FEE-PAYING colleges are hoping to bounce again from final yr’s hiccup when a few of them didn’t get their typical crop of high grades throughout the board.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin says the Authorities hopes the Leaving examination will go forward as regular in June. If it does, the standard sample of grades will presumably resurface and the fee-paying colleges will proceed to do nicely.
Most of them are cautiously optimistic in regards to the future anyway. Their functions are wholesome, with many twice or 3 times over-subscribed. They’re secure within the data there is no such thing as a fast risk to the annual €100m subsidy they get from the taxpayer for lecturers’ salaries, and so on.
Final yr this included €2m from pandemic-related funds for colleges. To date, so regular.
They may, nevertheless, face a brand new nightmare after the following election if we find yourself with a authorities dominated by the left wing. The entire left-leaning events want to scale back if not abolish that subsidy.
That is despite the truth that some opposition leaders had themselves attended fee-paying colleges, together with Mary Lou McDonald (Notre Dame Des Missions); Eoin Ó Broin (Blackrock School); Paul Murphy (St Killian’s Deutsche Schule) and Richard Boyd Barrett (St Michael’s School).
It’s simpler to make guarantees in opposition than it’s to implement them in authorities. Sinn Fein is in search of to broaden its electoral base to enchantment extra to the center and aspiring center courses, the very those that ship their youngsters to fee-paying colleges in Dublin the place most are situated.
The social gathering has softened a few of its extra excessive tax proposals in recent times to win over that vote. It dangers alienating the dad and mom of the 25,000-plus pupils in fee-paying colleges due to some extent of political precept that wouldn’t save any cash in the long term.
The fact is that ending taxpayers’ assist would drive most fee-paying colleges into the Free Training scheme the place the lecturers’ salaries should be paid anyway and the place colleges would turn out to be entitled to constructing and different grants. And what about these smaller Protestant colleges whose continued existence can be beneath risk?
Sinn Fein says it has a plan to safeguard minority-ethos colleges however attempting to implement it might virtually definitely spark a authorized problem by Catholic colleges who would declare discrimination.
Aside from the dad and mom of present pupils within the fee-paying sector, there are millions of others who aspire to ship their youngsters to those colleges however can’t get them in. They’re ready to pay for the benefits, similar to the additional lecturers and smaller courses for which the charges pay. Past the tutorial, some need their youngsters to attend these colleges for primarily social causes. Nonetheless, dad and mom of youngsters in fee-paying colleges don’t all match the well-heeled social stereotype. Many middle-income earners make big sacrifices similar to forgoing overseas holidays and larger automobiles to allow them to give their youngsters what they regard as a superb begin in life.
The extent of the unmet demand is proven on the web sites of particular person colleges, which are actually required to publish annual notices disclosing the variety of locations accessible for candidates.
Details about functions is simpler to search out on some web sites than others. One of the crucial clear is that of Belvedere School in Dublin, which had 550 functions for its 168 first yr locations final yr. These included 50 for its Social Range Programme that helps 10pc of the college’s consumption by offering bursaries for college students from financially and socially disadvantaged backgrounds.
Blackrock, Gonzaga, and Castleknock Schools in Dublin all had twice as many candidates as locations final yr whereas Loreto School on St Stephen’s Inexperienced had 502 candidates for 100 locations. Loreto Dalkey had 173 candidates for 132 locations final yr and its easy-to-follow web site offers a breakdown of what number of sisters of present pupils or previous pupils enrolled final yr.
Charge-paying colleges weren’t the one over-subscribed ones, after all, as many within the Free Training scheme had been as nicely. St Joseph’s Secondary Faculty in Galway metropolis, for instance, had 283 candidates for 130 locations. Mount Temple in Dublin was virtually 3 times over-subscribed, receiving 462 functions for 161 locations.
The brand new admissions guidelines are a lot clearer and imply that colleges can now not compile ready lists of candidates for locations years from now. As a substitute, functions are made within the yr of entry. The times when some dad and mom put down the names of their youngsters in fee-paying colleges as quickly as they had been born are gone. Not earlier than time.