Last week’s Budget for 2012 set out new measures that will raise the pupil-teacher ratio in Ireland’s fee-paying schools to 1:21. But is the funding allocation shift a justified austerity measure against archaic institutions, or is it a knee-jerk response that merely restricts the right of access of protestant families to schools of their own faith?
Proponents of the cuts have claimed that private schools are elitist and self-serving, while others argue that these fee-paying schools actually ultimately cost the taxpayer less, and offer an essential alternative to public education.
Ian Coombes, Headmaster of Kilkenny College, examines the issue of private schools and the reality of Ireland’s education system.
Philanthropist Chuck Feeney believed that a good education was the most important thing that you could give anyone.
Most Irish parents agree, and rightly take great interest in choosing a school and monitoring progress of our children. Our Government has an unenviable task of trying to balance the books while keeping the essentials in the vital area of education.
We are dealing with a legacy of underinvestment in education, even during the ‘Tiger’ years, which is why families paid voluntary contributions and sometimes fees for schooling.
Newspaper articles, radio programmes, and RTE’s The Frontline special on how the State should treat fee-charging schools have raised issues of equity, cost to the taxpayer, and the rights of parents to choose enshrined in our Constitution. Issues such as privilege, restrictive enrolment policies, and exclusion of pupils with special needs have been loosely bandied about in that debate on ‘private education’.
In fact, the only purely ‘private’ schools are those institutions set up in major population centres over the last 25 years, which specialise in preparing students for State examinations. While vocational, community, and comprehensive schools are under various forms of public trusteeship and management, all secondary schools are privately owned and managed.
There are almost 400 secondary schools, of which 54 charge fees for tuition, a few charge for boarding and other non-tuition services such as meals, study, and activities – with the remainder asking for voluntary contributions from parents to help fund services. All are subject to inspection and are fully recognised by the Department of Education and Skills complying with all regulations.
The health service is heavily subsidised by citizens who pay for private health insurance in a sort of public-private partnership. A similar situation exists with the fee-charging schools, which are calculated by PriceWaterhouseCooper to be costing the taxpayer as much as €3,483 less per pupil each year than if the pupil or school became completely dependent on the State.
Kilkenny College is one of the 20 Protestant-managed secondary schools in the State which charges fees. The college has an inclusive policy, with 350 day pupils from Kilkenny city and county drawn from all backgrounds and faiths.
It caters for boys and girls, urban and rural, children of all abilities, interests, and backgrounds. We place special emphasis on pupils who need a little extra help and the broad programme on offer is especially relevant in such cases.
In the southeast and south midlands, Kilkenny College has a particular role as the only Church of Ireland school in the entire region. To fulfil that role to about 2,000 families in the hinterland, boarding remains an essential necessity to the Protestant community.
Boarders require not only tuition and accommodation, but careful attention to health, safety, child protection, nutrition, extra curricular activities, and supervision to name but a few of the daily needs. That requires a strong extra curricular programme in which day pupils also engage. Access is also enabled through the State Block Grant system, assistance from the trustees, the college, and other sources which help over half of the families with the costs.
Ever since free education was introduced in secondary schools over 40 years ago, the Protestant churches rationalised and amalgamated their second-level schools rapidly to attempt to cover a very scattered low density population. Kilkenny College has become the largest co-educational boarding school in Ireland to cater for the community.
The State agreed a modified approach for the remaining Protestant secondary schools, where equivalent state funding to the free scheme was provided with the additional cost borne by parents through fees. That system worked at little cost to the State up to 2008 – when then minister Batt O’Keeffe unilaterally changed the arrangement and decided that thereafter, Protestant secondary schools would be treated in the same way as fee-charging Catholic schools.
The difference of course is that for Protestant parents over most of the country, there simply is no choice provided by the State of a school of the same ethos.
Since 2008, parents who wish to attend the remaining fee-charging schools have seen their teacher allocation and grants cut to a greater extent than in other schools. When mention of the supposed €100 million State subsidy to fee-charging schools is made, such parents comment that it is they who have been subsidising the State since the cost to the taxpayer of keeping a child in the college is far less than that of going to a non-fee-charging school.
That differential was increased in last week’s budget, with the raising of the pupil teacher ratio to 21:1. Taken in conjunction with the removal of a guidance teacher allocation, and higher school transport costs in all schools, this represents a huge challenge for the schools, for parents – and will cost jobs.
In the current crisis, we are all required to make sacrifices to restore our country to solvency, sovereignty, and a return to prosperity. Parents simply ask for equality of funding for their children.
A liberal pluralist democratic republic has a responsibility to its minorities. A statement by Minister Ruairí Quinn (last week ) that he wishes to meet representatives of the Protestant secondary schools to discuss their situation is most welcome and encouraging.
