Municipalities have escaped accountability for school crisis, union chief says

Municipalities have been allowed to avoid responsibility for what has been described as an emergency in education, according to Magnús Þór Jónsson, chairman of the Icelandic Teachers’ Union. He made the comments in an interview with mbl.is.

Municipalities are responsible for operating the country’s preschools and primary schools, Jónsson said. They are also responsible for systems used to assess schools, he said.

Jónsson appeared on the Dagmál programme with Jón Pétur Zimsen, a parliamentarian for the Independence Party, to discuss the state of education and measures to address the continuing decline in primary school pupils’ performance in PISA assessments.

Jónsson said he had written a paper several years ago comparing school spending with local tax revenue. The figures, which are now old, showed that spending on preschools and primary schools ranged from 28 per cent to 70 per cent of local tax revenue, depending on the municipality.

“This is the largest area of responsibility for a municipality, but when we hold municipal elections, very few municipal councils argue about it,” Jónsson said. He added that politicians were more likely to discuss planning matters, pavements or rubbish.

He said that when PISA results are released, education officials and municipal representatives who make decisions about schools should be involved in the discussion alongside national politicians.

“It would be good to have education directors, mayors or municipal council members who make decisions about their schools at the table, because they must not distance themselves from responsibility,” Jónsson said.

Jónsson said the monitoring systems introduced in education, including external evaluations of primary schools, had not received sufficient resources.

He said many schools and municipalities were investing substantially in some aspects of their work, although not necessarily all of them. However, he added that problems remained and that those responsible needed to be part of the discussion.