'We have to go cap in hand to our parents association': Cork primary schools on funding woes

Principals in Cork primary schools are having sleepless nights as they worry about paying mounting power and heating bills and overheads associated with maintaining ageing schools from the capitation grant, which was only restored to pre-austerity levels of €200 per student a year in June.

It had last been at €200 in 2012, before being reduced to €170.

Siobhán Buckley, principal of Millstreet Presentation NS and member of the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) executive said the reality for principals is that the expenditure on heating, power, and other overheads leaves them with no money to purchase educational resources for the pupils.

Ms Buckley detailed how the school had to pay an electricity bill of €18,000 to cover the last school year, from September 2023 to August 2024, and a heating bill of €10,000. This took well over half of their capitation grant of €49,000.

“Our main spending is on keeping the school open, keeping it heated, keeping it lit, keeping it maintained — there’s actually no money left to invest in the education material that’s so badly needed to implement the curriculum.”

“We have to go cap in hand to our parents association for fundraising — we fundraise ourselves, we have a coffee morning and other events — but that shouldn’t be the case.”

Ms Buckley spoke of meeting another Cork principal after a recent regional Into meeting who, she said, was “so distressed over the financial situation”.

“At the moment they are giving a once-off cost-of-living grant, but it comes nowhere near what’s needed — I think we got between €5,000-€6,000 last year, it’s nearly an insult.

“He was asking me, bottom line, was that grant coming because he was gone into the red. We really need to nurture these young principals, not to have them stressing out about stuff like this, because we will lose them, they will burn out and they will be gone.”

Ms Buckley raised these issues with the Sinn Féin leader, Mary Lou McDonald, during her visit to Millstreet on Wednesday.

Ms McDonald, who was accompanied by the party’s Cork North-West candidate, Nicole Ryan, said some of the concerns raised by the teacher would be addressed in Sinn Féin’s election manifesto, which is to be published on Tuesday.

“What can you get for €200 nowadays? Nothing,” Ms Ryan said. “It is nothing for a child for a full year.”

The principal of the Belgooly National School, Scoil Mhuire na nGrás, Diarmuid Hennessy, said insurance costs at his school had increased from €9,900 in January 2023 to €15,800 this year.

Mr Hennessy pointed to a comprehensive attitudinal survey of Irish Primary Principals Network (IPPN) members conducted by the Deacon University in Geelong, Australia, and presented to the IPPN annual conference in Killarney yesterday which found that 61.8% of principals said more funding and resources were needed.

“Principals are becoming preoccupied with basically making ends meet in terms of the basic utilities, let alone looking at educational resources and all of that,” said Mr Hennessy. 

“It’s causing a level of distress — it was identified in the research piece as the third major source of stress for school leaders in school — making ends meet.”