Sir, - I greatly admire Fintan O'Toole's contributions to your paper. I deplore, however, his prejudice against what he pejoratively describes as "exam factories", "grind schools", and "commercial results factories" (Opinion, March 20th). Most of the new-style private colleges were set up about 25 years ago in response to inadequacy in the educational system, basically a shortage of university places. This meant that candidates for the limited number of places had to compete through the Leaving Certificate to get the "points" necessary for admission to their chosen courses. The State failed to provide an adequate number of places in third-level education. Private enterprise stepped in to take commercial advantage by playing the system as the State decreed it - nothing wrong with that!
In the case of my two children, the traditional education system may have made them "well rounded" (to use Mr O'Toole's description) but it severely inhibited their future careers inasmuch as their efforts in the Leaving Certificate were quite inadequate to attain the further education they sought.
Each spent a year with one of the new private colleges. Each raised performance in the subsequent Leaving Cert exam by one grade in four subjects and two grades in one subject. My daughter was offered an athletics scholarship to an American university and successfully completed a four-year degree course. My son obtained his first-choice engineering course at his university of first choice and proceeded to a first-class honours degree in the minimum time. The private college unlocked the potential of both, and for this I am grateful.
Private colleges are here to stay simply because they are needed. They are first-class employers; they are lively and responsive to the needs of the educational situation; they provide competition (which is always desirable); they have moved well beyond being cramming establishments; they meet the needs of demanding customers. It is time the prejudice directed at them ceased. - Yours, etc.,
F.W. Peard, Primrose Lane, Lucan, Co Dublin.