On Monday, as Minister for Education Helen McEntee stood at a podium in a Dublin primary school to launch the State's new and ambitious primary school curriculum, it was difficult to ignore the smell of damp that pervaded the hall, and the state of the ceiling above her head.
The new syllabus goes big on PE - doubling the time to be spent on the subject and emphasising the importance of movement and physical health for children - but the 'PE hall' Helen McEntee stood in told a different story, its ceiling tiles ringed with multiple brown water stains, small and large.
The walls too, looking recently painted but already stained by water that must have poured through the ceiling and dripped down the walls; this staining evident along the entire length of the hall.
Scoil Mhuire Gan Smál leases the hall from the local Catholic church.
"The roof has leaks all over it. The [State’s] minor works grant is not enough to repair it, and we can’t afford to renovate it," principal David Gough told me.
After the launch of the new curriculum, parents at the school spoke to me as they cleared away the tea and coffee and cakes that had been laid out for the visiting dignatories.
They told me how they had fundraised with sponsored hikes, pancake Tuesdays, halloween dress-ups, craft sales, raffles, and Christmas bake sales, to purchase chairs and tables for the school’s classrooms.
They were at pains to point out that no family was put under any pressure to give money. This is a DEIS band 1 school and money, for many parents, is in short supply.
This school is not alone in having to fundraise to find money to pay for the most basic and necessary of items.
To these schools the picture painted in a letter that primary school patron bodies, trade unions and child-focussed charities have sent to Helen McEntee is a familiar one; the fact that heating bills have risen by more than 80% since 2019, that refuse costs have risen by more than 50%. Primary schools that managed well in the past are now struggling.
"Our minor works grant was €11,000," Mr Gough said. "We spent €17,000 painting half of the school this summer. And then there is the plumbing, tiling, bathroom repairs, as well as any other classroom expenses."
The new primary curriculum is the fourth since the State was founded. It has been hailed by the Department of Education as "the most comprehensive transformation of primary education in over a generation".
"This is a view that we would strongly share," Seamus Mulconry of the Catholic Primary School Managers Association said. "But schools can’t focus on a new curriculum if all their focus is on fundraising."
Of the new and ambitious curriculum, he said: "This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, but if we want to see it properly implemented then schools need to be resourced."
