MCW - €4.5k per pupil, per year subsidy to private schools

[yoganmahew]

Some schools must be very poor to do so badly on very basic stuff like reading and basic arithmetic. Anyone know what percentage of secondary school students attain their leaving cert?

Good thing our kids spend all that compulsory time learning Irish and religion from the age of 4! Surely that’ll stand to them in the job market!

view from the US now is that an Arts and rounded education is better than trying to make people learn useful stuff as useful stuff goes out of date.

Indeed. But what about Irish and religion?

Also, maths doesn’t really go out of date.

Not sure mechanism, science, engineering, comp sci. etc. go out of date either.

[AWAAF]

In my entirely biased view I think there is quite a lot of disciplinary diversity in terms of what gives a good allround education. Maybe I am biased but I think Economics/Psychology/History would be up there. Engineering and CS are OK. Chemistry, Law and Accountancy seem a bit disastrous to my mind. The Humanities/Arts make the shrillest claims for their broad grounding with the least evidence presented (true to form?). I sometimes suspect that they can cite so many examples of people using a humanities/arts degree to make a successful living in some disparate field because they set such an employability challenge to their grads that it forces some impressive examples. Also it may be that well connected people can better afford to study Arts. With regard to Business Grads I think if they can sell stuff, market stuff or be entrepreneurial they could probably do it before they went to college. Of course these could be just bitter ramblings.

[Homemaker]

I would definitely make it compulsory to do some sort of business course and domestic science to teach a bit beyond coping level skills for real life. Everyday things like managing household income and expenditure, paying invoices/bills, and so many need help with basic nutrition…it seems a bit nannyish, but it also seems like it’s necessary

[FirstBass]

Whatever about Irish, and if it were well taught it seems there is little harm in having an extra language, but religion is a fundamental human force as important to understanding the world as geography or any of the sciences. In Ireland perhaps it is simply the outsourcing of Catholic indoctrination, and that is unfortunate and of very little use to anyone. But teaching children about religion and how it manifests in human history and society is really important.

I was taught “religious studies” at school (not in Ireland). It was brilliant. Our teacher was quite devoutly Jewish but wouldn’t discuss his personal beliefs. We learned loads of wonderful stuff about ancient and modern religions, from Stonehenge to Islam (and probably more that I’ve since forgotten). It fostered in me a deep fascination for all sorts of imaginary-friend-ery that persisted through my adult life until I moved to Ireland and found myself frustrated and appalled by the reality of non-secular State institutions.

The Junior Cert curriculum for Religion is a bit like that, several religions are taught. I think it’s brilliant

[newirishman]

Not the most detailed of analyses, but there’s something to think about:

private schooling myth debunked

Children who attend private primary schools don’t perform any better in NAPLAN tests than their peers at public schools, new research shows.
It was the children of a healthy birth weight, who grew up in higher socio-economic circumstances in homes filled with books and had mothers who didn’t work long hours who performed best at NAPLAN.

[yoganmahew]

Not the most detailed of analyses, but there’s something to think about:

private schooling myth debunked

Children who attend private primary schools don’t perform any better in NAPLAN tests than their peers at public schools, new research shows.
It was the children of a healthy birth weight, who grew up in higher socio-economic circumstances in homes filled with books and had mothers who didn’t work long hours who performed best at NAPLAN.

Depending on how you look at it, all Irish primary schools are public (or perhaps they’re all private, since responsibilities are outsourced to boards of management). So that one doesn’t help/hinder in Ireland.

[slasher]

Yiz are only begrudgers. Spending yer money on pints and holliers in Tenerife. Ye should be glad that awntrpreneurs like Geoff are subsidising yer sprogs, ye ungrateful b@stards

Sir, – Finally! A coherent argument on the reason why parents should not be penalised for sending their children to fee-paying schools (Mary Mitchell-O’Connor, Opinion, October 11th).
There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth about the unfairness of it all, discrimination, etc; but the real discrimination here is that children in fee-paying schools receive less subvention than those in State-funded schools. “Poor taxpayers” are therefore not subsidising fee-paying schools. Rather it is the struggling parents who scrape the fees together for private education who are subsidising State-funded schools because their own children cost each taxpayer less to educate – an elementary equation to confound even the most entrenched philosophies.
So could I request the begrudgers to allow parents to have a choice – if they prefer pints, cigarettes, new cars and holidays in Tenerife to private education then that is their choice. Allow others to make their own priorities. – Yours, etc,
GEOFF SCARGILL,
Loreto Grange,
Bray,
Co Wicklow.

[Tenant]

napd.ie/cmsv1/phocadownload/lc%20points%20stats%202013.pdf from post on page 31. I noted that the percentage of students getting 350 or more points increased from 37.7% in 2000 to 47.3% in 2013 (An increase of over 25%). Is Normalisation (www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/physics/archive/teach0708/general/assessment/mark_normalisation.pdf Marks upwards over the last 13 years the explanation for this as I do not believe that students now are smarter or study more than their 2000 counterparts. If normalisation of marks upwards is the reason then why? Is it to give the preception that the Irish Students of 2013 are a good deal smarter than they were in 2000.

[FirstBass]

Dear Geoff

Please stay off my side of the argument.

Thanks

FirstBass
The Internet

PS the most coherent argument of all is that the majority of the fees that people pay goes to employ people.

[Tyler]

I received one of those “voluntary” donation letters home from my lad’s free primary school

what is the going rate?

[jake76]

I received one of those “voluntary” donation letters home from my lad’s free primary school

what is the going rate?

I don’t know, but I find myself wondering what exactly is the difference between paying an obligatory ‘voluntary’ donations and paying fees?

€250 was what ours requested per family.

[yoganmahew]

I received one of those “voluntary” donation letters home from my lad’s free primary school

what is the going rate?

I don’t know, but I find myself wondering what exactly is the difference between paying an obligatory ‘voluntary’ donations and paying fees?

€250 was what ours requested per family.

Wow.
€50 per child capped at €150, at CoI in Tullamore.

@Barney
The difference is that it is that the department and it’s Labour Minister can have clean hands on free primary education. At the same time, though, the department assesses that schools should fund-raise through voluntary contributions for certain activities (heat, light, water rates, IT fixing, photocopying, maintenance, etc. since they provide insufficient funds to do these things… this is before you get to the non-core things that the original voluntary contribution was supposed to provide).

[Tyler]

I received one of those “voluntary” donation letters home from my lad’s free primary school

what is the going rate?

I don’t know, but I find myself wondering what exactly is the difference between paying an obligatory ‘voluntary’ donations and paying fees?

€250 was what ours requested per family.
Wow.
€50 per child capped at €150, at CoI in Tullamore.

@Barney
The difference is that it is that the department and it’s Labour Minister can have clean hands on free primary education. At the same time, though, the department assesses that schools should fund-raise through voluntary contributions for certain activities (heat, light, water rates, IT fixing, photocopying, maintenance, etc. since they provide insufficient funds to do these things… this is before you get to the non-core things that the original voluntary contribution was supposed to provide).

We are a low tax economy. So I am told all the time.

[Mossy_Heneberry]

napd.ie/cmsv1/phocadownload/lc%20points%20stats%202013.pdf from post on page 31. I noted that the percentage of students getting 350 or more points increased from 37.7% in 2000 to 47.3% in 2013 (An increase of over 25%). Is Normalisation (www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/physics/archive/teach0708/general/assessment/mark_normalisation.pdf Marks upwards over the last 13 years the explanation for this as I do not believe that students now are smarter or study more than their 2000 counterparts. If normalisation of marks upwards is the reason then why? Is it to give the preception that the Irish Students of 2013 are a good deal smarter than they were in 2000.

We come 20th in both literacy and numeracy.

Read more: dailymail.co.uk/news/article … z2hjMNj2SI

[Homemaker]

I received one of those “voluntary” donation letters home from my lad’s free primary school

what is the going rate?

I don’t know, but I find myself wondering what exactly is the difference between paying an obligatory ‘voluntary’ donations and paying fees?

€250 was what ours requested per family.

€250 per first Child, €100 for each subsequent child

But they are very good with book expenses and no uniform, swings and roundabouts

[coc]

€250 is just over the threshold for the school to claim tax back off revenue with the CHY2 form.

[jake76]

€250 is just over the threshold for the school to claim tax back off revenue with the CHY2 form.

It was included with the envelope.

[GameBlame]

Interesting ethical angle to the Middle Class Welfare. See calls it “peculiarity” I’d say dysfunctionality.

irishtimes.com/culture/unthi … -1.2418659

“State subsidisation of private schools – a peculiarity of the Irish education system – is increasingly hard to justify in a society characterised by intensifying socio-economic inequality.
“While politically contentious, there is growing recognition of the fact that present funding arrangements result in an unfair situation whereby parents who cannot afford to send their children to fee-charging schools are effectively paying for those who are already privileged to attend schools that confer significant advantages on them.”

Now that the Budget is over and the Middle Class Welfare many of their Dublin readers enjoy is safe, the Irish Times can do some soul searching. Paper of Record my arse.

[Mossy_Heneberry]

Interesting ethical angle to the Middle Class Welfare. See calls it “peculiarity” I’d say dysfunctionality.

irishtimes.com/culture/unthi … -1.2418659

“State subsidisation of private schools – a peculiarity of the Irish education system – is increasingly hard to justify in a society characterised by intensifying socio-economic inequality.
“While politically contentious, there is growing recognition of the fact that present funding arrangements result in an unfair situation whereby parents who cannot afford to send their children to fee-charging schools are effectively paying for those who are already privileged to attend schools that confer significant advantages on them

.”

Now that the Budget is over and the Middle Class Welfare many of their Dublin readers enjoy is safe, the Irish Times can do some soul searching. Paper of Record my arse.

I don’t think that’s correct, as parents already pay for education through their taxes and then pay for it again through school fees.

[GameBlame]

Do you want the state to pay half the cost of your taxi too, because you don’t like to travel on the bus ?