After mucho squealing from Castlerock the Times tries to straddle the grand canyon and fails. Informing a debate me hole.
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/educatio ... -1.1361045NOTE quotes are resynched by 2Pack. They do not appear as sequenced by the Times but they appear.

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The end of the private school?
Ehhh, the taxpayer pays for the teachers but carry on.
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Ireland's fee paying schools have consistently pointed to a report, commissioned by 27 Catholic and Protestant private schools from Pricewaterhouse Cooper (PwC), which claims that “in 2009, the average cost, excluding pensions and pension related costs, to the State to educate a second-level student was €8,035 in a non-fee-paying school and €4,552 in a fee-paying school”.
PWC lost more than one bank on their watch.

What PWC did was load the VEC sector and the Voluntary secondary sector
together here. This is FALSE Accounting...but we offically had banks then I think thanks to PwC

They loaded all the VEC Bertie era schemes including Youthreach (costs a fortune) PLCs ( cost a fortune) and deprivation supplements like DEIS (only urban VEC schools nowadats since Quinn abolished rural deprivation) and also the still extant language and traveller support systems in VEC schools into the spreadsheet.
Then they added the VOLUNTARY SECONDARY SCHOOLS who do not (_generally_) run Youthreach (costs a fortune) PLCs ( cost a fortune) and deprivation supplements like DEIS (only urban VEC schools nowadats since Quinn abolished rural deprivation) and also the still extant language and traveller support systems into the same spreadheet.
Then they AVERAGED these costs across schools that receive none of these special scheme incomes. And by averageing they destroyed the VOLUNTARY SECONDARY SCHOOL system since austerity arrived into town.
The PROBLEM is that the VOLUNTARY SECONDARY SCHOOLS are the education system.
Most of ....like.....everybody with a brain who is relied upon to run anything in Ireland went to a VOLUNTARY SECONDARY SCHOOL along with a small rump wo went to Private Schools and are/were not bankers or work for PwC.

Middle Ireland exists because of the VOLUNTARY SECONDARY SCHOOL sector. It was nuns and brothers in my day but they
are long gone out of it. Sadly Ruari Quinn has spnt his entire career hollowing out the VOLUNTARY SECONDARY SCHOOLS to the extent that 50% of them ( including most schools that were attended by Irish Times journalists ) will close by the end of this decade the way Quinn is runnig things.
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Following enquires by The Irish Times to all 55 fee-paying schools in the State and to the Joint Managerial Body (JMB), which represents the management of some 400 fee-paying and non-fee paying schools, the PwC report was given to this newspaper. The report has been consistently cited by those opposing a reduction in State support for fee-paying schools. This includes Fine Gael’s Eoghan Murphy and Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East), various principals of fee-paying schools, and the JMB.
The Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) has called the PwC figures “grossly exaggerated”
The TUI would. They do not have members in the VOLUNTARY SECONDARY SCHOOL sector, only in VECs. But a lot of the support payments that they have have been cut back since PwC published their report. It would be unwise to assume the Bertie era spending delivered anything useful but the cash kept TUI members busy. They don't cost as much as that though. Back to the Times.
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The PwC report combines the State costs of running secondary schools with the costs of the further education sector, including Post Leaving Certificate (PLC) courses, Vocational Training and Opportunities Schemes (VTOS), Traveller training, adult and community education, outdoor education centres, and youth services. By adding these areas together, the report presents a higher cost for the publicly-funded second-level system. In comparison, the relative cost to the State of fee-paying schools appears much lower.
And the cost of the VOLUNTARY SECONDARY SCHOOL sector is the lowest of all. It comes in at slightly above Fee Paying ...less than €1000 per skulll and at half that of the (frankly) shite PwC number but in reality at 2/3 of the like for like PwC number. and a hell of a lot better value. It is just taht Daddy and Mummy dont pay €5000 a year per chile from the pocket on top of that ( for a day pupil)
And the schools caught in the middle are where the
average literate numerate Pin member learnt to read and write and express themselves hereabouts. You can forget about your own offsprings though. tech or privaye for them. Most of them will be shut by 2020 and it is the fault of the near doddrering Mr Quinn and his innumerate staff in his departmemt.
And with them goes our last hope for a better future. The VEC sector produces very little product of any merit.

Thanks a lot to PwC for deliberately misframing the debate too but that is OK seeing as the portners generally went to a VOLUNTARY SECONDARY SCHOOL while their spoilt chilters went to Castlerock so they could scream at plebs in cafés off Dame St.

The Times bleats on about them for many column inches thereafter.
I'll keep it simple......how may Pinsters attended their local Tech?????