State primary schools must merge to save on costs

The National Audit Office has called for a comprehensive study by the Education Directorate over dwindling class sizes in state primary schools, and the infrastructural and staffing costs associated with smaller classrooms.

The NAO also said that new strategies had to be developed for the use of government-owned properties currently used as primary schools, since these assets constitute substantial financial and social value.

The NAO study proposed a phased amalgamation of state primary schools, in a bid to make the government-funded educational sector more efficient.

“Smaller class sizes are conducive to diseconomies of scale, which ultimately inflates costs related to the running of primary schools,” the NAO said in the report.

“The question arises as to whether it remains feasible to operate a state primary school in almost every town and village across Malta and Gozo. To date, however, the Education Directorates have not embarked on comprehensive financial evaluations of the various options available to address issues arising from low populated primary schools.”

Demographic shifts were the main factor leading to a continuously changing demand for state primary school services. Coupled with the historical practice of maintaining a state primary school in almost every town and village, this has resulted in operating low population schools with classes having a low number of students, resulting in higher costs per student.

Instead the ministry for education has mainly focused on the building of new schools to address excessive demand in some localities, such as the recently constructed primary school in Pembroke, and similar initiatives planned at Marsaskala and St. Paul’s Bay.

During scholastic year 2013-2014, the total expenditure for the operation of primary schools, including the pre-primary levels, amounted to over €68 million. Around 94 per cent of these costs were attributable to personal emoluments of teaching and non-teaching grades. Annual operational costs ranged from €2,660 to €9,162 per student.

“The higher costs materialize through the resultant diseconomies of scale associated with classes having a significantly lower number of students than the maximum permitted by law for the various educational levels or the national class-size average, which during the scholastic year amounted to 16 students.”

The report concluded that there was no correlation between the number of students in each classroom and the standardized average scores attained by Years 4, 5 and 6 students in three core subjects, namely Maltese, Mathematics and English. This conclusion is similar to other studies conducted by the Department for Education (United Kingdom), which focused on class size in primary schools within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.