Dear Madam, - Education was dominating the Agenda again in last week’s local papers. Is it any wonder? People are feeling let down by all in Education authority at the moment. There is too much sitting on the fence, or stating they are helping but doing nothing, by our political parties. Too much secrecy as well, when it comes to governing bodies.

If you belong to a specific school, eg board of governor member, of course you do your best for that school but not at the expense of the rest of the schools in the area. It seems the schools that need a new school, can’t see further than their own schools’ needs. So far I see no great hurry in that happening, meanwhile it is destroying the general school community and morale in those schools.

What is needed is for everyone who cares to come together from all schools including those from the Lisnaskea area, affected by the closure of the school a year and a half ago. At that time a lot of promises were made, but I don’t see many been achieved.

A meeting needs to be held in a neutral place, for all involved in this, from parents, Boards of governors, councillors, MLAs, ministers, headmasters/ headmistresses, church leaders and Protestant Board. To listen to the ideas of the community and others. Because either the community wasn’t loud enough in what they wanted or it fell on conveniently deaf ears.

I believe unless two schools that are to amalgamate totally agree, ie parents, children as well as everyone involved in the running of the school, it will not work. That has been very publicly seen this last two years, when all this came out first to the public.

There are ways this could be sorted out. Schools could agree to work together, eg in providing the number of subjects in the entitlement framework scheme, to which I believe schools are doing anyway. But they could keep as separate schools, with their own name, ethos and community. They could share teachers, resources and so on.

There is a great debate about numbers of pupils in schools in this whole saga. It is not the be all and end all. As we also have seen in the papers examples of successes were St Eugene’s College in Rosslea, where despite having a small enrolment in the school, they achieved remarkable results in last year’s GCSEs, down to a lot of support and hard work. Credit were credit is due. Well done.

Also we have St Mary’s in Brollagh, another success story, when support is there, great things can be achieved, without a large enrolment and no new school. Smaller can work and is working, so please keep that in mind, when big decisions are been taken.

In the papers also there was the continuing fight to Save St Mary’s Primary in Fivemiletown. Their aim is to keep their school open to keep the Catholic controlled maintained education alive in this community. I think this rings a bell to Lisnaskea High School’s battle as well, but yet again, no listening or action was seen for this. I look on with interest at the outcome of this decision next month, and good luck. Every area deserves to have both communities represented in an area. Or where is the shared space.

Also shared education was mentioned with the two Brookeborough Primary Schools pressing ahead with this idea. Nice photo of all the supporters also was shown. If this doesn’t go on after all that, we have no hope. So in summing everything up, we need full support from everyone. There is so much money involved in all these major changes, but if it is not the will fully of everyone, Then a new plan needs to be brought forward for the years ahead.

I recently read a report that stated that the people in their communities should be listened to more, because they were more aware and more interested in their schools to be the best they could be without a radical cull of so many. Especially in the South East Fermanagh Area where there was a report being looked at where the three CCMS post primary schools and Lisnaskea High School could look into a cross sectoral federal shared model in 2012/2013, to be published in April 2013. The sad thing was Lisnaskea High School’s Principal had already announced by 31st January 2013, just in time for open night, that it was closing by end of June 2013. Then followed a two month public consultation. with the outcome as we know to close it after one day from the decision.

This is where this report should have been listened to and acted upon. Instead of a very speedy closure for the sake of all concerned. Closing the school so speedily achieved so much less than if things had been looked into more carefully because there has been so little progress on a new school for Devenish yet. Things like this shared model are so important in this day in age, and should never be looked at as being too late. I would be interested in what the three CCMS schools in this area thought of this idea now, a year and a half later. They are all still here, thriving, while Lisnaskea High is not. How fair is that?

Yours faithfully, Name and address supplied