STATE FUNDING for fee-paying schools appears secure for the foreseeable future after Minister for Education Mary Coughlan ruled out any change in current arrangements.
The issue has been controversial because of the Government’s €100 million support for fee-paying schools, while the most recent enrolment figures suggest continued strong demand from parents for places in this sector.
Ms Coughlan said she regarded the issue as settled and she had no plans to change current funding arrangements.
More than 26,000 pupils are enrolled in the State’s 51 fee-paying schools. Most charge about €6,000 for day pupils and more than €12,000 for boarders.
Ms Coughlan said State support for the fee-paying sector was a long-standing practice. “The situation is that teachers [in these schools] have been paid since the 1960s. The policy has been set and has been alluded to by my predecessor Mary Hanafin. I’m not changing that policy.”
The Minister noted, however, that budget cuts in the pupil teacher ratio had been deeper for fee-paying than those in the State sector. State-run schools are entitled to one teacher for every 19 pupils; in fee-paying schools, however, the pupil/teacher ratio was increased to 1:20.
The Department of Finance backed a 50 per cent cut in State support for fee-paying schools in its submission to the McCarthy group earlier this year. It said savings of €47 million could be achieved by significantly increasing the staffing schedule for fee-paying schools to the level where one teacher was only provided for every 38 students.
Ms Coughlan was speaking at the annual conference of the Joint Managerial Body, which represents the management of over 400 secondary schools.
Surprisingly, the economic downturn has had little impact on student numbers at these schools. Total enrolment has only declined marginally in the past decade. Some of the best known schools including Belvedere College and Blackrock College in Dublin have seen pupil numbers increase in recent years.
In all, private fee-paying schools enjoy a fee income of over €100 million per year. In addition, they received more than €100 million in support from the taxpayer in 2008/9. An additional €2.1 million in support was provided for capital or building works in 17 fee-paying schools last year.
With teacher salaries paid by the State, many fee-paying schools enjoy much better facilities than their counterparts in the free second-level sector.
These better facilities and the prestige attached to fee-paying schools help to explain the surge in private education in the past decade. Fee-paying schools have also traditionally dominated the list of top feeder schools for third level.
But the most recent Irish Timeslist showed that the gap between the performance of fee-paying and non-fee-paying second-level schools is narrowing.
Some 33 of the top 50 feeder schools in the State for 2009 were not fee-paying.
Many educationalists are critical of State support for private education at a time when the Department of Education is cutting the number of special needs assistants. The Teachers’ Union of Ireland has also accused some fee-paying schools of operating restrictive admission policies. It says State support should be withdrawn from these schools.
But defenders of the system say parents are entitled to choice. They say less State support would mean higher fees, forcing students into State schools at a greater cost to the exchequer.