Private Schools in Ireland, part 2
Continued from the post, Private Schools in Ireland...
Constantly being in a collective with teachers who not only teach but care for you, teaches children discipline, to be responsible for their actions, helps them understand subordination and teaches them to respect not only adults but also senior students. Whichever way you look at it, senior students care for and assist students who are younger then themselves.
Some schools even have a group of senior students, called prefects, who are elected by the staff and students. They wear special badges and any student that needs assistance or advice can go to them knowing that hey will receive the help that they want.
Children in private schools have active committees where they learn organization and management skills.
A very important part of private schools in Ireland is the extracurricular activities organized for the students. These activities have two very important roles. The first is to aid the development of the already pre-existing personal traits of each individual and secondly to reveal hidden skills and also to help the student develop positive qualities; for example, leadership, mutual respect, a sense of community, ethical behaviour, etc.
Given that sport, especially those that use teams, aid the development of the qualities mentioned above, all private schools offer their students the ability to do various different sports inside the school. It’s hard to imagine, but the numbers of the sports available can sometimes be comprised of two digit numbers.
For children that have artistic talents, there are also many available options. Many private schools in Ireland have their own theatres, choirs, instruments and musicians alike, art studios and art workshops.
Although one thing that is worth mentioning is that private schools in Ireland are generally not large and therefore usually specialize in only one area. This area can be sport, music, the visual arts or something like that. Large schools may specialize in two or more areas.
Now we will tell you about the different types of private schools there are in Ireland; apart from the schools which we will describe in detail, which are private boarding schools, there are two other types of Irish boarding schools. They are day schools, and morning to evening school. Private schools that operate morning to evening are schools that allow a child to go home after classes, if they do not do any after school activities. A full daytime private school is a school that students continue to stay in during the evenings, during this time they can do homework, engage in extracurricular activities and sport while at the same time having complete access to food if the get hungry.
Most private schools in Ireland use only one type of teaching out of the ones we mentioned above, but some schools can use two or even three of the types of the teaching mentioned above.
Now let’s talk about the price. We would like to inform you that the price to get an education in a private school is lower in Ireland than in other English speaking countries. The reason for this is quite simple. The thing is that all of the schools in Ireland, including private schools, receive financial support from the government, in comparison to such countries as Britain where private schools have to fully depend on the income that they make.
But the fact that schools receive financial support from the government does not mean that they have to fully rely on the Department of Education. On the contrary, the principals of private schools have the right to, with the help of teachers, decide the school program. Of course this program has to be made under Irish educational standards. These standards are closely monitored by the Ministry of education in Ireland.
The size of this blog doesn’t allow us to further explain all of the little details about private schools in Ireland, but we can give you individual counselling and we also hold free and paid webinars on this subject, where you can find the answer to any one of your questions.
To make our posts on this subject look like more than just theory, in our next post we’ll tell you about one of the oldest private schools in Ireland –King’s Hospital.