Private schools are ‘slowly and stealthily’ being excluded from Government grants, according to the principal of Dublin’s Alexandra College.
New figures suggest the cost of sending a child to a fee-paying school continues to rise in Ireland – with charges up between 5% and 17% across the country’s 50 private schools.
The increases are partially linked to inflation and rising energy costs but school principals are also warning that a shortfall in State funding is forcing them to hike prices.
Grants
On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, Alexandra College principal Barbara Ennis said private schools are being excluded from State supports.
“Private schools are being excluded from a number of grants - well, pretty much all grants - and it's been happening for the last 10 years, slowly and stealthily, by degrees,” she said.
“So we don't have access, at the moment, to the grant that is being rolled out for making the school a greener place to be and during the COVID pandemic we were excluded from the grants that were there until we made a case for ourselves, a very strong case with the assistance of the management body that we work with and the principles of fee-charging schools getting together and outlining why we felt it was not fair to exclude us from that particular grant.”
Fees
She said people who argue that parents who have €8,000 to spend on school fees should also have money to support the school have a “fundamental misunderstanding” of the system.
“For a person to pay €8,000 in fees, they have had to have earned that money and had tax paid on it and they've had to have made a choice to send their children to a fee-charging school like ours,” she said.
“There are so many parents who are willing to do that, that the numbers speak for themselves.
“The numbers attending fee-charging schools are growing and you know, to argue then that they have to subsidise other things on top of the fees is a very difficult argument to put out there.”
Private school
When it was put to her that private schools in the UK do not get any state support, she said they are very different to those in Ireland.
“I don't think you're comparing like with like because those schools are so incredibly inaccessible to the ordinary person on the street that they can't afford to even look at them, and the only way they can ever have a chance of attending a school like that is through a scholarship,” she said.
“Our fees compared to the UK are about one-third for the year and when you compare the fees of fully private schools in the United States, we are considered a bargain.
“So I don't think they are the same thing at all and the historical reason for this connection between State and private goes way back in time.
“It's to do with the fact that, at the beginning of the 20th Century, it was the religious orders who set up most of the schools without any subvention at all from the State and then as time progressed, the State gave money towards the schools to help them out - doing the right thing - and here we are today.”
She said opposition parties calling for an end to State supports for private schools will find it very hard to follow through on the policy should they find themselves in Government.
