Where to make savings in education budget

Powerhouse

derb12 wrote: »

Also, it is absolutely necessary that students sit exams in their own school? Could larger more economic exam centres not be used?

This is one of those things that seems like a good idea buy would probably cost more money arther than saving. The schools are already there and can be opened at minimal incremental cost. The alternative - hiring out the RDS or such large venues would cost far more. And at least schools already have the facilities for and knowledge of students with particular issues.

The most obvious waste I see in my time teaching is the provision of luch in the local pub for people on in-services. I have often gone to these and there''d be 20 people there, probably at €15 a pop for the voucher for lunch. That's €300. And there's usually more than one going on each day at the centre I go to. This must amount to a small fortune over the course of a year. Can people not get their own lunch? It's a genuine saving (not just making a teacher do more and pretending it's a saving) and could be done immediately. Unfortunately it's the kind of thing journalists don't know about or other teachers are not discommoded by so it's not highlighted.

Miss Lockhart

mick kk wrote: »

It would be on a par with saying secondary teachers shoulde take students during their "free"classes - I don't think imposing that idea on primary school teachers is a runner in fairness - those primary teachers have work to do during that time and cannot leave the school premises - in fairness to them, I don't think I would be able for anything after a morning with 4 year olds!.

Like I said, I don't agree with infant teachers doing extra unrelated work when their class is gone, but you are totally incorrect to compare it to a second level teacher's free classes. The second level teacher is not contracted or paid for those hours wheras the infant teacher is contracted and paid for that time.

It is comparable to asking a second level teacher to do work unrelated to their own class groups if for some reason that group is not available to teach during the contracted time - and this already happens.

rainbowtrout

mick kk wrote: »

A definite way the SEC could save money is by having smaller centres for those that need assistance rather than having one in a room. Its a shocking waste of money - you could easily put 4 or 5 students in a large room who need assistance such as reader [obviously depends on how much help a student would require] rather than having 1 adult per student - in my experience, some of these students are finished their exam within a very short period of time. However, it would meen less work for those that do this work and that often tends to be new teachers.

I had to laugh last year at the examiner conferences - no free cup of tea or coffee during the break....the miserable f....

That wouldn't be fair on the student. Sticking 5 students in a room together to save on money for 5 different readers is grand in theory but in practice would be very annoying for the student, if the reader is going around from student to student reading questions or passages aloud for them while the others are trying to concentrate on their exam. They should be provided with the same conditions students in the main centre are being provided with, i.e. a quiet centre without distractions or disturbance. It's also a sweeping generalisation to say 'some of these students are finished their exam within a very short period of time'. So what? That doesn't mean they should be afforded poorer exam conditions than the main cohort.

You might as well say 'sure they are ordinary level special needs students, who gives a fcuk' if you're going to go down that road.

It's amusing that you're quite happy to have poorer exam conditions for students with specific needs but are whinging about not being given free tea at a conference.....

highly1111

highly1111 wrote: »

yep - simple economies of scale. Too many schools. Obviously schools in rural areas have to be provided but by merging schools you'd make sufficient savings to provide a bus service between villages.

You will find most children being brought to rural schools, come frome nearby towns in cars, so there would be no need for a bus to take them down the road.

mick kk

You might as well say 'sure they are ordinary level special needs students, who gives a fcuk' if you're going to go down that road.

It's amusing that you're quite happy to have poorer exam conditions for students with specific needs but are whinging about not being given free tea at a conference



Rainbowtrout...thats why I said it would depend on the needs of the students...obviously some will require a room on their own with an adult.
I did this one year with a student. I was his reader. He hardly asked for any help and was done in the first half hour of the exam. I was paid for a full days work each day despite him being finished in no time. I felt it was wasteful at the time though I gladly took the cheque.
...and I wasn't whinging about free tea at a conference...I couldn't care less about it really but I thought it was one of the more "amusing" cutbacks. I'm sorry I mentioned it now.

Boom__Boom

There are massive savings to be made from closing smaller schools.

It's not just in completely isolated rural areas.

Where I'm from in Killarney there are is a huge number of small schools within the 10 mile range of the centre of town [and a fair few considerably nearer] which are "outside" town in the sub 100 pupils category. There's a few with sub 50 pupils. Some of these schools are located within a mile or so of each other.

Think of all the time that is wasted on bureaucracy when you compare five schools of 100 pupils versus one school of 500 pupils. If you cut down the number of individual schools, there would be a vast knock-on effect in terms of savings in terms of paperwork and bureaucracy.

Each of these schools spend a lot of money on the physical maintenance of the school buildings. Heating, lighting, maintenance.

There's also the matter of resources used on a infrequent basis that in larger schools will be rotated between classes which isn't possible in smaller schools.

Also once these schools were shut down you would get some money through their sale.

Some people will bring up to the point about these schools being with walking distance but the vast majority of pupils arrive by car. [Blame Irish weather, bad roads, laziness, whatever]

The point is that for the overwhelming majority they arrive to school by car. Closing these schools would mean a slightly longer drive for parents but the vast majority of these people are living in the equivalent of the "suburbs" and go everywhere by car anyway.

All of the pupils from these "rural" schools end up going to secondary schools "within" the town.

Most of these schools were originally built before the invention of the car.

There are a number of reasons why little to no effort has been made to establish a sensible number of schools.

1) politically a sensitive topic - mention of closing schools get the public annoyed which means for the politicians they will look at it as a choice between pissing off teachers by cutting salaries or pissing off the public by closing schools. Teachers only make up a small percentage of the public, so the choice for politicians falls into the no-brainer category.

2) its far less work for the Dept of Education and their advisors to adjust terms and conditions that go through all the work of closing/amalgamating schools.

3) as it is you have a number of posts which would most likely vanish if they were schools amalgamated. Basically there are a number of individuals who benefit under the current system and most likely wouldn't fare as well if the number of schools were reduced. Even a small percentage number of teachers being opposed can make it very difficult for the sensible thing to be done.

However in spite of this I still think it could be achieved if teachers looked at the issue and came up with a list of schools that they feel should be closed. It would need to be sensibly looked at and the campaign would have to clearly stress that the key reason for the campaign is eliminating pointless waste.

A key talking point that would be sure to be raised by those opposed to the idea would be "teacher's are unwilling to take any cuts to their pockets and want to penalise pupils instead"

As such the benefits to pupils would have to be stressed - better facilities, more opportunities.

There would most likely have to be some element of concession on terms and conditions but if the point was stressed that the over-riding reason for this proposal was to get the best possible education system for the best possible value. Also if some of current flaws in the system in some small schools such as the pupil teacher ratio is under a lot less pressure could be stressed or cases where a teacher is teaching two or three classes at the same time. Establishing the idea in the public mind that under the current system a huge amount of money is being wasted pointlessly.

If there were other efficiency savings along the lines mooted elsewhere in this thread included in the proposal it would be even more beneficial.

A campaign where there were teachers actively campaigning for schools to be closed is one that the government would have a huge difficulty in ignoring.

However I feel that some of the union leaders would have serious ideological issues with this approach and it might be necessary to work around them.

Out of interest have the unions ever actually solicited teachers on potential costs savings?

seavill

I am not against the idea of closing small schools and making larger ones as a cost saving exercise, but I would guess that it certainly does not help in any way the savings needed this year or next.

Taking your five school example, clearly none of the schools would be large enough to host the amalgamation - so either a new schools has to be built or a huge expansion of one of the current schools. This is not a short process in Ireland, design and planning permission all going well would be the bones of a year, plus building on that scale a good 9 months so thats 2 years down the line.

As I said I don't disagree with the proposals and long terms make complete sense but short term there is no benefit there that I can see

Powerhouse

Boom__Boom wrote: »

There are massive savings to be made from closing smaller schools.

It's not just in completely isolated rural areas.

Where I'm from in Killarney there are is a huge number of small schools within the 10 mile range of the centre of town [and a fair few considerably nearer] which are "outside" town in the sub 100 pupils category. There's a few with sub 50 pupils. Some of these schools are located within a mile or so of each other.

Think of all the time that is wasted on bureaucracy when you compare five schools of 100 pupils versus one school of 500 pupils. If you cut down the number of individual schools, there would be a vast knock-on effect in terms of savings in terms of paperwork and bureaucracy.

Each of these schools spend a lot of money on the physical maintenance of the school buildings. Heating, lighting, maintenance.

There's also the matter of resources used on a infrequent basis that in larger schools will be rotated between classes which isn't possible in smaller schools.

Also once these schools were shut down you would get some money through their sale.

Some people will bring up to the point about these schools being with walking distance but the vast majority of pupils arrive by car. [Blame Irish weather, bad roads, laziness, whatever]

The point is that for the overwhelming majority they arrive to school by car. Closing these schools would mean a slightly longer drive for parents but the vast majority of these people are living in the equivalent of the "suburbs" and go everywhere by car anyway.

All of the pupils from these "rural" schools end up going to secondary schools "within" the town.

Most of these schools were originally built before the invention of the car.

There are a number of reasons why little to no effort has been made to establish a sensible number of schools.

1) politically a sensitive topic - mention of closing schools get the public annoyed which means for the politicians they will look at it as a choice between pissing off teachers by cutting salaries or pissing off the public by closing schools. Teachers only make up a small percentage of the public, so the choice for politicians falls into the no-brainer category.

2) its far less work for the Dept of Education and their advisors to adjust terms and conditions that go through all the work of closing/amalgamating schools.

3) as it is you have a number of posts which would most likely vanish if they were schools amalgamated. Basically there are a number of individuals who benefit under the current system and most likely wouldn't fare as well if the number of schools were reduced. Even a small percentage number of teachers being opposed can make it very difficult for the sensible thing to be done.

However in spite of this I still think it could be achieved if teachers looked at the issue and came up with a list of schools that they feel should be closed. It would need to be sensibly looked at and the campaign would have to clearly stress that the key reason for the campaign is eliminating pointless waste.

A key talking point that would be sure to be raised by those opposed to the idea would be "teacher's are unwilling to take any cuts to their pockets and want to penalise pupils instead"

As such the benefits to pupils would have to be stressed - better facilities, more opportunities.

There would most likely have to be some element of concession on terms and conditions but if the point was stressed that the over-riding reason for this proposal was to get the best possible education system for the best possible value. Also if some of current flaws in the system in some small schools such as the pupil teacher ratio is under a lot less pressure could be stressed or cases where a teacher is teaching two or three classes at the same time. Establishing the idea in the public mind that under the current system a huge amount of money is being wasted pointlessly.

If there were other efficiency savings along the lines mooted elsewhere in this thread included in the proposal it would be even more beneficial.

A campaign where there were teachers actively campaigning for schools to be closed is one that the government would have a huge difficulty in ignoring.

However I feel that some of the union leaders would have serious ideological issues with this approach and it might be necessary to work around them.

Out of interest have the unions ever actually solicited teachers on potential costs savings?

Not sure this makes sense. I suspect that most small rural primary schools are run on a shoestring and are likely to be at least as efficient as a big one. I'm not sure 'economies of scale' really come into it, or that they contribute to major bureaucracy. We are not talking Microsoft here with these big schools. Their rooms still need to be lighted and heated and have their teachers paid. Not sure where the big savings come.

Closing them down and letting buildings (which the government does not own and cannot sell off anyway) run to dereliction which paying for new buildings and pre-fabs (which also have to be lighted and heated) would probably cost money. This solution (one big school rather than five small ones) is okay in a 'green field' situation.

There are two Post-Primary schools in the town where I spent my youth and if amalgamated they would amount to only about 650 students which in cities would be fairly normal. But I cannot see how boarding up the windows on one and building on a load of new buildings and pre-fabs to accommodate teachers and students would save a penny. In the short run, at the very least, I reckon this would cost the exchequer money.

It is a particularly specious saving that is being mooted here I believe.