Madam, – I welcome the call by the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) for the withdrawal of State funding from fee-paying schools, some of which it is claimed are engaged in education discrimination, (“Fee-paying schools engaged in ‘apartheid’ ”, Home News, April 23rd). The TUI decision to demand an audit of admission policies for all schools, including the 56 fee-paying schools in the State, is welcome, as is its contribution to the perennial debate on the issue of hard- pressed Irish taxpayers subsidising private educational institutions of privilege to the tune of €100 million per annum.
Notwithstanding the meltdown in State finances, whenever the sensitive matter of taxpayer subsidies to private secondary schools surfaces, the formidable middle- class and the well-resourced recipient private schools rush to defend what is increasingly seen as the indefensible.
Since the introduction of free post-primary education in 1967, the decision on whether secondary schools decided to participate or not was discretionary. Those schools that opted to remain outside the State scheme and retain their lucrative private ethos are rewarded most generously by the Department of Education and receive much the same level of funding as those schools which opted to stay within the free scheme. There is not a shred of justification for this discriminatory practice to be allowed continue. Speaking at the INTO annual conference, Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn ruled out any reversal of cuts to special needs classes, saying there are no more resources available (Front page, April 26th)). Surely this €100 million given to private schools should be used for the less well-off and special needs children. Just like fee-paying private hospitals, which are profitable businesses, those secondary schools that opt to remain private must resource themselves.
Why should taxpayers, the vast majority of whom could never aspire to such a privileged education for themselves or their children, be expected to subsidise exclusive boarding schools for privileged minorities when children and teachers in State-run schools, many of which are in a state of disrepair, are having their funding severely reduced?
Seeing as these private secondary schools are faith-based, would their respective boards of management not consider the morality of taking taxpayers’ money to fund exclusive education at the expense of the less well off and those with special needs? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Why is the TUI talking about “educational apartheid”? (“Fee-paying schools engaged in ‘apartheid’,” April 23rd). Is it using the same script-writer as the Republicans in the US, who have labelled Obama a socialist tyrant? Michael McDowell called Richard Bruton Goebbels in 2006. Can we look forward to Ruairí Quinn as Neville Chamberlain, appeaser of the wicked private schools? Apartheid is bad. An “increasingly two-tier system” is bad. We should turn bad into good. What a debate. – Yours, etc,