Scéimeanna Oideachais Dail Éireann — 2025-12-11 ============================================================ Michael Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West The programme for Government provides for a number of measures to support small schools, including the introduction of new national small school projects and training in new administrative supports. The Government is very aware that small schools are an important part of local communities and glue a community together, not just for the students and the school community but for generations to come as well. The current small schools action plan research, established in 2021, is due to conclude at the end of the next school year. The current small schools project is being implemented on a pilot basis to support collaboration and sharing of resources among small schools in rural areas. It also enables them to collaborate, identify common challenges and trial innovative solutions. Between them, the six clusters of small schools - two in Galway and one each in Donegal, Kerry, Wicklow and Waterford, respectively - consist of five schools per cluster. The feedback from the schools has been extremely positive. This is reflected in the interim evaluation report published by the Department. The independent review identifies potential areas for closer collaboration and an analysis of the scalability of actions already undertaken. As the project proceeds, a further evalution will take place. Learning from the crucial evaluation of this project will be invaluable and will form a strong basis to inform future policy directions in relation to all small schools, including how the programme for Government can be delivered. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-11/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:48+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-12-11