Boarding School..Scholarship

Piggy One

Currently my school does not offer the type of education I need. Does anyone know of scholarships for fifth year students to Boarding school

Fad

Piggy One wrote: »

Currently my school does not offer the type of education I need. Does anyone know of scholarships for fifth year students to Boarding school

What? be more specific?


(Not that im aware of)

K-Bowie

Piggy One wrote: »

Currently my school does not offer the type of education I need. Does anyone know of scholarships for fifth year students to Boarding school

Your education is what you make it to be, I've been to both Boarding and Public schools and its no better nor no worse. I would only advise Boarding school to people who might be living in the middle of the country with no one around them.

K4t

Fad wrote: »

What? be more specific?


(Not that im aware of)

Perhaps he's referring to the over-crowded classes, more restricted choice of subjects, ordinary and honours level in the same class for the majority of subjects, many poor, underperforming teachers who cannot be fired, many unmotivated and unenthuasiastic teachers in public schools?

Not to mention the amount of messers in class who take up the majority of teachers' time during class. These are the same students who have all the rights and can't be expelled unless they murder a fellow pupil or teacher, even at that there would be tonnes of paperwork.

PurpleFistMixer

Are public schools on average overcrowded? Or rather, are there statistics on this? Myself and my sister both went to (different) public schools, and both are losing students on average. Where once there were 3 classes in first year, there are now only 2. Perhaps the overcrowded schools are down the country. Or perhaps all the people in my school's catchment area go to the local private schools.

Piggy One: I'd start off by researching what boarding school you may want to go to, maybe even get in touch with them if you're thinking of applying, to see what kind of scholarships they may offer. If they have a website that may also have information on it.

K4t

PurpleFistMixer wrote: »

Are public schools on average overcrowded? Or rather, are there statistics on this? Myself and my sister both went to (different) public schools, and both are losing students on average. Where once there were 3 classes in first year, there are now only 2. Perhaps the overcrowded schools are down the country. Or perhaps all the people in my school's catchment area go to the local private schools.
.

It's moreso the fact that ordinary level students, most who have little or no interest in the subject they're doing, are in the same class as higher level students who want to get As. This is a recipe for disaster. It's fun in 5th year granted but ffs not in 6th year! The teacher spends more time explaining stuff to ordinary level who don't even care than with higher level. :mad:

PurpleFistMixer

K4t wrote: »

It's moreso the fact that ordinary level students, most who have little or no interest in the subject they're doing, are in the same class as higher level students who want to get As. This is a recipe for disaster. It's fun in 5th year granted but ffs not in 6th year! The teacher spends more time explaining stuff to ordinary level who don't even care than with higher level. :mad:

Depends on the school though. In my school we were all streamed, so there was none of that. (I'd imagine that was miserable, though. It was bad enogh in 6th year having people in HL who clearly couldn't keep up, delaying the class every day.)

K4t

K4t wrote: »

It's moreso the fact that ordinary level students, most who have little or no interest in the subject they're doing, are in the same class as higher level students who want to get As. This is a recipe for disaster. It's fun in 5th year granted but ffs not in 6th year! The teacher spends more time explaining stuff to ordinary level who don't even care than with higher level. :mad:

I've gone to a public school for 7 years (Yes I did TY and I am now forced to repeat) and I've never once been in a mixed class, all classes are either higher or ordinary.

So I don't see how you can claim that it's a fact that ordinary level students are in the same classes as higher level students. It may be a fact for a number of schools, but it's certainly not a fact for all.

K4t

-JammyDodger- wrote: »

I've gone to a public school for 7 years (Yes I did TY and I am now forced to repeat) and I've never once been in a mixed class, all classes are either higher or ordinary.

So I don't see how you can claim that it's a fact that ordinary level students are in the same classes as higher level students. It may be a fact for a number of schools, but it's certainly not a fact for all.

I'm attending one of the 'supposedly' best secondary schools in Mayo.

There is only streaming in English, Irish and Maths. Every other class for all 6 years are mixed ability classes, ranging from students with no interest whatsoever in the subjects to students trying to achieve A1s. It's very unfair on both teachers and students imho.

I know a guy in Dublin who goes to a school where there is 3 seprate ability classes for each subject. Ordinary, higher and a class for students aiming for an A1!!!!

K4t

K4t wrote: »

I'm attending one of the 'supposedly' best secondary schools in Mayo.

There is only streaming in English, Irish and Maths. Every other class for all 6 years are mixed ability classes, ranging from students with no interest whatsoever in the subjects to students trying to achieve A1s. It's very unfair on both teachers and students imho.

I know a guy in Dublin who goes to a school where there is 3 seprate ability classes for each subject. Ordinary, higher and a class for students aiming for an A1!!!!

Yah sorry you're actually right, I was only thinking of Maths, English and Irish. All the other students in different subjects are just lumped together!

PurpleFistMixer

(And yeah, in my school we had 3 English classes. OL, normal HL, and upper HL)

Now that I think of it, I only had streaming in English, Irish, Maths, and French. All other classes were combined, because we simply didn't have enough students/teachers to form new classes (German wasn't streamed due to this reason). Wasn't too bad. Some hard days doing stuff in Art History that the OL people didn't need to cover, but what can you do.

Pigwidgeon

K4t wrote: »

Perhaps he's referring to the over-crowded classes, more restricted choice of subjects, ordinary and honours level in the same class for the majority of subjects, many poor, underperforming teachers who cannot be fired, many unmotivated and unenthuasiastic teachers in public schools?

that sounds exactly like my school... gotta love being the only (apparently) non-fee-paying loreto school in the country!

we're streamed for irish english maths and spanish, but the rest of my classes are mixed.
my economics ranges from people getting A's and B's in all the tests to people who got 15% and the likes in the 5th year summer exam.
same for my biology class... and geography!

PurpleFistMixer

Loreto Mullingar is non-fee-paying, afaik. Just to throw that in there. Went to Irish college with a girl from there. She was surprised by the reputation Loreto has in Dublin.

Pigwidgeon

PurpleFistMixer wrote: »

Loreto Mullingar is non-fee-paying, afaik.

was an urban legend so...

implausible

Loreto Cavan and Letterkenny are non-feepaying too...

Most schools in the country have to cater to ALL students, of all levels and economic classes. It's part of living in a (fairly) equal society. Of course, you are going to come across disruptive and disinterested students, but all have to be educated - it's good training for life. In college, you will meet less of them, in life more.

Though it may be frustrating for ambitious students, at the end of the day, it is YOU who determines your grade; your school and teachers are merely facilitating this.

Piste

I would have assumed most classes are mixed ability?

Like in my school the core subjects and French are all streamed, but the rest are mixed. They just assume everyone will take the higher level paper so teach the classes at honours level and people may decide to switch to pass around christmas of 6th year.

Fad

K4t wrote: »

Perhaps he's referring to the over-crowded classes, more restricted choice of subjects, ordinary and honours level in the same class for the majority of subjects, many poor, underperforming teachers who cannot be fired, many unmotivated and unenthuasiastic teachers in public schools?

Now the schools that are like this are few and far between, but public schools can have better facilities than private schools, like i've never heard of a private school offer the LC Engineering subject, or this Technology one i heard about.

Also, in school at the moment, besides the core subjects and languages, there are no streamed classes. Like if you wanna do OL chem, youre stuck in the same class as all 14 of us who are doing chem at all.

KatCookie

What about Kilkenny College Piggy One?
its a private (ie large fee paying) mixed day and boarding school. they do almost every subject (except for maybe latin and italian or something like that)
there are grants available if you are on a low income and there is also the grant you can get for being a member of Church of Ireland (some rule about being allowed to go to a school of your religion)
there are people attending there from Dublin, Tipperary, Kildare, laois, wexford etc etc..
and i was looking at their statistics a couple of days ago, they tell me that they are abvoe the national average points wise.. apparantly.
The pupil-teacher raitio goes down the high you get up in the school (ie, it could be 25 students per teacher in 1st yr but by 6th yr it could be maybe 15). All classes are streamed after 3rd yr, and most are streamed before that

(i dont mean to sound like an advert for Kilkeny College)
there is also the institute in dublin which caters for 5th and 6th yr only, supposed to be good for cramming it all in!

Piggy One

Thanks for all your advice...
But what I really need is some info on where, how and when to apply for a scholarship to boarding school, for example, a merit scholarship.

spurious

I would imagine you apply directly to the individual schools.

Piste

http://www.glenstal.ie/scholarship.html
http://www.royalschoolcavan.ie/parents.html#scholarships
http://www.whs.ie/Scholarships.htm

KatCookie

Merit Scholarships? i didnt think there was many of them going, except for maybe first year... but on clicking those links im not so sure, if you are in a low income family then you definitely can get something!

jennyq

I know Rockwell College has an scholarship exam for incoming first years, they give one full scholarship and a few half ones I think, but I don't know if there's a procedure for entering other years.

It's stupid to generalise about schools though, all privates schools are not full of ambitious, hard-working and dedicated students and all public schools are not full of layabouts. Having worked on Eurolanguages courses and witnessed a range of students from different kinds of schools, but a large number of them from your typical south Dublin private schools, let me just say that in many of such students' cases it is not a great advertisement for the schools! Obviously there's plenty of lovely people from such schools too but my point is that just because you're in a private/boarding school does not mean you will have no messers in your classes, attending a private or boarding school is in general not an automatic sign of intelligence or ambition.

To be honest unless your school has a serious problem with people disrupting classes it is not going to make a huge difference to your grades if a few people don't give a damn so long you're actually doing the work, just focus on yourself and ignore it as best you can, get grinds in a subject if necessary. In real life you're going to have to deal with people who are lazy or don't put in effort, there is probably no school or college or workplace you'll go to that there won't be a least one or two people like that but it shouldn't have a major impact on you.

As far as I know most schools do not stream subjects other than the compulsory ones as the majority of students will take the honours paper, but I could be wrong.

If you do really feel like you have to move schools, just bear in mind it is probably not necessary to go to an expensive boarding school miles away (unless you want to move far away obviously).