Shutting down private schools

K-9

KarmaBaby wrote: »

This is an amazing contradiction in your post.

You wanted to study primarily Finance/Business related subjects, but the state curriculum meant you got a more diverse and balanced educaiton.

Your choices would have limited your own knowledge to one area from a young age.

It is important for every child to have a balance that includes arts, science, languages, history, geography and so on. and it is also important in the make up of society that people are well educated in all areas.

There is a time and place to specialise in order to choose your future career. It's called college.

Indeed, I had the option to take 3 Business subjects for my Leaving and I took 3, I wouldn't recommend it tbh.

Permabear

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KyussBishop

Valmont wrote: »

How on earth does private education not 'work in theory'?

Extending your usual criticism, was the current system tested prior to its implementation? Did some institution 'empirically' test an entire system of part public part private education and then carefully measure the results before moving things along? What journal was the study published in?

In fact, what is the evidence in favour of the state providing education in the first place? Why shouldn't they make shoes or bread? Or the statePhone 4S?

Regardless of the origins of the current education system, it obviously has a lot of empircal evidence backing up how it functions where an all-private system doesn't.

What is not obvious with an all-private system, is how it would resolve the social segregation issue (proponents usually say social segregation is not an issue); that is one of the big practical hurdles of private education, that no resolution to that appears to exist, and proposed solutions to that are not tested.

KyussBishop

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

Private education disproportionately favours the rich, particularly as the fees do not scale based upon income like taxes do.

People with high incomes find it disproportionately easier to send their kids to good private schools than those with low incomes, so it it creates an inherent and automatic imbalance; a greater percentage of low-earners wages go to school funds, and a much smaller percentage of high-earners wages.

seamus

KyussBishop wrote: »

What is not obvious with an all-private system, is how it would resolve the social segregation issue (proponents usually say social segregation is not an issue); that is one of the big practical hurdles of private education, that no resolution to that appears to exist, and proposed solutions to that are not tested.

An idealised public-only system is incongruent with a free society.

Naturally people will congregate into communities of their peers. Middle class people will live in middle class areas. Working class in working class areas and so forth.

If you force schools to only accept people from their catchment areas, then the rich kids will all attend the same schools. If you have no enforced catchment areas, the schools themselves will be required to come up with their own fair system for allocating places which will undoubtedly conclude that those living closest to the school have more fair right to a place than those living far way.
Otherwise you have a ludicrous situation where a local child is forced to attend a school far away for no reason other than he failed to be selected in a lottery for any of the local schools. That in itself is contrary to the idea of a free society.

So ultimately you end up with the same problem no matter what you do - rich kids attend the same schools, poorer kids attend the same schools.

You could argue that the standard of education is uniform - and that's true to an extent - but as we all know from having been in school, the quality of any education is highly dependent on the quality of the students. A class with better students will learn faster than a class with poorer students.
Which means that the rich schools, whose kids will be attending extracurricular activities and whose parents have a higher regard for education, will perform better than the poorer schools where the kids go play football from 4pm to 10pm and the parents are less enthused about education.

KyussBishop

seamus wrote: »

An idealised public-only system is incongruent with a free society.

Naturally people will congregate into communities of their peers. Middle class people will live in middle class areas. Working class in working class areas and so forth.

If you force schools to only accept people from their catchment areas, then the rich kids will all attend the same schools. If you have no enforced catchment areas, the schools themselves will be required to come up with their own fair system for allocating places which will undoubtedly conclude that those living closest to the school have more fair right to a place than those living far way.
Otherwise you have a ludicrous situation where a local child is forced to attend a school far away for no reason other than he failed to be selected in a lottery for any of the local schools. That in itself is contrary to the idea of a free society.

So ultimately you end up with the same problem no matter what you do - rich kids attend the same schools, poorer kids attend the same schools.

You could argue that the standard of education is uniform - and that's true to an extent - but as we all know from having been in school, the quality of any education is highly dependent on the quality of the students. A class with better students will learn faster than a class with poorer students.
Which means that the rich schools, whose kids will be attending extracurricular activities and whose parents have a higher regard for education, will perform better than the poorer schools where the kids go play football from 4pm to 10pm and the parents are less enthused about education.

There are a lot of good points here, but I don't think catchment areas need to be a part of this new system, and even if there is still a locality-selection process for the schools, that is a different problem to what my OP tries to address.

Lets say all the problems you point out there stand: things then change from an issue of social segregation due to wealth, plus neglect of the public system (through the wealthy and politically influential being able to bypass it), to an issue where societal problems in poor areas affect the quality of the schooling.

This is an issue that exists even in the current system, so that is still a net-benefit, as at least in principal it affords everyone a more balanced level of equal opportunity, even if individual circumstances at certain schools affect that.
You also curtail the worst effects of private schools being able to cream-off easier to teach students through selective admission (as they would not be allowed to discriminate on who they enroll, even if locality is allowed to be a factor), and the wider issues of social segregation enrollment discrimination could aggravate.


Beyond that, there is plenty of room for redefinition of and tweaking of the enrollment process; you could provide a quota that (depending upon demand) a school may have to allow for 10% of students to come from non-local areas, which would be more of a lottery situation.

If demand is high in an area such that you would have to turn away local students to do this, then that would call for a new school in the area.

Madd Finn

Part of the frustration with this thread is that the OP takes a comment pertaining to a situation in another jurisdiction and then tries to apply it to the situation here. Apples and oranges don't mix, or at least not in a way that complements one another.

For example there are various references to "private" and "semi-private" schools. What the hell is the difference? In Ireland, so far as I can gather, all fee paying schools are "semi private" in that they are partly funded by the state anyway by virtue of the fact that it pays all teachers' salaries.

The OP seems to be holding up the notion of semi private education (I'm guessing he/she is referring to the British situation here) as being preferable to completely independent privately funded schools. But that is precisely the system we have here, and one of the most vociferous arguments against it is that fee paying schools are being subsidised by tax payers, including those depending on non fee paying schools. Because the state pays the teachers.

"If people want to send their children to fee paying schools," the argument goes. "They should pay the full cost of it".

(NB I don't subscribe to this bonkers argument but it is widely expressed, not least by the main teachers' unions.)

So we already have what the OP seems to be proposing.

One of the differences between non fee paying schools here and in Britain is the selection process. Here, a school can determine its own criteria for selection. This means that among the most coveted schools in Dublin are those non fee payng schools with good reputations. Of course people will send their children to a school in which they have confidence, especially if they don't have to pay extra for it. We're not stupid!

The upshot is that nobody turns away more kids than the good non fee paying schools. And they also spend a lot of money defending themselves legally against challenges from disappointed parents.

In Britain, the critical factor determining who gets accepted to a school is proximity. You live in the school's catchment area; you're in. Period.

This leads to a situation, perfectly accepted over there, whereby parents of kids approaching secondary school age naturally attempt to move to the catchment areas of "good" state schools.

Some close friends of mine are in precisely that process at the moment. These are typical of many people in the middle class in Britain who are generally supportive of the welfare state and wouldn't dream of investing in private health care or sending their children to private schools.

But they're not going to send them to a bad school either, so instead of spending (I'm guessing at fees of £20k a year) £140k over seven years to send their kid to a private school, they will spend half a million quid over 15 years to guarantee their place in a good state school. This is a normal rite of passage for many people in the welfare-state supporting British middle class.

This naturally leads to social stratification and ghettoisation between rich and poor areas. The presence of a good free school pushes up local house prices. And you say you're concerned with avoiding privilege and stratification!

What next? Nobody with a child over ten years old can move house until that child has reached 18. By order. It's to promote "equality".

The simple argument against "banning" private education is that it just cannot be done in a free society. You cannot ultimately tell people how to spend their money. They will kick back and circumvent the system in a way that undermines the effect you are trying to achieve. In some instances they will do so partly JUST to react against a state diktat.

People are like that.

Eliot Rosewater

The article author's theory that banning private schools will spurn on the public school system to improve means that at least in one sense his motives are good - but ultimately I think it's a naive view.

In all public education systems there are special interests working directly against better schooling. In Ireland these are public sector trade unions (who are, understandably, against more meritocratic policy) and the Irish lobby, who see Ireland's children's education merely as a means for promoting Irish. The government have their own vested interests - giving the impression, for instance, that certain Irish people are "knowledgeable", even if they're not.

The notion that individual parents, or a group of parents, can successfully challenge these vested interests on a large national scale is a little fantastical, in my opinion. It all goes back to the Public Choice Theory insight: the benefits of certain mediocre schooling policies are concentrated among a very small group of people (school employees, Gaelgoirs, politicians), whereas the costs of them are borne by all of society. Many parents care a lot about the education system but they will never care as much as the INTO do, as members of the INTO derive their living from it. The way it's set up, special interests will always be willing to fight harder for their side than, for instance, parents, who have a whole rake of other things to care about as much as the education system.

KyussBishop

Madd Finn wrote:

...

To me, semi-private means that the school is privately administered, but cedes a certain amount of control to the state as an obligation for accepting public funding.
A fully private school, would not cede any amount of control to the state; thus, if a school is to be fully private, it should not receive any funding from the state.

I accept that the situation in the UK does not apply here (or at least, to a much leser extent if it does); the segregation through private schools there is much greater. Also, I don't accept the idea of catchment area's; that isn't a necessary prerequisite of the system in my OP (though a lot of posters seem to assume so).

Also: To make the change to this system, would likely require a referendum due to the constitution, so there would not be a public revolt against it as it would need public approval in the first place

KyussBishop

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

The article author's theory that banning private schools will spurn on the public school system to improve means that at least in one sense his motives are good - but ultimately I think it's a naive view.

In all public education systems there are special interests working directly against better schooling. In Ireland these are public sector trade unions (who are, understandably, against more meritocratic policy) and the Irish lobby, who see Ireland's children's education merely as a means for promoting Irish. The government have their own vested interests - giving the impression, for instance, that certain Irish people are "knowledgeable", even if they're not.

The notion that individual parents, or a group of parents, can successfully challenge these vested interests on a large national scale is a little fantastical, in my opinion. It all goes back to the Public Choice Theory insight: the benefits of certain mediocre schooling policies are concentrated among a very small group of people (school employees, Gaelgoirs, politicians), whereas the costs of them are borne by all of society. Many parents care a lot about the education system but they will never care as much as the INTO do, as members of the INTO derive their living from it. The way it's set up, special interests will always be willing to fight harder for their side than, for instance, parents, who have a whole rake of other things to care about as much as the education system.

One important difference would be that wealthy parents would now be in the mix, and with that wealth would come a greater proportion of lobbying power and political access; this would arguably increase the likelihood of reform in the public system, instead of the wealthy simply bypassing the public system and going private.

Permabear

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KyussBishop

Permabear wrote: »

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I suppose nothing, but if the students wanted to do the Leaving Cert for instance, it could be a requirement to have a certain amount of attendance in a public/semi-private school.

Private tutoring as a supplementary education (i.e. in addition to public/semi-private) need not necessarily be out of bounds; it would provide an advantage to those that can afford it, but the bulk of education would be in a public/semi-private school, whereas supplementary would be after-hours education requiring a greater investment in time as well.

Getting educated abroad isn't something anything can (or should) be done about; the primary purpose of the change of system would be to reduce social segregation and increase potential for equal opportunity locally.
If some students go abroad to learn, it's a different country with different rules for that student, with the local system still gaining the above benefits.

Permabear

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BOHtox

KarmaBaby wrote: »

This is an amazing contradiction in your post.

You wanted to study primarily Finance/Business related subjects, but the state curriculum meant you got a more diverse and balanced educaiton.

Your choices would have limited your own knowledge to one area from a young age.

I wasn't using myself as an example of the state curriculum not being wide enough. I was saying Public Schooling couldn't accomodate my needs whereas they could be in a private school. Rathmines costs €300 a year to attend, it only does 6th year. Most familes with children going to public school would pay way more than €300 a year in taxes that goes towards public education. If education was taken out of control of the government, tax would be reduced accordingly. Even as someone mentioned €25,000 grand a child. That's a lifetime. When you're child currently stops attending school, you're still paying for education for the rest of your life through VAT or income tax etc.

KarmaBaby wrote: »

It is important for every child to have a balance that includes arts, science, languages, history, geography and so on. and it is also important in the make up of society that people are well educated in all areas.

There is a time and place to specialise in order to choose your future career. It's called college.

I would argue that primary school should remain state controlled to get everyone an equal education until you're an early teen. Then you go to a secondary school that's private to get to know what you want to do, ie. one that specialises in business or in arts or in practical work. I'd say 90% of people in my school knew what area in which they wanted to work in first year.

KarmaBaby

Permabear wrote: »

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What facts are you referring to? There is absolutely nothing whatsoever in that article to support what you've said here. Do you have a breakdown of the socio-economic background of students in fee paying schools?

You also seem to have skimmed over this little nugget from the same article.

"While parents of some of the 26,000 students in fee-paying schools may grapple with fees averaging €5,000, almost 200,000 parents cannot afford to buy their children's school uniforms, according to the applications for the back-to-school allowance. "

Permabear wrote: »

If fees for "privileged education" average around €5,000, putting a child through five years of private secondary school would cost around €25,000. We're hardly in the realm of the super-rich here. Any middle-class parent who starts saving early and regularly can afford this.

If a couple spent €25,000 on their wedding, that would be considered par for the course in Ireland. But if they saved that money and put it toward education for they child, they would find themselves accused by people like you of rending the fabric of society asunder, perpetuating a class divide, and keeping the political establishment in the control of a privileged minority.

In any case, the latter claim makes little sense. I don't know the figures for the current Dáil — but in the government that left office last year, just 18 of 166 TDs had attended a private school.

Most families put two or three children through school, not one. So €60K to €70K would be a more accurate figure and many families will have two kids in school at the same times. Are you really going to tell me that in the current climate the average household could afford to pay this? Not a chance.

I have no idea what you're trying to prove with your wedding analogy. Do you think the average couple pays €25K for weddings with savings? They really don't!

KyussBishop

Permabear wrote: »

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That's fair enough, there wouldn't be anything to stop that, but on a practical level it seems like it would require a family moving out of the country for a time to provide that, so there would be that barrier there.

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

It is a very different situation here compared to the UK, agreed; the article in the OP mainly struck me as an interesting viewpoint (particularly how it was framed regarding those of privileged status in the UK being under private education, even if that may not apply here).


To be honest, considering most of the thread so far, and things here in Ireland overall, there doesn't really seem to be a huge benefit to come from forcing out private education, as there isn't any apparent evidence of segregation taking place; indeed, the only evidence of discrimination so far in the thread is from some public schools as bluewolf posted.

While I still view the argument for minimizing private education as strong in theory, it doesn't really seem to be a problem here in Ireland at the moment to require implementation in practice.
Some of the more interesting problems highlighted so far in the thread though (that in my view need addressing), seem to be the discrimination in enrollment even in public schools, and also the public subsidizing of private schools (without any state-imposed obligations on those schools it seems), which seems kind of unfair.

KarmaBaby

BOHtox wrote: »

I wasn't using myself as an example of the state curriculum not being wide enough.I was saying Public Schooling couldn't accomodate my needs whereas they could be in a private school.

You're assuming that as a 14 year old (or whatever the age students are when they make these choices) you have a better idea of what your "needs" are than the people that decide what the public curriculum is.

I know that our curiculum is not perfect. I certainly have a problem with it, but on its own this does not provide the basis for an argument for privatisation. It's an argument for changing the curriculum. That's all.

BOHtox wrote: »

Rathmines costs €300 a year to attend, it only does 6th year. Most familes with children going to public school would pay way more than €300 a year in taxes that goes towards public education. If education was taken out of control of the government, tax would be reduced accordingly. Even as someone mentioned €25,000 grand a child. That's a lifetime. When you're child currently stops attending school, you're still paying for education for the rest of your life through VAT or income tax etc.

No mention of how the Rathmine's school is funded or how much it receives from the state. I've got news for you. Your parents paid more than €300 for your education because government subsidises private schools with tax-payer's money , almost certainly including Rathmines.

BOHtox wrote: »

I would argue that primary school should remain state controlled to get everyone an equal education until you're an early teen. Then you go to a secondary school that's private to get to know what you want to do, ie. one that specialises in business or in arts or in practical work. I'd say 90% of people in my school knew what area in which they wanted to work in first year.

This is absolute bull. Half my classmates in school wanted to be lawyers when they were 16. I doubt more than one of them made it and I'm sure they benefited from their broader educaiton. Most people don't have clear ideas about what career route they should take until leaving cert year and often much later.

Kinski

KarmaBaby wrote: »

This is absolute bull. Half my classmates in school wanted to be lawyers when they were 16. I doubt more than one of them made it and I'm sure they benefited from their broader educaiton. Most people don't have clear ideas about what career route they should take until leaving cert year and often much later.

Damn straight. At 13, 3/4 of my classmates wanted to be footballers (we had a class poll). A quick glance at Man City's most recent starting XI...not one person I went to school with.:pac:

Valmont

I'm getting the impression from reading this thread that if there was a demonstrable benefit for 'society' resulting from the forced closure of private schools, all would be on board. While I find the consequentialist argument interesting, I think it misses the bigger picture here.

It is simply oppressive and downright totalitarian to even entertain the notion that the state has an inherent right to force parents to send their children to a school not of their choosing, just because it fits in with some notion of social mobility or a misty-eyed egalitarianism.

Does the right to choose still exist?

KyussBishop

Valmont wrote: »

I'm getting the impression from reading this thread that if there was a demonstrable benefit for 'society' resulting from the forced closure of private schools, all would be on board. While I find the consequentialist argument interesting, I think it misses the bigger picture here.

It is simply oppressive and downright totalitarian to even entertain the notion that the state has an inherent right to force parents to send their children to a school not of their choosing, just because it fits in with some notion of social mobility or a misty-eyed egalitarianism.

Does the right to choose still exist?

It's not really a choice though for people who can't afford it; I appreciate the bigger picture and the viewpoint that ideally people should have unrestricted choice, I just argue that if it results in greater social segregation and an imbalance in opportunities, it's worth weighing whether or not the costs of curtailing that choice is worth the societal benefits (pretty much the consequentialist argument, as you paint it).

For Ireland now, I don't (on balance of the arguments in the thread) think there's a need to curtail that choice, but if private education became more prevalent, and along with it began to mirror the social/opportunism divide in the UK (not saying that would happen, just 'if'), then the argument for shutting-down/assimilating private schools may then become relevant.

K-9

BOHtox wrote: »

I wasn't using myself as an example of the state curriculum not being wide enough. I was saying Public Schooling couldn't accomodate my needs whereas they could be in a private school. Rathmines costs €300 a year to attend, it only does 6th year. Most familes with children going to public school would pay way more than €300 a year in taxes that goes towards public education. If education was taken out of control of the government, tax would be reduced accordingly. Even as someone mentioned €25,000 grand a child. That's a lifetime. When you're child currently stops attending school, you're still paying for education for the rest of your life through VAT or income tax etc.

€300 is incredibly cheap but again the reason is the state subsidy, parents get about 80% of their tax contribution for education back through the subsidy for salaries and the average family has 2 or 3 children. €300 a year wouldn't come near the teaching subsidy with say 1,000 families, €300,000 wouldn't cover many teachers wages!

Permabear

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K-9

Permabear wrote: »

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How much of the education budget is spent on salaries? IIRC you might well have quoted the percentage before.

K-9

Permabear wrote: »

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From reading the article again in the OP, over €100 Million is given to private schools for teachers salaries, that is nearly €4,000 per child, per annum. That is a big chunk of taxes back annually, €20,000 over 5 years and double that if you've 2 children going.

I'd say my point is debatable, not nonsensical, certainly nowhere near as absurd as your claim that parents double pay for private education. I don't know where you read that but it doesn't make sense at all.

steddyeddy

I dont think you should get rid of public schools but I would cut state funding and I would educate kids that private school children have no advantage in college.

golden lane

a thread on the shutting down of private schools.........

is there really that many jealous people in existance...........shame !!.

steddyeddy

golden lane wrote: »

a thread on the shutting down of private schools.........

is there really that many jealous people in existance...........shame !!.

A thread on establishing equal rights? Is there that many jealous people in existence?

golden lane

steddyeddy wrote: »

A thread on establishing equal rights? Is there that many jealous people in existence?

equal to what.......are all teachers the same......are all kids the same......

are all buildings the same.....are all incomes the same.......do all parents think the same.........

jealousy =rights............??????????????????????????????????????

steddyeddy

golden lane wrote: »

equal to what.......are all teachers the same......are all kids the same......

are all buildings the same.....are all incomes the same.......do all parents think the same.........

jealousy =rights............??????????????????????????????????????

If what you say is true then why have a division of schools based on parental wealth?

golden lane

steddyeddy wrote: »

If what you say is true then why have a division of schools based on parental wealth?

i believe it is called freedom of choice..........the first, and most important lesson for children...........

you grow up, you earn, you spend, .............if you cannot afford, the state makes provision........

anything else is not workable.........

steddyeddy

golden lane wrote: »

i believe it is called freedom of choice..........the first, and most important lesson for children...........

you grow up, you earn, you spend, .............if you cannot afford, the state makes provision........

anything else is not workable.........

Ah bit in the case of wealth funding difference in education the children do not earn or spend. They benifit. Where as some child in a disadvantaged situation like I was gets punished.

golden lane

steddyeddy wrote: »

Ah bit in the case of wealth funding difference in education the children do not earn or spend. They benifit. Where as some child in a disadvantaged situation like I was gets punished.

punished.............?????????

i was brought up in dublin in the forty's/fifties......i went cold and hungry, and had the shoite beaten out of me for not learning religion or irish........

best education in the world....i am now retired, i have never been short of money since i started work.....and have sufficient pension to have a decent life........

a lot of public school kids have not achieved as much.........parental choice......yes, that is their right.....

steddyeddy

golden lane wrote: »

punished.............?????????

i was brought up in dublin in the forty's/fifties......i went cold and hungry, and had the shoite beaten out of me for not learning religion or irish........

best education in the world....i am now retired, i have never been short of money since i started work.....and have sufficient pension to have a decent life........

a lot of public school kids have not achieved as much.........parental choice......yes, that is their right.....

The eighties for myself and had similar problems at home not shcool I just think that things hae got worse since we were in school. Now maybe Im wrong I just have an empathy that some people who went through what went through have equal oppertunities.

BOHtox

Stop using so many full stops!!!

steddyeddy

BOHtox wrote: »

Stop using so many full stops!!!

Sorry I admit my spelling and grammer are terrible I apologise! Im working on it!

golden lane

steddyeddy wrote: »

The eighties for myself and had similar problems at home not shcool I just think that things hae got worse since we were in school. Now maybe Im wrong I just have an empathy that some people who went through what went through have equal oppertunities.

there is no such thing as everybody being equal.....in any world.........
that is life..to try and achieve that........ends up counterproductive.......

BOHtox

I was talking more to Golden Lane but you're excused

golden lane

BOHtox wrote: »

I was talking more to Golden Lane but you're excused

thank you..... i will try.

K-9

Sorry to interrupt the grammar debate!

I think the disadvantaged schools debate is different to what the OP is suggesting though. They'll always exist and it probably is a wider debate with wider issues. Free Third Level fees were introduced by Labour in the mid 90's and from what I've read just benefited the middle and upper classes, and the car sales industry! It's a wider issue and I don't think scrapping private schools will solve it.

I know private third level colleges often offer scholarships, do private secondary schools offer those here? Do they take in special needs students if parents are willing to pay?

jank

KarmaBaby wrote: »

According to the 2010 Meryl Lynch report 1% of the population own 34% of the wealth. Such a concentration of wealth among a minority of elites is clearly detrimental to society. It's a dictatorship of the ruling class no different from a monarchy.

You must not know what a monarchy is so.

jank

KarmaBaby wrote: »

There is a time and place to specialise in order to choose your future career. It's called college.

Typical socialist nonsense. Thinking that they are more aware of what subjects someone should study rather then the individual themselves.

jank

KarmaBaby wrote: »

The U.S. and Turkey are two good examples. the private sector has a monopoly of education in Turkey, particularly at third level. I know because I've studied in Ankara. You also couldn't really classify education in Australia and New Zealand as "public" because of their ridiculous loan system which put many people in 6 figure debts. The less the state funds educaiton via the exchequer the more schools and universities invariable end up behaving like private institutions with a profit motive. In that sense they are only publicly owned in name.

That is Bull$hit. The Australian and NZ system is very fair by all accounts. Fees are usually around the 5-6k per year mark. Over a 4 years term on average how could that raise to 6 figures? Maybe on the very rare courses for certain universities that fees may go over the 100k but that would be for a Dentist or a Doctor and the like.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_education_fees_in_Australia

K-9

jank wrote: »

That is Bull$hit. The Australian and NZ system is very fair by all accounts. Fees are usually around the 5-6k per year mark. Over a 4 years term on average how could that raise to 6 figures? Maybe on the very rare courses for certain universities that fees may go over the 100k but that would be for a Dentist or a Doctor and the like.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_education_fees_in_Australia

That's more Third level though? The OP is more aimed at second level I'd have thought.

Eliot Rosewater

KyussBishop wrote: »

One important difference would be that wealthy parents would now be in the mix, and with that wealth would come a greater proportion of lobbying power and political access; this would arguably increase the likelihood of reform in the public system, instead of the wealthy simply bypassing the public system and going private.

Again, though, you're assuming that education reform will the number one priority of the new group of people pushed into public education, and that they will be willing to mount as large a campaign as dedicated trade unionists and Irish lobbyists do. How could this be? Parents involved with their child's education care a lot about the overall education system but one couldn't expect it to be their number one priority. There are many other issues, such as, say, taxation and business regulation, that they might reasonably care about as much. Your argument relies on these people somehow forming a group that can lobby the government in as dedicated fashion as the trade unions do. Are many of these parents going to quit their day-jobs to establish such a lobby? Because, when the INTO and other groups have permanent lobbyists, this is precisely what would be necessary to even stand a chance of getting some reform.

Then, in the unlikely case that such a lobby forms, why would the government listen to them? By giving into teachers the incumbent government is sure of picking up a ton of votes from people whose livelihood will be improved in the most direct fashion it could be. "No matter what else this government does," a teacher might think, "at least they made my livelihood easier." On the other hand, there's not many votes to be gained from improving education standards. Our hypothetical lobby will vote for the government, but who else will? For how many people is education reform the one overriding concern that, no matter what else, they will vote for the party who delivers it?

Because, in conclusion, the demands made of teachers are, for teachers, the one overriding concern, and they will vote mostly on that basis. Comparatively few will vote on the basis of education reform. Therefore, it is in the interest of the incumbent government to pay more heed to teachers' unions than education reform lobbyists. There's more political gain in it for them.

This, as I said, is just the classic public choice theory insight. Regardless of how good or bad a particular policy is for society as a whole, if the benefits of it are concentrated among a few people and the costs are dispersed across many, there will be an incentive for popularity-seeking governments to provide that policy, as they will get votes from the few without losing votes from the many.

KyussBishop

The benefits are predicated on the idea that private schools are heavily in use by politicians and the influential wealthy, which (as the thread went on) I've decided doesn't apply to Ireland (or at least, not nearly to the extent of the UK).

Presuming the politically influential and wealthy already are sending their kids to the public/semi-private system, they are already in the same boat and there isn't any (or much) more impetus for reform to be gained.


At this point in the thread, it would be interesting to see wider stats which breakdown the demographics of kids in private education here, and their backgrounds.

steddyeddy

K-9 wrote: »

Sorry to interrupt the grammar debate!

I think the disadvantaged schools debate is different to what the OP is suggesting though. They'll always exist and it probably is a wider debate with wider issues. Free Third Level fees were introduced by Labour in the mid 90's and from what I've read just benefited the middle and upper classes, and the car sales industry! It's a wider issue and I don't think scrapping private schools will solve it.

I know private third level colleges often offer scholarships, do private secondary schools offer those here? Do they take in special needs students if parents are willing to pay?

Belvedere college do off scholarships and they do a lot of good work in inner city schools. Some private schools dont offer scholarships though.

Milk & Honey

FreudianSlippers wrote: »

How can you force a private entity to close its business?

Same way as you can force a brothel to close, or a pub with no licence to close or a restaurant with bad hygiene to close.

BOHtox

K-9 wrote: »

€300 is incredibly cheap but again the reason is the state subsidy, parents get about 80% of their tax contribution for education back through the subsidy for salaries and the average family has 2 or 3 children. €300 a year wouldn't come near the teaching subsidy with say 1,000 families, €300,000 wouldn't cover many teachers wages!

I know it is. I was just using the example that not all private schools would cost €5,000 a year.

BOHtox

KarmaBaby wrote: »

You're assuming that as a 14 year old (or whatever the age students are when they make these choices) you have a better idea of what your "needs" are than the people that decide what the public curriculum is.

I know that our curiculum is not perfect. I certainly have a problem with it, but on its own this does not provide the basis for an argument for privatisation. It's an argument for changing the curriculum. That's all.

I can guarantee you that the vast majority of students correctly identified the area of work they'd like when they were in first year. Not fine tuning it but they knew the that it would be Science, Business, Practical subjects, the arts etc. Also, there would still be choices in private schools. You wouldn't go to a private school and only study one subject. There'd still be a range of subjects. Of course some schools would specialise in Business areas for instance but a lot of public schools do that now!

KarmaBaby wrote: »

No mention of how the Rathmine's school is funded or how much it receives from the state. I've got news for you. Your parents paid more than €300 for your education because government subsidises private schools with tax-payer's money , almost certainly including Rathmines.

I'm against State subsidies for private enterprise. The €300 example I was posting is that not all schools will cost €5000 to attend. The subsidies only amount to €100m of an ~€8.5b education budget. Do that math!

1/85th of the education budget.

KarmaBaby wrote: »

This is absolute bull. Half my classmates in school wanted to be lawyers when they were 16. I doubt more than one of them made it and I'm sure they benefited from their broader educaiton. Most people don't have clear ideas about what career route they should take until leaving cert year and often much later.

Well firstly, if you don't decide what you want to do until years after you do your leaving, well then I would not consider that the failing of any sort of education, purely a personal choice has yet to be made.

Anyway, I wanted to go into Business when I was in first year, now 6 years later I'm doing computer Science, although I wanted to do Economics. That's still the same area, it's all business subjects, granted different areas in business one being IT and the other Economics or banking etc.

I refer to my earlier point. Not all education will be purely specialised. In fact it's the opposite. State education couldn't facilitate my need of subjects. Whereas in private education they would have.

Education will still remain broad in most schools. Look at now, if you want your child to play sports at a high level, you can't really pick your school as few schools have good high levels of sports. Same with, for instance, woodwork rooms. If you want your child to do woodwork, not all public schools have this facility. So this problem MAY still exist but it does exist now... and we throw a lot of tax at this system

bwatson

I couldn't disagree more if I tried. Its no surprise to see which columnist and which newspaper this article eminates from.

I suppose we should also shut down all restaurants but McDonalds and Kentucky because working class parents can't afford to treat their children to a meal at a michelin star place. I too suppose we should stop richer parents taking their children to the United States on holiday because some can only afford to take theirs to Butlins? These are the next steps, surely?

Public schools provide a (very good, in most cases) service to those who wish to spend their money on them. It would be an outrage if parents who wanted to pay for their child to recieve a better standard of education than they would get in their local state school (many of which are absolutely shocking) were stopped from doing so. Whatever happened from spending your own money in the manner you desired?

I went to a public school in the UK, it wasn't particularly well known and very few associated conformed to the stereotypes of privately educated pupils. For this option to be taken away for those who wish to use it would be downright strange.

Maybe this particular guardian columnist should look to improve the standard of those severely underperforming state schools in the UK (of which there are staggering amounts) before he tries to hundreds more state schools to accomodate for those who were forced out of public schools?