University fees fiasco

The Minister for Education, Mary Hanafin, made an intriguing admission recently. Commenting on figures showing that the numbers of students attending non fee-paying schools in Dublin had plummeted, the Minister said that the drift to private education could be directly traced to the decision to abolish university fees a decade ago. Many parents who in the past would have put money aside for their children's university, were instead now spending that money on private education, she said.

Anecdotally I was aware that non fee-paying schools were having trouble filling places especially in Dublin's affluent south side. But the official figures make pretty sobering reading. There appears to be a large sociological shift taking place right under our noses, and either nobody had noticed it before, or no one wants to draw attention to it.

It seems clear that what is happening is that middle-class parents can now afford to send their children to fee-paying schools. Their reasons for this are numerous – better results, more peer pressure to do well, better discipline, better facilities, social cache, take your pick. But what it increasingly means is that the class divide which is already practically absolute in Ireland, and growing bigger all the time, is at this very moment being cemented even further. There is a very real danger that we are fostering hordes of real life Ross O'Carroll Kellys in Dublin, something we are sure to reap a terrible price for sometime in the near future.

Thousands of young students now in fee-paying schools will probably never meet anyone from outside their own socio-economic group before they enter the workplace. Money has insulated them from everyone else, and the same is true of those less well-off. Of course this has always been the case, but the numbers are growing exponentially as our economic success continues.

The figures compiled by Sean Flynn in The Irish Times show that the traditionally strong non fee-paying schools in Dublin are in a period of huge decline over the past decade. O'Connell's of North Richmond Street is down by 58 per cent, St Paul's, Raheny down 35 per cent, Oatlands College in Stillorgan, down 35 per cent, and Synge Street down 57 per cent. Girls schools are suffering as well and the statistics show clearly that the numbers have been taken up in private schools. In the not-too-distant past all of these schools and their counterparts around the country produced top civil servants, politicians and at least half of the best known broadcasters in RTÉ. Parents sent their children from outside the schools' immediate areas and even from outside the city to attend, knowing that they would get a good education. Stiff entrance exams were also, of course, the order of the day, allowing these schools and many like them to cherry pick the best primary school leavers and stream them from the day the crossed the threshold.

The abolition of entrance exams took some of the cache away from schools like these and could account for some of the drop off. But people involved in education are in no doubt that the real reasons are because of our economic success and because university education is now free. There is no need now to save for your child's education. Why save when the really expensive part of that education, third level, is now free? Better to spend all you can today on education and create an advantage for your children as soon as you can. If they happen to turn into an O'Carroll Kelly along the way, well that is just the risk you run. The big problem is that we will have more of these privileged twits than anywhere else.

There are two ways of tackling the sociological time bomb. We have more children in private education in Ireland than anywhere else in Europe because it is so cheap. The state grants €80 million to private schools every year, most of it in the form of teachers' pay. Abolish this and fees would triple. Students would flood back to the public system. Of course any government who does this will lose the following election and would probably never be elected again. Secondly, the state system could not absorb that number of pupils, so abolishing the subsidy to private schools will never happen.

The other way is to bring back university fees. This would force parents to think again when calculating the costs of their children's education. It would also free up all of the revenue spent on giving free university places to those who can well afford to pay, allowing it to go on maintenance grants for those who really need it. The crazy system at the moment means that someone can be offered a fee-free place in Trinity while they can't afford to feed themselves for the year while they are there. Better to give the money to those who really need it.

I suspect there is hardly a politician in the country who would disagree with me, including the Minister, but with an election just 18 months away, don't hold your breath waiting for change.

Fergal Keane is a reporter with RTÉ radio's Five Seven Live