Will exclusion based on religion really stop?

visg wrote: »

From what I understand: Schools don't get much money from the government. The church helps. When you are related to the church you can have better funded education. So actually the whole system should be changed and schools should get more money. f.

The vast majority of school funding in Ireland comes from the state, not the churches. They may own legacy buildings or donated lands and have driven things decades ago, but school building programmes, particularly at primary level were almost always driven by the state. Teacher's salaries are paid by the state. There's an annual capitation grant per student per year and there are various other funds made available for capital expenditure, special needs supports and so on.

I find that we are having a discussion about divestment in a complete vacuum of facts. I would like to see a full, transparent publication of who's funding what in each school. That way we could maybe have a discussion, as from what I am aware, the role of the 'sponsors' of schools in terms of financing is quite small relative to what the state puts in, particularly when you consider pay and pensions.

We also have created an issue where we've duplication and triplication and even quadruplication of facilities because they're nominally owned by different sponsors (usually religious communities) or they're divided by gender and so on. So, typically Irish primary schools are small and often don't seem to reflect modern settlement patterns or demands in many cases. We don't have concepts like school districts or involvement of local authorities or planning authorities in any serious way, as would be the norm in most countries.

But I would like to see a proper breakdown of exactly what's being funded and by whom as without that all these debates get swept up into people making statements without any facts and figures to back them up.

I'd also like to see an analysis of costs and efficiency of use of state resources where you've got clusters of multiple schools that are basically divided up for what amount to sectarian and gender segregation reasons or legacy sponsors.

It just seems utterly crazy to me that we have so little transparency in what is basically one of our largest areas of public expenditure.

visg wrote: »

I never said I dislike Catholics. I dislike the fact that not everybody is welcome. Education is a human right.

Protestant schools only take Protestants in their schools as well . If a religion owns a school surely they are entitled to have their own crew going there . If they aren’t allowed control who enters their own buildings they might as well close it down so no one has a school to go to .
More educate together schools or else those who disagree with religion have to travel further with their children to one . In England and America ca you can’t get into catholic schools such is the demand and here people are giving out about having to go to one .

State funding:

Current expenditure:
Teacher's pay and pensions.
Secretary
Ancillary grant - covers caretaker etc.
Capitation grant - €375/student per yr (this is way higher for students with special needs).
ICT grant (covers technology) (5 million total pot depends on size of school but can be tens of thousands in larger ones)
School books grant (seed capital to start school books rental scheme)
DEIS grant which covered schools identified as needing extra assistance for social inclusion.
Minor works grants - pays for minor capital upgrades to buildings.
Then you've major capital grants for buildings, site acquisition and so on.

Outside of that money is raised by schools themselves - usually fundraising from parents or through various drives. The sponsors typically don't put significant money in.

Overall the Irish government spends €10.8 billion a year on education in general.

Differences in facilities and martials are down to how an individual school prioritised it's expenditure. Some will place more emphasis on ICT for example than others. It can vary very significantly depending on who's driving the management priorities - principal and board of management.

The biggest issue that I would be concerned about here is the duplication/triplication that goes on in cities and towns. You can have huge numbers of very small schools - I've looked at lists that have shown 10 primary schools in one suburb of a city for example.

The issue with that is it's driven by diversify of sponsors - different religions, different religious orders, gender segregation (more common in cities than rural areas), gaelscoils, educate together etc and as more religious communities establish, there'll be more demand for more school because we never developed a public school model.

Each school has buildings, overheads, secretaries, management costs etc etc and it's a big part of why money gets spread so thin.

Also it's providing education based on needs of religious communities and their concerns, rather than looking at the best outcome for students, best facilities and supports for staff, impact on the overall state financial position.

If we maximize the expenditure by creating umpteen versions of primary and secondary schools in urban areas we also pull money from budgets that could be helping small schools in rural areas that have no option but to be small scale.

It also absorbs funds that could be going into school libraries, funding support services like psychologists, support teachers and specialist services, special needs assistance, ICT, books, sports facilities, STEM facilities etc etc

Look at something like school meals: we've primary schools on such a small scale that things like school meals are even way too complex to provide. Whereas that's rather normal in many European countries.

I just see a system that seems to be entirely driven by nominal sponsors' (private interests) perceived needs and not educational or societal needs.

judeboy101 wrote: »

Vol schools typically only receive 70% of the funding they need from the state, ETB schools get 100% of funding.

The other % is made up by voluntary contributions though. It's not coming from the church. It's coming from the parents and sometimes fund raising drives by the schools themselves for exceptional items.