Madam, - Brian Hayes (Head To Head, December 1st) cites two reasons for his defence of fee-paying schools. The first reason is that it would cost more to cut funding to the schools than it would be to maintain the existing system. The second reason is that there could be difficulties posed by guarantees under Article 42 of the Constitution. I am not a constitutional lawyer so I will not comment on the latter reason.
On the cost issue, it is interesting to reflect on how Fine Gael policy on school funding has changed since the publication in the 1960s of the much-vaunted Just Society policy documents. At that time, Fine Gael advocated a system that would avoid "the dangers of creating a rigid line between free schools and fee-paying schools" (Just Society Document, Part 3 Education, Section 113).
The document also stated: "We have been fortunate hitherto that our secondary education system is not divided on a class basis in the clear-cut way that the English system is" (Section 106). Forty years on, we now have a Fine Gael spokesperson on education advocating the continuance of a system that is much more socially divisive and financially privileged than that which exists in England or in any other European state.
The real problem with fee-paying schools, as with private hospitals, is that they enable our better-off citizens to opt out of the State system at a greatly reduced cost because the private systems are underwritten by the State. This policy also ensures the silence of a potentially powerful lobby group, frequently bonded by the networking provided by these institutions, from demanding better services for all our citizens.
Recent events should show us that society is something more than an economy and that everything should not be reduced to monetary values. Private fee-paying schools are an anachronism in a modern European society and should only be tolerated where the total cost is provided by the beneficiaries. - Yours, etc,
Madam, - I don't know where Kieran Allen (Head To Head December 1st) would wish to place himself on his 100-metre dash to the bottom but he would be well advised to tie up his logical laces before setting off.
Having informed us that nine out of the 10 top-performing schools for boys who gain entrance to university are fee-paying, he then insists that private schools do not offer a better education, merely a "different" one.
It is precisely this "difference" that led this family to scrimp and save and worry about finances in order to send our children to a fee-paying school, and not a commitment to either religion or a skewed social system.
It would behove Mr Allen to look at what is provided in the fee-paying schools and seek to replicate it in the mainstream. - Yours, etc,