Sir, – I welcome Minister for Education Jan O'Sullivan's plans to introduce legislation to outlaw discrimination in school admissions policies ("Blackrock old boys urged to fight 'unjust' Bill", October 11th). Former Blackrock College students, known as "Rockmen", and indeed alumni of other schools in the private sector, are being prompted to oppose the "unjust State interference" in the school's admissions policy. This draft Bill, if introduced, would prevent schools from reserving places for the sons of past pupils.
We are now well used to the perennial debate on the issue of hard-pressed taxpayers subsidising fee-paying educational institutions of privilege and watching the formidable middle class and the well-resourced recipient private schools rushing to defend what is increasingly seen as the indefensible. The resilience of some of these private schools in weathering the economic tsunami washing over us is matched by their energy in defending the status quo of the restrictive admissions policies that make these school virtually inaccessible to children of immigrants, the Travelling community, children with special needs and those whose parents cannot afford the cost. Yet it is this same category of people who by their taxes help fund the State's €100 million subvention of private schools. This subvention is then used to provide facilities that State schools cannot afford. There is also evidence that some of this State funding is used to lower the pupil-teacher ratio at these institutions of privilege, which in turn discriminates against children in State schools.
Fee-paying schools have been the best-resourced in the State. Just like private hospitals that are profitable businesses, private fee-paying schools with restrictive admissions policies must resource themselves.
Why should taxpayers, the vast majority of whom could never aspire to such a privileged education for their own children, be expected to subsidise exclusive boarding schools for the wealthy privileged when State-run schools are having their funding reduced? – Yours, etc,
TOM COOPER,
Templeogue, Dublin 6W.