Free education? It costs us €120,000
A MOTHER of five has told how she is struggling to pay a crippling €120,000 to put her three eldest children through college.
Donegal postmistress Anne Alvey has two sons and a daughter in third level but she gets no State aid, an RTÉ documentary reveals.
The Classroom Divide, presented by Joe Duffy, shows how rural students have to drop out of college because of financial pressures or miss lectures to work and cover accommodation and living costs.
As many as 9,000 pupils a year don’t finish second-level education, while only 25% of working-class children go to college, compared to 80% of middle-class children. ‘Over the four-year courses each is doing, it is going to cost about €120,000,’ said Mrs Alvey from Dunkineely.
She and her husband work fulltime, and overtime in her husband’s case, to try to cover the costs.
‘The eldest girl is in Limerick and the two boys are in Sligo and the younger girls are in the Abbey Vocational in Donegal. The fees are €9,000 a year. The boys’ rent last year was €600 a month. You have utilities, then there is travelling expenses. Enya is in Limerick.
‘My husband works in Killybegs in the fish business and does a lot of overtime and I work in the post office and it’s still not enough. But because both of us are working, basically we don’t get a grant.’
The Classroom Divide is on RTÉ One tomorrow at 9.35pm.