Department of Education.
The only thing I would say, I supposeis that the most schools do pay a fee
(29:30):
to their patron body or managementbody, depending on their patron.
But.
That's the only impact they mighthave is one of their schools might
not be able to afford their bill.
But in, in reality, it's notmaking a huge amount of difference.
So effectively the patron level ofthis isn't particularly important.
(29:52):
And even if they do care, thereisn't very much they can do.
Like a patron body can't shut aschool down just for this, just,
they don't have the power to do that.
They don't have the power to threaten.
The Department of Education thatthey're going to shut a school down.
So in a way, there area dead duck in this.
They don't really do anything.
Their only power really is thehiring and firing of teachers.
(30:15):
Really, that's the onlything they hold over.
A community.
One, they can hire and fire teachersif they don't uphold their ethos and
they can change, they can dissolve aboard of management if they need to.
And I think they can obviouslydivest or reconfigure a school.
I mean that, I'm saying they do nothing,as it sounds like a mon python sketch
at this stage, but that's reallyall they do, but very little of use.
(30:36):
They're just there as a kind ofa buffer between the Department
of Education and Schools.
But if the patron bodies didn't exist,it would mean that the Department
of Education would be responsiblefor the schools in all aspects.
And it's not like thatdoesn't happen in Ireland.
(30:57):
Which is interesting.
Some of you may not remember this,and some of you may not know this,
but there are nine primary schoolsin Ireland whose patron body is
the Department of Education, andI'm not talking about ETBs here.
The ETBs have decided to becomepatron bodies themselves.
There are nine primary schools.
(31:17):
They're called the model schoolswho are whose patron body is
the Minister for Education.
These schools have a history as theyall do, and you can listen back to my
podcast on model schools back, gosh, Irecorded it back before Covid, I'd say.
But just in a nutshell, they receive all,they don't receive a capitation grant.
I don't think they receivean ancillary grant either.
(31:39):
What they do is.
They send their bills directly tothe Minister for Education and the
Minister for Education pays those bills.
So that is very interestingbecause it is a precedence.
It means it is being done, itcan be done, and it's interesting
why it isn't being done.
(32:01):
There is no reason why theDepartment of Education can't.
Be responsible for thefunding of schools and for the
financial management of schools.
And while I know it's not whileI know there's a big difference
between doing it for nine schoolsand doing it for over 3000 schools,
it's not something that's impossible.
(32:22):
It's not something that isn't withintheir I suppose within their remit
or within what they're able to do.
And I think that's the we need to do this.
We need to move.
To a situation where the Departmentof Education are paying the bills,
and you would find very quicklythe deals that would be done,
the things that happen in primaryschools that are absolutely shocking.
(32:44):
For example, primary schools haveto pay that on many things despite
the fact that they're completelygovernment fundings funded.
So that's two, two bits of VAT thatare paid rather than the one vat.
Things like that, stupid stuff thatwe know is happening, for example.
With school books, the Department ofEducation would fund all of the school
books, not just partially pay them.
(33:06):
The insurance company.
I can absolutely guarantee you thatinsurance would change overnight if the
Department of Education were responsiblefor paying for the insurance bills.
Every single decision, every singlething affecting money would change
overnight if the Department of Education.
Basically funded, fullyfunded primary schools.
(33:26):
And I would even suggest it might linger.
It might carry over into some otherareas which I often talk about on this
podcast, I've already mentioned it alittle bit so I won't go there again.
So there's my solution.
How it gets there mean I, I iseffectively back to my normal arguments.
(33:48):
We need to get rid of patron bodies.
I think, I dunno if I can ifyou'll agree with me on that.
I hope it's a compellingenough argument for you.
But in the meantime, we're going tosee more and more schools falling.
I.
Under huge financial pressure as thecost of living goes up and the capitation
(34:10):
grant remains much lower than it needsto be, even relatively speaking, and even
with inflation and all the rest of it.
There's just, I don't I don't thinkthis will be the last school to end up.
Financial difficulty.
I hope you've enjoyed this episode.
If you have, please subscribeto the podcast by going to
(34:32):
your favorite podcasting app.
And clicking subscribe.
And please leave a review if you'd like.
It helps some people find it more easily.
And if you'd like to subscribe to my.
Newsletter, my fortnightly newsletter,which not only tells you when the podcast
is coming out, but also gives a summaryof the last two weeks of the news in
primary education some stuff that youmight have missed and my own thoughts on
(34:53):
it, as well as my other passion, which isICT and education where I am giving free
courses to anyone who wants them on usingai for loads of different teaching uses.
I would really recommend youlook at that and you can.
Get my my newsletter by goingto on shot.net/subscribe.
(35:14):
So that's it for me.
Thank you so much for listening.
All the very, very best.
Bye bye.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.