Ireland (2 Viewers)

[magicbastarder]

Private school fees climb above €10,000 for day pupils as sector criticises ‘exclusion’ from State grants

Cost of sending children to fee-charging schools has risen for most parents this year

www.irishtimes.com

It's subscriber only, so I will share with you this absolute corker of a line:

"Principals say the policy has since extended to their “exclusion” from a growing number of grants, including free schoolbooks for students"

 

[nuke terrorist]

Private school fees climb above €10,000 for day pupils as sector criticises ‘exclusion’ from State grants

Cost of sending children to fee-charging schools has risen for most parents this year

www.irishtimes.com

It's subscriber only, so I will share with you this absolute corker of a line:

"Principals say the policy has since extended to their “exclusion” from a growing number of grants, including free schoolbooks for students"

Unless you want to be a rugby player I fail to see any point in fee paying schools. Every kid has to do the same exams.
In my generation boarding schools had a very conservative borstal element to them by all accounts. Being sent there is an affliction of being well off (or protestant). They institutionalise kids when they should be finding some independence.

 

[MacDara]

Unless you want to be a rugby player I fail to see any point in fee paying schools. Every kid has to do the same exams.
In my generation boarding schools had a very conservative borstal element to them by all accounts. Being sent there is an affliction of being well off (or protestant). They institutionalise kids when they should be finding some independence.

I went to a non-private ‘rugby’ school that should’ve been a GAA school as one of my classmates was an All-Ireland winning captain for Dublin.

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

Unless you want to be a rugby player I fail to see any point in fee paying schools. Every kid has to do the same exams.
In my generation boarding schools had a very conservative borstal element to them by all accounts. Being sent there is an affliction of being well off (or protestant). They institutionalise kids when they should be finding some independence.

Non-boarding private schools generally have smaller class sizes and were traditionally much more supportive of students with additional needs (like dyslexia, dyscalcula, etc.) - so they might do the same exams but removing some of the barriers to doing those exams that weren’t traditionally supported in public schools. My wife went to one of the smaller private schools and I went to a much larger public school (I think my year alone was larger than her school) and you could see the difference in how much support struggling students got.

 

[nuke terrorist]

Non-boarding private schools generally have smaller class sizes and were traditionally much more supportive of students with additional needs (like dyslexia, dyscalcula, etc.) - so they might do the same exams but removing some of the barriers to doing those exams that weren’t traditionally supported in public schools. My wife went to one of the smaller private schools and I went to a much larger public school (I think my year alone was larger than her school) and you could see the difference in how much support struggling students got.

In my time those things were unknown. A lad in my brother's primary school class probably had autism (harmless lad completely in his own world, no self awareness, not conscious of being teased) but seemed to get no help.
Dyslexia was unheard of.

I briefly went to a very bog standard bogger fee paying school in late 80's (no longer has fees now). It was a horrific place.
108 students split over 4 classes usually, sometimes 5 inc. a remedial class.
There were no toilets in the changing room area. Only one block of boys toilets in the school. The school was crap at sports. It had all these absurd unquestioned rules that relentlessly encouraged bullying. Thank fuck the kids were actually nice and able to cope.
If you had a problem, it was your problem, few teachers even cared.
Why would any teacher want to work in such a place?
Little duty of care, no such thing as personal development.
I hated the place and everything it stood for.

After moving twice in six months I ended up in a village tech school.
Massively less discipline and smaller class sizes. 4 classes for 86 kids. The sports facilities were OK. Hurling is mostly played in neutral venues anyway.

Go in, do your school work with no real hassle, with few nasty teachers and you'd be pretty OK. You could do some sport if you wanted but even PE ended up as being optional.
Much better school.

 

[ernesto]

Thumped is full of ex posh school boys?
Well, I never

 

[Cornu Ammonis]

Thumped is full of ex posh school boys?
Well, I never

I think only @nuke terrorist has so far said they went to a fee paying school. I married up the social ladder, regular school for me all the way.

 

[MacDara]

I think only @nuke terrorist has so far said they went to a fee paying school. I married up the social ladder, regular school for me all the way.

I visited Gonzaga once, for a table quiz or something. I thought they were very fancy with their long, winding driveway to the school building.

 

[nuke terrorist]

I think only @nuke terrorist has so far said they went to a fee paying school. I married up the social ladder, regular school for me all the way.

The day fees were something like 700 p.a. in late 80's. So this place was very bog standard. Lots of farmers. I left after about 6 months.
Lots of people there never went near a university afterwards.

 

[JohnnyRaz]

I wasn’t really aware of the fee paying school-class thing, (beyond my dad being a scholarship kid in Rockwell in the 60s) until I came to college in dublin and met dubs from that background.

One thing that I felt they all projected was a sense of confidence that was alien to me, and the network element. whether that came from coming from well off backgrounds, or the private schools I don’t know.

Obvious my data free personal/experience observations of a well bullied country kid from a non-fee paying school.

 

[magicbastarder]

My old school is the only one on the list in that IT article which has dropped their fees. Clearly a school for the common man.

 

[Bladez]

I went to De La Salle in Churchtown, probably the least posh of all the rugby schools in South Dublin. I hated the place. Everything revolved around the cult of the rugby team. I remember a bunch of us being reprimanded for not trying out for the team. Then there were the half days so you could go attend the match, and being gathered in the hall beforehand to practice the chants. Education took a back-seat to all this. Everything was so half-arsed. My maths teacher was League of Ireland's Dermot Keely, who never showed up for class. There were the usual couple of teachers who were known for their fits of violence. The whole place just had a weird vibe. My parents took me out of it after a couple of years and put me in a community school, which was so much better.

 

[egg_]

I wasn’t really aware of the fee paying school-class thing, (beyond my dad being a scholarship kid in Rockwell in the 60s) until I came to college in dublin and met dubs from that background.

The class thing is mad - the primary school my kids went to is out in the countryside, so there's no ethnic diversity but lots of class diversity. This kids Ma works in Tesco, this kids Da owns Slane Castle.

 

[JohnnyRaz]

The class thing is mad - the primary school my kids went to is out in the countryside, so there's no ethnic diversity but lots of class diversity. This kids Ma works in Tesco, this kids Da owns Slane Castle.

Yeah, my county primary school had the sons of barristers, businessmen, and big farmers with the children of families that were (in retrospect) living in poverty.

The kids didn’t remark upon it too much I don’t think. No doubt parents were more aware of what people had or didn’t have

 

[nuke terrorist]

The class thing is mad - the primary school my kids went to is out in the countryside, so there's no ethnic diversity but lots of class diversity. This kids Ma works in Tesco, this kids Da owns Slane Castle.

Same here. Went to school with well off farmers and hardcore bogger working class kids. Not much distinction.
Few kids I went to school with parents had gone to university and hardly anyone had both parents with degrees other than teachers or nurses.

 

[magicbastarder]

I went to De La Salle in Churchtown, probably the least posh of all the rugby schools in South Dublin. I hated the place. Everything revolved around the cult of the rugby team. I remember a bunch of us being reprimanded for not trying out for the team. Then there were the half days so you could go attend the match, and being gathered in the hall beforehand to practice the chants. Education took a back-seat to all this. Everything was so half-arsed. My maths teacher was League of Ireland's Dermot Keely, who never showed up for class. There were the usual couple of teachers who were known for their fits of violence. The whole place just had a weird vibe. My parents took me out of it after a couple of years and put me in a community school, which was so much better.

Yeah, the rugby chant classes thing is bizarre. I remember one of the first times we had to do it one of the sixth years started rage crying because we weren't showing enough passion.

One of the interesting effects I copped from school was that some of the guys who were from blindingly rich families were less affected by money than the 'merely rich' guys. One guy in particular, from a family so rich that money probably ceased to have meaning. Like a turning on a tap without any concern for water running out.

 

[nuke terrorist]

Whatever skool I was at, the more we were told to support the school sports teams the more I wanted them to lose.
As much as I like sport it could easily be done away with at school. I am amazed this nonsense gets so much attention.
Oh wait. Then there would be no point to rugby or single gender schools!

 

[JohnnyRaz]

Yeah, the rugby chant classes thing is bizarre. I remember one of the first times we had to do it one of the sixth years started rage crying because we weren't showing enough passion.

One of the interesting effects I copped from school was that some of the guys who were from blindingly rich families were less affected by money than the 'merely rich' guys. One guy in particular, from a family so rich that money probably ceased to have meaning. Like a turning on a tap without any concern for water running out.

Was it like cheer leading stuff?

 

[magicbastarder]

yep; and some of the chants are really quite old and utterly nonsensical. one of them was (and i'm not making this up)

tango tango
walla walla whiskey
yerra yerra
yap yap yap
hora hora
ha ha ha
hee hee hee
nesper nesper
wee wee wee
yerra yerra SVC
c'mon KNOCK
K-N-O-C-K
KNOCK

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

I went to a GAA school, if you wanted to play rugby you had to join the rugby club and do it outside school hours and then the school wouldn't let you play GAA for the school, although I think would be allowed compete in athletics stuff. But there was no rugby school, you just joined the rugby club if you wanted to play rugby and it wasn't a class thing as far as I saw. Is "rugby is for rich kids" just a Dublin thing?