The following opinion piece appeared in today’s  Irish Times. You can read it on the IT  website here, or just scroll down.

Opinion: The purpose of the Department of Education’s report published on Tuesday – Fee Charging Schools: Analysis of Fee Income – is to inform future policy decisions about the nature and extent of exchequer funding provided to fee-charging schools in the context of the current financial correction.

In other words, given that we have less money, with at least three more years of cuts coming, what should our policy in relation to fee-paying schools be from a financial point of view? The report does not address anything else in the wider debate on education.

In that context, the figure the report provides as the potential saving to the State from parents paying for their children to attend fee-paying schools is key.

Read more here.