Certain schools are better squeezed than others

Private institutions still receive substantial State funding, which seems unfair in light of cuts to DEIS schools, writes Michael McNamara

The loss of two teaching posts in Co Clare might not seem a calamity given the scale of the proposed cuts in other areas of the country.

However, the funding of schools that cater for disadvantage raises fundamental questions about how seriously we take equality of opportunity to all children born in this Republic, and how we spend our overall education budget.

Education Minister Ruairi Quinn is reviewing an earlier decision to cut staffing levels in DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) programme schools. I welcome this review and hope it will result in saving a valuable teaching post at the Convent of Mercy National School in Kilrush.

However, There may be no such review of a post to go at Killaloe Boys’ National School as, though it is a town which grapples with considerable disadvantage and great disparities of wealth, it is not a DEIS school.

Cutting posts in DEIS schools hits the most socially disadvantaged in our communities. Yet the State continues to spend money in schools that cater exclusively for the most socially advantaged in society.

About €100m is paid out by the Government each year to private fee-paying schools. This is mostly used to pay teacher salaries. Under the minister’s proposal to abolish so-called legacy posts, the DEIS pupil-teacher ratio will rise to 22:1, while the mainstream/non fee-paying pupil teacher ratio is set at 28:1.

In private fee-paying secondary schools, the situation is quite different. In spite of some cuts in the recent budget, the pupil-teacher ratio in these schools is 21:1. Of course, the schools which charge fees can use them to significantly reduce that ratio below that.

We have to get real here, or so we keep saying. Cutting posts in schools that cater for educational disadvantage hits the weakest. Pouring taxpayers’ money into the 53 fee-paying schools supports the strongest. It is as simple as that.

It is true that the minister has cut funding to private schools for capital investment and they have suffered a slight disimprovement in their pupil-teacher ratio. However, the question of funding teacher salaries to the tune of €100m remains. It is the elephant in the classroom.

However, we are making a start. Mr Quinn is conducting an audit of how fee-paying schools spend the €120m they receive in fees from parents and that investigation will also examine State investment in these schools, including funding for teachers

Removing funding from fee-paying schools may not net huge savings for the State. A certain number of schools that now command fees would cease to do so and therefore have to be funded by the department to meet the lower mainstream pupil-teacher ratio, as well as receive a capitation fee, which they currently do not.

However, in my view, the subsidisation of fee-paying schools is contrary to the ideals of a real republic.

I don’t advocate the abolition of private education but I am opposed to paying large subsidies to this sector while children at the bottom of the education ladder have their services cut. As we move toward the centenary of the 1916 Proclamation, we must recall the commitment to cherish all the children of the nation equally.

Funding schools which deny access to children based on any selection criteria, especially the ability of their parents to pay fees, offends that which was proclaimed by Connolly, Ceannt, Clarke, Mac Diarmada, MacDonagh Pearse and Plunkett, supported from the shadows by Éamon de Valera and Michael Collins, et al.

* Michael McNamara is Labour Party TD for Clare