Are fee-paying schools good value for the State, or part of a toxic culture that links education to money?

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin: No. The toxic link between money and education has far-reaching effects

Education is the great liberator. It is the greatest weapon we have in ending life-limiting obstacles to individual greatness such as poverty, illiteracy and exclusion. A country that values education understands that it must be a collective endeavour to lift all of our boats, to empower all of our children, to dare to allow every individual to reach their potential regardless of background, race, religion or creed. It is not just the vehicle for economic or social advancement – it can free the mind and soul to experience true beauty and the best of what life can offer. Education, as my grandmother used to say, is no burden. More than that, it lifts burdens every day.

In Ireland, unfortunately, we have inherited a legacy of a toxic relationship between education and money. Ask your average parent about their child’s school experience and the conversation will inevitably turn to cash. It is the cultural expectation of Irish people that education and school life comes with a price tag. Reaching deep into our pockets for schoolbooks, uniforms, voluntary contributions, school trips, fundraisers and the dreaded grinds circus are all part of our collective understanding of how things should be. And therefore we are conditioned to believe that money and education are inextricably linked.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Finland, for example, has an education system based absolutely on equality. Every school is completely state-funded, with fees and fundraising totally outlawed. The entire political spectrum has bought into the educational revolution in Finland that began 50 years ago. There are no school inspections, teachers all have masters degrees and there is no competition between schools for enrolments. The results of this school experiment? Finland has an effective literacy rate of 100 per cent understandably one of the highest in the world. In Ireland 17.9 per cent of our adult population have functional literacy challenges. That’s one in eight who have difficulty reading.

Why the difference? Partially because progressive countries don’t believe in separating children. In Ireland we’re obsessed with it. We separate on the basis of gender, religion and income more than any other European country. And we fund fee-paying schools to the tune of approximately €110 million a year. Nothing perpetuates inequality quite like the Irish education system. Can we genuinely stand over a circumstance where money that could be prioritised elsewhere is being used to prop up schools that exclude those without deep pockets?

I am that deeply suspect Irish creature, a mother of an only child. It was by choice

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[ The hidden costs of private schools go well beyond basic fees ]

The influence of the fee-paying sector on public policy is profound. They lobby effectively and tend to get what they want. In 2018 when the School Admissions Bill was passing through the Houses of the Oireachtas, one particular section allowed greater admission rights to schools for the children and grandchildren of past pupils. This was inserted I understand at the behest of the fee-paying lobby so that the familial bloodlines could be maintained within their institutions for fundraising purposes. What if your parents or grandparents attended school in another part of the country, or indeed in another country? What if none of them had attended secondary school at all? The toxic link between money and education has far-reaching effects.

Imagine a system of such excellence that this impulse for exclusivity was made redundant, such as in Finland and other visionary jurisdictions. The State should prioritise schools who provide inclusive enrolment policies for children and young people regardless of ability, background or income. If an individual school wishes to exclude they can fund themselves, the State is under no obligation to facilitate them. It is true that the Department of Education does not pay capitation to fee-paying schools and the argument has persisted that in the event of withdrawal of State support, it would cost the exchequer more in the long run. However, the real cost is to a system that should embrace equality and one that invests in every student.

We can do better. Like Finland.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin is a former north inner city Dublin principal and is Labour’s spokesperson on education

Arthur Godsil: Yes. Fee-paying schools are an excellent example of a public-private partnership

The question of whether the State should support fee-charging secondary schools produces very strong opinions from those who oppose the continuation of fee-paying education and indeed its very existence. In the main, these arguments have been put forward with little understanding of how the system was conceived and continues today. And in some cases, political posturing and vote-garnering proclamations take precedence over a true examination of the reality of this uniquely Irish educational provision.

In 1966, when the then Minister for Education announced the intention to provide free secondary education up to the Intermediate Examination, not all educational leaders wished to subscribe to this radical development. They believed that the scheme would not adequately fund their schools, so the State allowed schools to continue to charge fees; however, these schools would not receive the capitation grants given to non-fee-charging schools.

Let’s examine the issues as they present themselves today. To put the whole argument into perspective, there are 728 post-primary schools in the State, of which 50 are fee-charging. The estimated cost to the State for the payment of the teachers’ salaries in these schools amounts to approximately €100 million. This represents less than 1 per cent of the total educational budget for this year. Or to put it in another way, more than 99 per cent of all State funding to schools does not go to fee-charging schools. In fact, funding to fee-charging schools has been repeatedly cut over the last 15 years and now it is predominantly only the salaries of the teachers that are paid.

The financial argument often put forward by opponents of State funding to fee-charging schools is that the funds “saved” could be used to provide additional supports where need existed. But this argument is patently ill-informed. The fact remains that the teachers will still have to be paid, and the students will still have to be educated. Removing the funding will no doubt place fee-charging schools in difficulty and many may well close their doors. In this scenario, the students will be redistributed to non-fee-charging schools, as will the teachers – and the cost to the State increases.

Under the current model, it costs the State a lot less to educate a student in a fee-charging school than in a non-fee-charging school. This stands to reason as parents, who also pay taxes, currently add approximately another €100 million to the schools by way of fees. So, in fact, it is the parents who – by exercising their right to choose - are actually subsidising education at present. In 2013, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) was commissioned to investigate this claim. The PwC report details that the total cost to the taxpayer of a student in a non-fee-charging school was €8,035, compared to €4,552 in a fee-charging school, a difference of €3,483. It is in fact a very beneficial arrangement for the State and could be seen as an excellent public-private partnership structure, already used by the State in road building, health and other areas.

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

Ultimately, the answer to this perennial question is not to focus on our fee-charging schools, but rather to work to increase the funding to all our schools. If all our schools were adequately funded, there would be few, if any, fee-charging schools, as is the case in many European countries. In Norway,which has a similar-size population, current education funding represents 13.1 per cent of GDP, whereas ours is 6.3 per cent – less than half.

Of course, some might say that all our schools are fee-charging, just to a lesser extent. As schools across the country strive to meet their growing educational demands, relying on less-than-satisfactory income, they are forced to resort to a system of voluntary contributions – acceptable for some, but by no means for all.

Arthur Godsil is former headmaster of St Andrew’s College and current director of Godsil Education