Sligo Grammar School, the only Protestant-run secondary school west of the Shannon, prides itself on the breadth of its school experience.
Its 490 day pupils and boarders have a wide choice of subjects, access to a range of extracurricular activities including rugby, canoeing and horse-riding, as well as access to guidance counselling and special needs supports.
The school, however, says it has had to hike its fees this year – up 19 per cent to €4,900 for day pupils, and 10 per cent to €11,700 for boarders – in the face of rising costs and exclusion from a growing array of Department of Education grants.
“In this academic year, there’s been the loss of the free books scheme, we’ve been refused the grant towards solar panels for schools,” says principal Michael Hall. “The last in the long line of cuts. The most recent one which means we’re not getting assistance for the refurbishment or upgrading of science rooms in order to provide for the new Leaving Certificate science programme.”
Sligo Grammar isn’t alone. An Irish Times analysis shows fees across most of the private school sector are rising with significant year-on-year increases. Annual fees for day pupils now range from more than €4,000 to almost €14,000.
The most expensive fees for day pupils are at Glenstal Abbey in Limerick, where fees for “day boarders” – who have access to meals and evening study – are €13,933. The next highest is St Columba’s College in Dublin 16 (€10,770), followed by the King’s Hospital in Dublin 20 (€8,910) and Alexandra College, Dublin 6 (€8,726).
For boarding schools, fees are highest at St Columba’s College (€28,966), Clongowes Wood College, Co Kildare (€27,957) and Rathdown School, Glenageary, Co Dublin (€23,400).
The Department of Education says fee-charging schools generally do not get any State grants towards their running costs. This is on the basis that they can rely on their additional income in the form of fees to hire additional staff.
[ Taxpayer subsidising private schools by more than €140m a yearOpens in new window ]
This, a department spokesman said, was why the State paid the salaries of one teacher for every 23 pupils in private schools compared with one teacher for every 19 pupils in schools in the free education scheme.
It is also the basis of why the department is not paying grants such as free schoolbooks and funding for science laboratories to the private sector.
However, Barbara Ennis, principal of Alexandra College, a private all-girls school in south Dublin, said it meant taxpaying parents of children attending private schools were being financially penalised because of their education choices.
She said decisions to exclude State funding for science labs or reduce the allocation of career guidance counsellors in the fee-charging sector were unfair, especially when educational services related to student wellbeing.
Michael Hall also said rising costs were placing an unfair burden on the shoulders of parents with a Church of Ireland background, especially, given their limited schooling options.
“We’re here primarily to serve a rural, minority faith community,” he says. “For those families, if they wish their children to attend a school with their religious ethos, then they have to go boarding. And in order to facilitate that, we have to have fees.”
While fees are rising across most private schools, they remain significantly cheaper than those in the UK.
This is because UK private schools do not receive State funding and rely entirely on fees for their income. As a result, the cost of sending a child to the most prestigious fee-charging schools over there is in excess of £50,000 (€60,335).
So, why is the system so different in Ireland?
The roots of the policy go back more than 50 years when free second-level education was introduced.
At the time, most schools charged for enrolment but then minister for education Donogh O’Malley invited them into the “free scheme”.
This involved additional exchequer funding for schools in return for ceasing to charge fees. While most did so, a number of voluntary secondary schools opted to remain outside the free scheme from the outset, believing that State funding was not sufficient.
The department effectively granted each of these schools a licence to continue to charge fees, but within a context of universal free access being available.
This system persists today, but the funding model is a source of charged political debate. Sinn Féin and Labour pledged to phase out grant aid for the sector in their recent general election manifestos, on the basis that it perpetuates privilege and the money could be invested elsewhere. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have no such plans.
Nonetheless, many private schools worry that any move to phase out State funding would be “catastrophic” for schools and parents.
“If they do that, we just won’t be able to function,” said one principal of a Dublin-based private school. who asked not to be identified. “During the election, some politicians came knocking on my door. I just said, ‘leave us alone’. I fully accept that we’re fee-charging and don’t get access to the same funding. But if they stop paying for our teachers, it would close us down. It’s a simple as that.”
