NATIONAL school enrolments in west Limerick have fallen and a survey predicts that the region will lose I4 teachers in the year 2000.
The results of the survey of 16 schools by the Shannonside Primary Schools Association were presented to a meeting in Foynes this week attended by more than 400 people, including politicians.
Schools surveyed were at Askeaton, Foynes, Kildimo, Pallaskenry, Shanagolden, Glin, and Adare Church of Ireland primary school.
Mr Paddy Fulham, the principal of Shanagolden primary school who presented the survey, said enrolments would continue to fall in all of the schools.
"Teachers will be redeployed and teach in other schools but the children will have lost a teacher. The remaining staff will try to ensure that children will continue to receive the best possible quality of education. As a result of losing a teacher, classes must be split, doubled or made into multigrade units which can frequently mean a class size becomes bigger and the age gap between pupils is widened," he said.
This made individual tuition impossible and raised the possibility of school closure. "There must be an end to the antirural bias which has resulted in the closure of post primary schools, post offices and Garda stations and will ultimately result in the closure of primary schools, which may well be the final death knell for communities," he said.
There had to be official acknowledgment of rural disadvantage, he said. Taking teachers from rural disadvantaged schools for urban disadvantaged schools had to be the classic example of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
The survey showed that only one school had a secretary on a temporary FAS scheme. Eight schools had caretakers on temporary FAS schemes and that service would end when the scheme expired.
Four schools did not have any remedial teacher. All the others had a remedial teacher on a shared basis only.
Seven schools had at least one group with 30 pupils or more in the one classroom. One school had 35, and two had 36. One school had a split class with 42 pupils in it.
The association is to campaign to "ensure that our children have a better standard of education for the future and to do away with the rural disadvantaged primary schools".