Long waiting lists for a place in private school
Rising fees are having no effect on the numbers vying for enrolment
PRIVATE schools in Ireland are continuing to see a surge in popularity despite rising fees blamed on inflationary pressures, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.
New figures provided by the Department of Education reveal 26,682 children were enrolled in fee-paying secondary schools yesterday, up almost 500 on the previous year and an increase of 1,000 on the past two years.
And parents attempting to enrol their children in future years are facing lengthy waiting lists where, in some cases, there are more than five applications for every place.
Latest admission statistics show most private schools – especially those in the Dublin area – are heavily oversubscribed and have long waiting lists.
This is despite many of the State’s 51 private schools raising their fees this year, saying rising energy costs were partly due to the hikes. Some schools have raised their fees by up to 8% in the past year.
The Irish School Heads’ Association, which represents about 21 Protestant fee-charging secondary schools, said reports that the overall percentage of children attending private schools is dropping are misleading. Johnston Reid, principal of the Monaghan Collegiate School and a member of the association’s executive says demand continues to grow.
Mr Reid told the MoS: ‘Yes, the percentage figures have dropped over a 20-year period, but that’s because a number of private schools like Newtown in Waterford and Kilkenny College have come into the public system.
‘But the demand (for private schools) is very strong.’
One frustrated parent said she attended an open day at a private co-education school in south Dublin last Saturday hoping to enrol their ten-year-old daughter.
But she told the MoS: ‘We loved it and went to put her name down for first year and were told that there were over one thousand children on the waiting list for about 150 places. With no previous connection to the school, we’ve very little chance of getting her in.’
Figures released by the department last year show Blackrock College took in 1,032 boys, Wesley College in Ballinteer took in 930 pupils and Midelton College in Cork enrolled 430.
The King’s Hospital in west Dublin, where Tánaiste Leo Varadkar was educated, enrolled 730, while Loreto College on Saint Stephen’s Green took in 557 students.
Loreto is five times oversubscribed. Similarly, at the €7,000-ayear Gonzaga College in south Dublin there were 252 applications for just 96 places to first year in 2021/22. Alexandra College, also in south Dublin, has 221 applications for 105 first year places.
One of the most heavily subscribed schools in the country is the non-fee paying Muckross Park in Donnybrook. They routinely have more than 700 applications for just 120 places. The school is located in an area where many parents have little alternative but to send their children to private school through lack of choice.
Each school admits students according to criteria set out by their board of management. Having a parent who was a past pupil
‘We’ve little chance of getting her in’
‘Over 1,000 on waiting list for 150 places’
and/or having a sibling in the school are usually factors in determining the first round of entrants.
Of Dublin’s private secondary schools, 12 are all-girls, 10 are allboys and 12 are co-educational.
Ireland does not publish exams league tables, so there is no way of directly accessing a school’s exam results. But ‘feeder tables’ are punished by several newspapers annually, determining the rate of progression from a particular school to third level.
In the last set of feeder tables, 55 schools recorded a third-level progression rate of 100%.
Twenty-one of these were private schools in Dublin, while a further five were private schools in other parts of Ireland.
Sinn Féin and Labour have vowed to cut State funding for private schools if they are elected.