Private schools got €95m in State subsidies in 2011

Fee-paying schools were granted €95m in State subsidies for the latest academic year, despite pressure on Education Minister Ruairi Quinn from his own party to end the support.

Figures released by the Department of Education show the majority of the subsidies are concentrated in South Dublin, with the suburb of Blackrock receiving subsidies for four private schools amounting to €7.8m.

Four private schools in Cork received subsidies amounting to €9.5m. The Cistercians College in Roscrea, alma mater of former taoiseach Brian Cowen, which also boasts three former foreign ministers among its alumni, received €900,000.

The State paid teachers’ salaries amounting to €86.6m in 56 private, fee-paying schools across the country for the 2011 to 2012 academic year.

A further €261,000 was paid for clerical staff and €1.85m for Special Needs Assistants, while €28,183 worth of assistive technology grants was issued to private, fee-paying schools.

Some €6.5m was paid in subsidies to meet other current costs, according to figures provided in a written answer to a parliamentary question from Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald.

In 2009, the McCarthy report recommended that subventions for private schools be reduced from €100m to €75m. It said the schools generated annual incomes from fees amounting to about €100m.

Budget 2012 increased the pupil-teacher ratio in the fee-paying schools from 20:1 to 21:1 and the minister made cuts to their capital funding.

But this did not satisfy many in the Labour Party, who passed a motion at its annual conference in April calling for subsidies to be phased out over four years.

Party leader and Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore told delegates that this would not result in savings envisaged because most of the private schools would just convert into public schools:

“Irrespective of whether the pupils are attending private schools or public schools, they’re still at school anyway and the money would have to be paid, so if these were public schools the salaries would have to be paid in any event,” said Mr Gilmore.

“But what we want to achieve is a system of education that is fair to every pupil, that gives every child the best opportunity, and that does not distinguish.”

Demand for private education, which costs in the region of €5,000 a year per pupil, remains strong despite the economic downturn, with some reporting a rise in registrations.