Should Second Level Fees Be Reintroduced

imme

Was Donogh O`Malley right or wrong as Minister for Education to recommend to cabinet that second level fees be scrapped from 1969?

Should they be reintroduced to encourage students to study harder as they`d have to pay for their education.

Should second level fees be reintroduced?

Byron85

imme wrote: »

Was Donogh O`Malley right or wrong as Minister for Education to recommend to cabinet that second level fees be scrapped from 1969?

Should they be reintroduced to encourage students to study harder as they`d have to pay for their education.

Should second level fees be reintroduced?

Are you completely insane???

"Free" second level was a large enough expense for me when I was going through the system as someone from a single parent family. If full fees were introduced then you might as well tell people from certain areas to send their kids down the mines. :rolleyes:

Foxhound38

imme wrote: »

Was Donogh O`Malley right or wrong as Minister for Education to recommend to cabinet that second level fees be scrapped from 1969?

Should they be reintroduced to encourage students to study harder as they`d have to pay for their education.

Should second level fees be reintroduced?

Absolute madness...

The entire basis for our economy - in fact one of the few things we have left is a highly educated workforce. The very least someone should have upon leaving school is their Leaving Certificate under the normal run of affairs. It gives a good general basis to the subjects taught compared to the likes of the British Education system. We are a small country, the least we can afford is to educate our youth - it is an investment.

What would you do imme, with those who cannot afford to pay second level fees? Forcing youngsters to leave School with only a Primary School education behind them is tantramount to condemning them to unemployability for life, with all the problems and expense for society that comes with that. I really don't understand your logic in suggesting this...

dan_d

Simple answer to your question....yes.He was right.

TheReverend

No they should not be brought back, it would be pure insanity

RandomName2

imme wrote: »

Was Donogh O`Malley right or wrong as Minister for Education to recommend to cabinet that second level fees be scrapped from 1969?

Should they be reintroduced to encourage students to study harder as they`d have to pay for their education.

Should second level fees be reintroduced?

This would encourage people who were strapped for cash or not academically minded to leave school and get trades, unskilled work or live on social welfare.

We are coming down with people with trades.

Even unskilled work requires Leaving Cert qualification (or foreign nationality) to make someone employable.

Having more people live off social welfare for lack of work due to lack of education is a pretty loony proposal.

ei.sdraob

Foxhound38 wrote: »

The entire basis for our economy - in fact one of the few things we have left is a highly educated workforce.

we do?

dan_d

ei.sdraob wrote: »

we do?

Well, we'd be far worse off if all that most of the population had was primary school education....could you just picture it....:eek:.As to what we currently do have, that's a story for another day!

hallelujajordan

imme wrote: »

Was Donogh O`Malley right or wrong as Minister for Education to recommend to cabinet that second level fees be scrapped from 1969?

Should they be reintroduced to encourage students to study harder as they`d have to pay for their education.

Should second level fees be reintroduced?

Interested to hear your opinion on this OP ? I struggle to understand how anyone in their right mind could rationalise the reintroduction of second level fees . . .

With so much focus (rightly so) on the smart economy / knowledge economy we should be making education more accessible, not less so !

whatawaster

Absolutely not.

meditraitor

T.W.H Byron wrote: »

Are you completely insane???

I couldn't have put it better,

danbohan

ei.sdraob wrote: »

we do?

dan_d wrote: »

Well, we'd be far worse off if all that most of the population had was primary school education....could you just picture it....:eek:.As to what we currently do have, that's a story for another day!

maybe we might have a bit more reality than we currently have from some of our, over educated ,under motivated whinger generation

NSNO

danbohan wrote: »

maybe we might have a bit more reality than we currently have from some of our, over educated ,under motivated whinger generation

Sorry, please explain how someone could be overeducated?

Permabear

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Cookie_Monster

2nd level isin't exactly free as it is.

Books (which change every year or two and make 2nd hand useless), uniforms, mandatory voluntary donations etc all add up to a hefty amount each year. And you want to add more cost to that?

dlofnep

The unfortunate reality of re-introduction of third-level fees will mean that many families will be unable to afford to go to college. While colleges are underfunded, especially at IT level - and we need to increase funds - I just don't think that there is a fair way of doing this, without impacting on the most vulnerable people in society,

The abolition of fees has allowed for many people from disadvantaged backgrounds to get an education.

Donegalfella - Suppose we go ahead with your plan - What sort of fees would we be looking at? For the sake of discussion at all that. Would you support a fee cap, and a grant system?

NSNO

donegalfella wrote: »

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That's not to say that excellent education systems can't be (relatively) free. What the OP is suggesting would create an economic barrier to both second-level AND third-level education. He doesn't even want to give disadvantaged children the opportunity to an education, by virtue of where they were born and which family they were born into.

So much could be done to reform our second-level system without increasing current expenditure. Curriculum reform would have to be at the top of the list; I personally feel that our LC curriculum has, year-on-year, changed to allow for the students who do absolutely zero study for nearly 6 years and then break out the books in early May. So much of the exam can simply be learned off by rote through cramming that the LC has not become a test of a candidate's suitability for third-level, but more a test of their short-term memory.

This is evidenced by the poor uptake and/or results in subjects that actually require an understanding of the concepts examined (namely Honours Maths, Applied Maths and Physics).

But most startling of all is how the DoE has decided to address the age-old complaint of students: "But none of this is any use in real life".

The DoE feels that the best way to address that is to change the subject and difficulty of the curriculum to suit the candidates. It is an absolute farce. This results in us having tens of thousands of students coming out with a variety of basic and elementary information in various subjects that still has very little application to their lives or their further education.

Our second-level education system should foster the skills of learning. where are students actually asked to use their critical-thinking skills in the exam? I can think only of the very basic and predictable questions asked in the English comprehensions and the History documents. Where are our students asked to solve problems and use logic? Again, apparently the DoE thinks that logic is the sole preserve of Maths. How many of our second-level students can competently speak a second language, foreign or otherwise?

Students can barely spell or structure a proper sentence with any sort of varied vocabulary, let alone structure a strong argument! (As clearly evidenced by my post! ).

All of these are real problems with our education system that can and should be tackled soon. They won't require much funding, if any. These are reforms to our educational climate; how we, our students, our teachers, our academics and our employers view our education system and what we want our students to achieve there.

However, absolutely none of this suggests that the introduction of second-level or even third-level fees would improve this situation. We need to improve the standards of quality of those students who go from second to third-level, we do not need to improve the standards of their wealth. There is nothing to suggest that students from wealthier families who would be more able to pay second-level fees better perform in second-level schools. They do, however, perform better at exams - and that's not through their own brilliance. That's simply down to their parents wasting thousands on grinds schools to push their kids through the exam because a) kids won't get off their arses and b) the exam encourages grinds schools because it is so predictable.

nuac

Secondary school fees should not be brought back.

I know there are other costs related to secondary schools but the abolition of fees allowed many to go beyond primary education who could not otherwise afford it.

hallelujajordan

donegalfella wrote: »

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I don't think 'excellent' and 'free' are or have to be mutually exclusive concepts . . .

danbohan

danbohan wrote: »

maybe we might have a bit more reality than we currently have from some of our, over educated ,under motivated whinger generation

how do you justify comments like that? "whinger generation" wtf?

danbohan

NSNO wrote: »

Sorry, please explain how someone could be overeducated?

over educated in their own minds to do a lesser or more menial job than what they are ''qualified'' to do and earn less than 35k omg!

Permabear

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sceptre

donegalfella wrote: »

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For second level, I'll take free excellence. Or uncharged excellence if we'd like to be more accurate but "free" seems to have been the term for the past forty years.

For the OP questions: right, no and no.

danbohan wrote: »

maybe we might have a bit more reality than we currently have from some of our, over educated ,under motivated whinger generation

It's difficult to uneducate people in a controlled manner so your idea isn't a goer and, to be blunt, is mixing correlation and causation if you're correct, which you haven't established either, unfortunately. If you don't like the modern yoof, that's fine but it's nothing to do with the thread unless you join the dots so it becomes so.

jank

Donegalfella, would you like to see fees introduced at 2nd level to raising funding levels in education?

I know we could look at other ways at improving education but would fees be the basis of your own reform plan?

sceptre

donegalfella wrote: »

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While I don't particularly care what anyone else's views are on unions (positive or negative, depends on the day of the week for me), we'd have a far better discussion minus the pro- or contra-union bit. Leave it outside please.

/mod

NSNO

donegalfella wrote: »

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I completely agree with you with regards to the fact that throwing money at the system will not make it better. The problem is much deeply rooted in the climate and culture of our education system (and its intanglement with the church) than people like to think. The system as a whole is not underfunded (Obviously and in my opinion undeniably some parts of it are eg. special needs assistants etc. but the lack of funding for those parts is directly caused by the wastage and poor performance of the others)


Incidentally, do you have a link for the NCCA report? I'd be interested in reading that.

Permabear

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mrboswell

imme wrote: »

Was Donogh O`Malley right or wrong as Minister for Education to recommend to cabinet that second level fees be scrapped from 1969?

Should they be reintroduced to encourage students to study harder as they`d have to pay for their education.

Should second level fees be reintroduced?

It won't exactly fit in with current plans for a knowledge economy.

mrboswell

donegalfella wrote: »

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Thats fine - let the private schools pay teachers full wages themselves.

See how long the private schools last then....

Valmont

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

mandatory voluntary donations

You would make a great labour TD in the run up to an election. .

Madd Finn

If you think private investment in education is the answer then there are already hundreds of schools you can pay to send your children to at second level.

Thousands of parents throughout the country choose to send their children to fee-paying schools despite the fact that there are always non-fee-paying alternatives.

This whole thread is a red herring.

Permabear

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jank

donegalfella wrote: »

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Thats all well and good but what about the people who cant afford it?

Permabear

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annoyingbeast

No way! Progressing in school should be about how smart/hardworking you are, not how much money you have, too much emphasis is put on money these days, money is what makes our society unequal!

Permabear

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Het-Field

A Voucher system is the best that could be achieved from a libertarian/fiscally conservative perspective. It would ringfence spending on education, and would increase competition.

It would be a very regressive step to offer people education up to 12 years, and the set them free at that point. If people cannot afford education, then why will they pay for it ?

mrboswell

donegalfella wrote: »

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Indeed it would be nice to know. I suspect that unchallenged ridiculous insurance premiums has something to do with it.

Just to clarify though, what I was getting at is that private schools shouldn't have the use of state teachers. It gives them an unfair advantage with regard to cherry picking teachers because they can pay extra compared with standard teacher rates. It also allows them to spend money on facilities/sports etc that other schools can't afford.

As far as I know a high percentage of salaries to private school teachers are paid by the state and the schools top them up. If they had to pay teachers from their own budget it wouldn't last long.

Parents should have the choice to spend more on children's education, but if they are going to pay for it they should pay for all of it. There is an onus on the state to provide education for every child in the state. Once there is a provision for it and parents choose not to avail of it then the states obligations is ended.

Private schools should pay their own teachers, from their on money, and not the states.