Should the State continue to provide €112m a year to private schools?

Should the State continue to provide more than €100 million-a-year to the fee-charging school sector?

As enrolments in the sector climb to a new high, it is a question which goes to the heart of a political debate which has been gathering momentum among Opposition political parties.

Earlier this month the Labour Party, which supports phasing out State funding of private schools over time, criticised the provision of €3.6 million in school building costs for the sector.

“Education is supposed to be the great equaliser,” said Labour’s education spokesman, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin TD. “The Government is abjectly failing in this. The cost of building works for private schools should be consistently zero. I am calling for the Minister for Education to end the practice of subsidising private schools.”

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Sinn Féin also says it is the party’s policy to “phase out State subsidies to fee-paying schools over a number of years”.

The Government parties, meanwhile, appear happy with current arrangements where fee-charging schools receive about €110 million a year from the State in the form of salaries for teachers, special needs assistants and other grants.

Under this policy, private schools receive proportionately less funding than schools in the “free sector” on the basis that fee-charging schools have access to financial reserves which other schools do not.

This has been policy since 2009, following an outcry over the State’s funding of the sector in the context of austerity-era cost cutting.

[ Private school numbers climb to highest on record ]

For example, while teachers are provided by the State at a rate of one teacher for every 19 pupils in the free sector, it rises to one teacher for every 23 pupils in the fee-charging sector. They also receive reduced guidance and counselling allocations, and are ineligible for a range of capital grants. (The bulk of the controversial €3.6 million in school building costs for the sector last year, it turned out, was to expand a private school in advance of joining the free education sector).

The fee-charging school sector, on the other hand, argues that neither policy is sustainable.

The Joint Managerial Body, which represents voluntary secondary schools, argues that fee-charging schools are a successful example of public-private partnerships and are a net contributor to the economy.

It says most parents opting for such schooling make sacrifices based on their belief in education and their children’s future.

“The Government’s decision to reduce funding for teachers in fee-charging schools will ultimately force the State to provide for students, and indeed whole school communities, in the ‘free scheme’ at an even greater cost,” it says.

“There is no such thing as ‘free’ education – either the State pays, or parents pay. Schools in the fee-charging sector, where parents pay much more, save the State money.”

It says if the parents of the 27,000 young people currently being educated in fee paying schools, transfer their children to free education schools, the State will not only have to pay the teachers’ salaries, but also the capital costs for buildings, capitation grants for the running of the schools, in addition to extra teachers’ salaries as the pupil teacher ratio in free education schools is lower than in fee-charging schools.

“All funds contributed by parents in the form of fees are ploughed back into the school in terms of buildings, facilities and the employment of personnel to run the facilities available in the school,” the JMB says.

“The State is not asked to contribute in any way to the construction or provision of the school’s facilities. Many schools service large mortgages to meet the debt incurred in developing the campus.”

Despite headwinds and school closures, meanwhile, the sector has proved remarkably resilient.

Enrolments in fee charging schools rose steadily in the late 1990s and 2000s, but dipped in the years following the 2008 economic crash. Several private schools subsequently closed or joined the free scheme.

In recent year numbers have been on the rise again with enrolments climbing to more than 27,000. However, it has not been able to keep pace with a huge increase in student numbers across the second level system, with the private sector’s proportion of pupil numbers falling from almost 8 per cent to 6.5-7 per cent.

Whether the sector can withstand political headwinds – and the threat of a withdrawal of State funding – over the coming years is another matter.