Schools and education more broadly lie at the heart of a people-centred approach to rural policy, as they play an important role for the cohesion of rural communities and are a key pillar of the local provision of public services (OECD – Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development , 2020[1]). The quality and accessibility of rural education have a double role to play in addressing gaps in skills: starting from children’s early years, high-quality education and care can help raise outcomes in education and the labour market. At the same time, access to public services, such as childcare and schools, is a locational factor shaping the attractiveness of rural areas, including for highly skilled workers.
Access to high-quality education in rural areas can be one of the contributing factors to local economic development and help rural communities adapt to a fast-changing environment, while a lack of access risks widening the rural-urban divide with regard to the level and relevance of skills through multiple channels. The school closures and restrictions of movement that were put in place in response to the COVID-19 health crisis highlighted again how fundamental education services are not only for students’ development but also to allow parents to pursue their own employment. They also brought to the fore different levels of digitalisation within and across countries, facilitating or hindering distance learning.
In view of demographic change and dwindling population figures in rural areas across the OECD, the financial viability of providing high-quality education close to people’s place of residence is increasingly put into question as economies of scale falter. This challenge is not unique to education: other public services like health care provision also have to explore how to reconcile rural populations’ needs with the cost of maintaining hospitals for ever fewer patients and amidst shortages of qualified staff. Countries and regions take different approaches to manage the tensions between constitutional obligations related to service provision and day-to-day challenges in doing so in a feasible way. The question of how to make schools with small and/or decreasing student enrolment ready for the future lies at the heart of the policy debate about education provision in rural and remote areas.
While there are many important policy issues to consider for rural early childhood education, vocational education and training and rural students’ later potential higher education pathways, the present chapter focuses on mainstream primary and secondary education. Those levels are compulsory across OECD countries and thus the state has to ensure access to schools for students in a way that is accessible from their homes. As students in primary and most of secondary education are limited in their geographic mobility, especially in remote areas, the school they attend will largely be determined by the location of the home of their parents or guardians. Given the lack of alternatives, rural and remote schools, therefore, have a unique responsibility for the educational opportunities of children and youth in those areas.