Private schools: are they worth it? [IrishTimes]
- Published: 02 September 2011
The scramble for private education continues despite the recession and the fact that some 'free' State schools perform just as well academically. So why do parents fork out for private schools?
IT’S THE FIRST week of school at Presentation College in Bray, Co Wicklow, and four recent graduates are gasping through a tour of their old school’s new facilities. “You’d almost want to repeat,” says Harry Barrett, who is 19, admiring a language lab lined with freshly unpacked Apple iMacs. A transition-year class is being led out to a sailing lesson, there’s a new AstroTurf pitch behind the building and the light wells illuminating the hallway make it feel like a modern third-level institute.“There’s a belief that the more you pay, the better it is,” says Gerry Duffy, the school’s exuberant principal. “It’s rarely based, particularly not in education, on any sort of reality. I wouldn’t agree that fee-paying schools have ever necessarily offered better physical facilities. They certainly don’t offer better teaching.”
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