By Claire Corrigan
A local primary school principal this week drew attention to what he perceives as a worrying trend of late and spoke to Topic about his concerns that there will be 120,000 fewer children in primary schools in ten years’ time.
“Numbers are going down all across the country,” Matt Melvin, Principal of St. Etchens’ Primary School in Kinnegad told us this week.
He said that while he firmly believes the biggest challenge facing mankind right now is global warming, he also believes the “next biggest challenge is depopulation.”
Mr Melvin said the number of children in this country is “declining rapidly and the number of children enrolling in schools is declining rapidly.”
“We had 95 children in sixth class last year and 39 children in junior infants and we will have about the same number this year.”
