Private schools: are they worth it?

The scramble for private education continues despite the recession and the fact that some 'free' State schools perform just as well academically. So why do parents fork out for private schools?

IT’S THE FIRST week of school at Presentation College in Bray, Co Wicklow, and four recent graduates are gasping through a tour of their old school’s new facilities. “You’d almost want to repeat,” says Harry Barrett, who is 19, admiring a language lab lined with freshly unpacked Apple iMacs. A transition-year class is being led out to a sailing lesson, there’s a new AstroTurf pitch behind the building and the light wells illuminating the hallway make it feel like a modern third-level institute.

“There’s a belief that the more you pay, the better it is,” says Gerry Duffy, the school’s exuberant principal. “It’s rarely based, particularly not in education, on any sort of reality. I wouldn’t agree that fee-paying schools have ever necessarily offered better physical facilities. They certainly don’t offer better teaching.”

The new look of Pres Bray, a nonfee-paying school, has required patience. The school applied for Department of Education funding in December 1999, Duffy says, and upgraded the specifications in places through saving, borrowing and fundraising. But even before the new facilities appeared, the four recent graduates on today’s tour (all of whom achieved more than 500 points in the Leaving Cert) say their education wasn’t restricted and there was nothing others had that they didn’t. “If you have the right attitude to your work, it doesn’t really matter where you are,” says Barrett.

Though Duffy likens the scramble for private education in south Dublin to that for Gucci handbags during the Celtic Tiger, this week it emerged that several fee-paying schools have increased their enrolments and fees. The demand appears to have continued despite the recession and despite feeder-school lists showing that, in affluent areas, “free” State schools can perform just as well.

A recent report based on the performance of 15-year-olds in maths, as part of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, questioned the value of school fees, though critics have cast doubt on the finding. It showed the sample from private schools scored significantly higher than pupils from public schools, although not if the school’s selection policy was “accounted for properly”. Given the study’s limited scope and its assumption that less-able pupils are more likely to attend public schools, it’s difficult to draw firm conclusions.

“The first thing to ask is what do parents want? What do they think they’re buying?” says Dr Kevin Denny of the Geary Institute at University College Dublin, who has researched second-level academic performance among pupils from different social groups. “If you can’t judge the quality of a school, then you may think the more expensive one is probably better. And if you can afford it, you’re likely to play safe. We know intuitively there are good schools and bad schools, but once you control for demographics there really isn’t much difference between public and private. If you’re buying into a certain social milieu that’s important to you, fair enough. But if it’s just academics that matter, it’s not necessarily such a good deal.”

So what are parents getting for their money?

Wesley College, in Ballinteer, close to the Dublin Mountains, costs €5,560 a year. Christopher Woods, the principal, says the fees cover the school’s extracurricular programme, as well as amenities such as the dining room and having a nurse on campus. There has always been a demand for Wesley College, he says, as the classes are smaller, the facilities are usually better and the school has an excellent reputation. In 2010, all 138 final-year students went on to third-level education.

The school has just increased its first-year intake from 150 to 167 pupils by bringing in a seventh stream, partly because the school feels an obligation to the siblings of previous students who have applied.

“We’re the only Methodist school in the country,” says Woods. “As one of the very few Protestant schools, there’s a different ethos here, which they won’t get elsewhere.”

Carin Hunt, who has just graduated from Wesley to earn a place studying law at Oxford, says it was mainly the facilities that set it apart from other schools. “Teachers can be brilliant no matter where they are,” she says. “It would be unfair to say you do better at a fee-paying school automatically. It’s more important to have an academic atmosphere, and that ethos doesn’t really come from paying or not paying.”

Sion Hill in Blackrock, Co Dublin, a nonfee-paying school surrounded by fee-paying schools, relies on teachers to provide extracurricular activities voluntarily. That they don’t earn anything extra, even for expenses, shows a commitment that bolsters the rapport between students and teachers, according to principal Sheila Drum.

“We have to make sure the standards are very high, because people are looking at you and wondering, Am I really going to get the same education in this school? I always say, ‘What you see is what you’ll get.’ Obviously there are things we cannot give. But we’re honest about it.”

Despite a tight budget, Drum is passionate about the school’s open-door policy and says the education and facilities students receive are excellent.

“We would have been one of the schools that suffered, if that’s the word, during the Celtic Tiger times. There wasn’t a huge demand in the last number of years; we wouldn’t have had the waiting lists that others had, but we do now, because we’ve proven ourselves. I’m sure the perception that you do not get the same quality education at a nonfee-paying school is still there, but it’s not as strong as it once was. The recession may have changed things a bit.”

It’s late afternoon at Castleknock College, in northwest Dublin, and teenagers are streaming off the rugby pitches towards a car park teeming with SUVs. There are five new floodlit tennis courts, and a basketball arena is going up this month. In the chapel-like library, pupils can borrow DVDs, browse the Economist, or grab a copy of Homer’s Odyssey from the “quick reads” stand. Outside, the spacious greens seem fit for a student population greater than 567.

“Our intake has gone up because we’re delivering,” says Oliver Murphy, the school’s principal. “Even though parents are examining what they’re spending their money on, people will still say their most precious expenditure is their children’s education. It’s more important than holidays or an extension into the garden. For the vast majority of our intake, it’s not easy sending them here. It’s not because they have loads of money. It’s a decision made taking the price into consideration. This is not a school for the super rich where €5,000 just drops out of their back pocket.”

There’s no urgency for places, Murphy says, though there is at least one student signed up for 2022. The school’s fees of €5,160 allow for the employment of 12 extra teachers above the State allocation; last year Castleknock College received €2.1 million of the State’s €100 million subvention of private schools.

Murphy says if subvention was removed and fee-paying schools closed down as a result, it would cost taxpayers an additional €100 million per year. “Education in fee-paying schools gets extra money because parents are willing to add that into the education system. Why should they be stopped from doing it? It would not be for the betterment of education in Ireland if that day came about. It’s like saying the State should close the M50 because it’s unfair on people who don’t own cars.”

MANY PARENTS DON’T HAVE a choice of schools, either financially or geographically.

Bernadette Ryan, a mother of two from Ranelagh, in Dublin, would have sent her son to a nonfee-paying boys’ school in the area if there was one. Ultimately she opted for nearby Sandford Park because of its class sizes and nondenominational status. “I figured that if I was going to suffer the pain of paying fees – and believe me it was painful – I was going to find a smaller school that suited him,” she says. “But another thing about this neighbourhood is that [often] if you don’t have your kid’s name down for secondary school in junior infants, you don’t get in.”

The only option for a nonfee-paying girls’ school for Ryan’s daughter, she says, was Muckross Park College, in Donnybrook, which regularly features highly in the Irish Times feeder-schools list, as do the non-fee-paying Gaelscoileanna Coláiste Íosagáin and Coláiste Eoin, in Booterstown, south Co Dublin.

Ryan says the biggest difference between fee-paying and nonfee-paying is communication, but she says the ideal would be more nonfee-paying schools for boys with the spirit of Muckross and more public schools managed along the lines of Sandford. “Of course the fees have to help, but the nonfee-paying schools are just as capable,” she says. “I think it comes down to school size, the principal’s leadership and the dedication of the staff. But you’re not going to get 100 per cent dedicated staff in any school.”

Eoin English, a teacher who has worked in a range of both fee-paying and nonfee-paying schools in Dublin, Carlow and Wicklow, says that while location and enrolment policies can drive a school’s academic record, he believes parents are more likely to take an active interest in their child’s education at a fee-paying school.

“The threat of involving a parent in any sort of disciplinary issues [at a fee-paying school] is usually quite effective,” he says. “There are plenty of exceptions, but it could be the case at a nonfee-paying school that the parents won’t care or the kids won’t care. I qualify that by saying I’ve worked in some pretty rough schools.”

Though English says some fee-paying schools can represent a bargain relative to their UK equivalents, it can be a different story for children with special needs, even those from middle-class backgrounds. “There’s definitely a perception, backed up by hard fact, that nonfee-paying schools will provide far better to children with special education needs. Whereas fee-paying schools, despite what they say, actively distance themselves from that.”

A prospectus and raw statistics do little to gauge a good school, says Clive Byrne, the director of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals. “It’s the happiness of the children and the outcomes achieved, and you can’t only measure those in exam grades.”

Byrne, who was principal of the fee-paying St Mary’s in Rathmines, Dublin 6, and also taught at the non-fee-paying Presentation College Glasthule, Co Dublin, says schools with modest numbers progressing to third-level are often the ones doing most in terms of added value when you take into account where the students are starting from. But finding the right school, of either type, can take time.

“The best thing to do is interrogate, in the nicest possible way, what the school can do for your child. Speak to the principal, look at the resources, the subjects on offer, the parents’ council, the school council, and get a tour from a fourth- or fifth-year student. There are no guarantees, but the important thing is to find the right fit.”

Fee-paying schools contacted in Cork, Limerick and Wexford did not return calls; nor did others in Dublin.

'Educational apartheid'? Fees in the spotlight

For decades, private fee-paying schools have operated under the radar of Irish society, without much public scrutiny. All that changed during the boom, when enrolment rose by up to 35 per cent as the middle class, especially in Dublin, deserted the Christian Brothers and opted for something with greater prestige.

More than 26,000 pupils are enrolled at the State’s 51 fee-paying schools. Most charge about €6,000 for day pupils and more than €12,000 for boarders. Ireland is one of the few countries where the State pays the salaries of teachers in private schools, at a cost of more than €100 million. This allows fee-paying schools to use their considerable fee income (also about €100 million a year) to boost their range of services and facilities.

In its own way, the emergence of the iconic Ross O’Carroll-Kelly reflects private education’s move from the margins to the mainstream of Irish life. As this has occurred, more awkward questions have begun to be asked about private education. Should it be subsidised by taxpayers? Are private schools guilty of restrictive admission policies? How can religious orders continue to justify this privileged education for the elite?

Some see private schools as one of the last bastions of privilege in a more egalitarian, meritocratic society. The Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) has even accused some fee-paying schools of “educational apartheid”. The union says State funding should be withdrawn from private schools that pick the best pupils and exclude immigrants and those with learning needs.

There is pressure, too, from other, more unexpected quarters. Increasingly, Catholic groups are questioning the church’s role in private education. Traditionally, Catholic groups have defended their role on the basis that they are imparting Christian values to the “leaders of tomorrow”. But this looks a bit thin when one reflects on the behaviour of corporate Ireland in recent years. Can anyone reasonably claim that the business class, most of them educated in fee-paying schools, have stronger morals?

Increasingly, these wider questions about the role of private education are gaining traction among the political class. Three years ago the Department of Education imposed larger class sizes on private second-level schools than on their counterparts in the State sector. It was a small but significant step, the first time official Ireland had targeted the sector.

During the election campaign there were indications the new Government would see private education in a harsher light when Labour leader Éamon Gilmore signalled radical change, expressing concern about a “two-tier” system. But since then there has been no indication that Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn is exercised about State support for the sector. To the surprise of some, he has been broadly supportive of current arrangements. But a future minister might take a different view.

This week’s figures show that parents care little about the wider political issues relating to private education. The recession has scarcely dented the fee-paying schools’ popularity, and enrolment is at record levels at some of them. Many have lengthy (and growing) waiting lists for admission.

Lindsay Haslett, warden of St Columba's College in Dublin says, "I believe that parents are willing to make enormous personal financial sacrifice to give their children the best start they can in life. They're prepared to forgo foreign holidays and new cars to invest in their children's future. They see our academic results are outstanding, but equally important is the all-round, balanced education they get." - Seán Flynn, Education Editor