Sir, – Your letter writers Kieran Sparling and Joseph M Doddy (December 30th) are both under the impression that the private school system is doing the State a favour; they both cite saving the exchequer and cost-effectiveness as reasons to maintain the status quo. What they both conveniently fail to mention is the elitism, access and privilege that comes with such subsidised school places. The argument that private schools are saving the State money is disingenuous given that the public subvention of private schools benefits the children of those schools disproportionately both during and long after their school years.
A two-tier education system that is bolstered by the State is immoral and makes a mockery of a republic of equals. – Yours, etc,
SHEILA MAHER,
Goatstown,
Dublin 14.
Sir, – The fairest approach in tackling this dilemma is surely to adopt a voucher system where the funding follows the child.
Parents are the primary carers of their child, not the State, and different families have different priorities. For some, they rate highly the benefits of a private education and are willing to do without holidays abroad, fancy cars, etc, in order to achieve that. For others, they’re quite happy to send their child to the community college down the road if it means they can holiday for three weeks in Lanzarote and upgrade their car every three years.
It is unfair to expect the parents sending their child to private school to be contributing through taxation to an education system that their children do not avail of.
Rather, by providing an education voucher per child, it allows the parents to decide whether to redeem it at the community college with no additional charge, to redeem it with a private school while paying the difference, or to redeem it with approved home-schooling resource providers to ensure that the home-schooled child is getting access to the approved State curriculum.
No two children are alike and there is no one-size-fits-all solution to a child’s education. The voucher system gives control of the child’s education back to the parents without penalising those who choose a less conventional path. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN LENEHAN,
Castleknock,
Dublin 15.
Sir, – There is one big difference between public schools and fee-paying schools.
Public schools are inclusive, while fee-paying schools are exclusive.
Public schools will accept all children, regardless of their parents’ income.
Fee-paying schools exclude all child whose parents cannot afford the fees for that school.
Public schools are egalitarian. Fee-paying schools are not.
It is because of the exclusion of poorer pupils from fee-paying schools that those schools should not receive equal treatment in terms of public funding. Indeed, there is a strong case for removing all public funding, including paying for teachers, from fee-paying schools, precisely because they exclude.
The State should not be in the business of promoting inequality by funding schools which exclude. – Yours, etc,
DAVID DORAN,
Bagenalstown,
Co Carlow.
Sir, – It strikes me that a number of the principals interviewed in the article “To fee or not to fee: Has Covid sparked a private school revival?” (Education, December 27th) would benefit from spending some time in a Deis school, where they would receive a lesson in reality. – Yours, etc,
NIAMH
MURPHY,
Stoneybatter,
Dublin 7.
Sir, – PJ Maloney (Letters, December 30th) writes: “It’s a reasonable premise to hold that fee-paying parents pay higher taxes than the average”. I agree that such parents probably do have higher incomes than the average.
However, it does not necessarily follow that they pay higher taxes than the average. – Yours, etc,
K DUNPHY,
Waterford.