Dropped into the press statements at the end of the school year, just as all of us were starting to think of sunnier climes, the Education Authority (EA) released its latest light read, ‘Planning for Sustainable Provision: Strategic Area Plan 2022 – 27’.

It has all the necessary attributes of a ‘I’ll look at that later’ document, with all the skills of insomnia-inducing story-telling that only civil servants can produce.

However, beneath that veneer lies issues of major concern for all: that of the use of the word “sustainability”.

The report’s preamble isn’t especially overwhelming. Its aim is “to ensure that all primary and post-primary pupils have access to a broad and balanced curriculum that meets their educational needs in a school that is educationally and financially sustainable”.

However, like a helicopter buzzing around in circles looking for a place to land, the document takes us to visions, mission statements, aims – the lot, before finally coming to four areas: of increasing parity of access, promoting co-operation, maximising resources and to inform strategic infrastructure, planning and investment.

Thereafter follows many pages of facts, promises, aims and, of course, brightly-coloured graphics. This is vintage EA stuff; long-windedness is their speciality.

So why am I so sceptical? Well, primarily because I could paper my entire house and many more besides with pages of strategies, promised investments, visions and other medium- and long-term aims, most of which are still unfulfilled, lain waste or overtaken by some other strategic mess caused by a change of government.

However, as I often say, let’s dig a bit deeper, especially to the main thrust of the sentence with the phrase “in a school that is educationally and financially sustainable”.

Sustainable

To be sustainable, they claim, rural primary schools should have more than 105 pupils, or more than 140 in an urban environment; post-primary students, in excess of 500, and post 16, 100.

To correct this, the EA has three key areas which they claim are certainly addressed. These are primary school classes where there are more than two year groups in composite classes, post-primary schools that don’t offer a broad and balanced curriculum, and sixth forms that have fewer than 100 children and do not offer a full range of A-levels or equivalents.

So how is all this going to be achieved? Under the innocuous title of “creating opportunities for change”, the EA has identified a four-part cunning plan, though that’s not what they call it.

The first of these, “collaboration”, already partially happens locally under the aegis of The Fermanagh Learning Community.

Here, students can move between schools to complete A-Levels in subjects not offered in their own school, or ‘host’ school, as it is sometimes rather peculiarly called.

This allows schools to offer subjects such as A-Level German, Politics and so on by shipping in students from other schools in pre-agreed slots.

The problem with that is that schools have now twigged that they can save on substantial sums of money by employing part-time teachers and forging ahead in-house.

This system works reasonably well, especially for the taxi drivers who ferry the kids to and from our local post-primaries and SWC.

The second strategy is to support integrated and Irish medium education.

In this area, the onus will be on these two relevant umbrella bodies, C na G and NICIE, to “provide guidance on innovative sustainable provision”.

Given the EA’s alacrity on supporting curricula, however, I don’t think either body will be rushing to their breakout rooms to navel gaze – not just yet.

The remaining two strands, supporting schools and communities, are a bit wishy-washy and hard to prove if work has been done or not.

I say this, as language such as “engaging with governors”, and carrying out “innovative area planning options” don’t exactly inspire confidence that these areas will be at the front of the queue.

So what of sustainability and how do the numbers stack up?

Minimum threshold

Across Northern Ireland, we have 220 primary schools below this minimum threshold of enrolment – just under a third of all primary schools in the province, in fact.

In the secondary sector, almost half the rural schools in NI have fewer than 500 students, 18 out of 37, while 32 urban schools out of 155 fail to meet the threshold.

The bottom line with this report is that the EA have now said in black and white that there are “still too many small/unsustainable schools”, going on to say “that may be some local circumstances where provision will be necessary but the determination of this will be subject to consultation, assessment and rationale for provision”.

In short, they will try to merge or close as many as they can get away with, all in a bid to save money, which they will then probably spend paying management consultants to make business cases to justify the study.

As for the data itself, on a NI basis, there are 75 primary schools in the province with fewer than 60 pupils, 167 with between 61 and 105 learners, 251 between 106 and 210, and falling off to 88 pupils for schools between 211 and 300.

The second-largest category comes next, 301 – 420 pupils, where there are 119 such schools before dipping off to just 16 schools in NI having pupils in excess of 631.

The key factor in all this is what it costs to educate a child.

In the first band, fewer than 60 schools, the average expenditure per pupil is £5,005 and teaching costs per pupil is £4,094.

By the time we get to the largest schools, it costs just over £3,000 per pupil, with teacher costs of under £2,500. By making schools larger, there is a clear savings cost of several thousand pounds per pupil.

Even by making small schools moderately-sized, merging two schools of around 65 pupils would very approximately save £120,000 per annum.

Costs

In the post-primary sector, it’s the same thing – more students mean more savings, with the costs being about 25 per cent higher than in the primary sector.

The 28-page light read ends with key targets, all based around making schools more sustainable, such as making them larger.

The words “encourage, facilitate and promote” are used a lot – a forewarning of things to come.

Should schools be worried? Possibly, especially the smaller they are.

These are cash-poor times, and any savings will be seized upon by the bean counters who, no doubt, will soon be baring their economic teeth. Let battle commence...