Warden’s Blog:

The latest piece from the Warden is from his contribution for the new Old Columban Society Bulletin (published in May for members):

Every year has its challenges and I will not bore you with some of mine! Nevertheless the challenges that we face over here as a sector are nothing compared those faced by the independent sector in the UK. The new Labour government which was elected in July 2024 lost no time in fulfilling its manifesto promise to remove the exemption on charging VAT on school fees, thus essentially adding 20% to the cost of sending your child to a private school. Some schools have been able to absorb some of the cost but they have had to make cuts elsewhere. A year’s fees at Eton in September 2025 will be an eye-watering €75,000 a year! The irony is that this would have been impossible if not for Brexit, since it is illegal in European law to charge VAT on education.

I have many friends running schools in the UK and morale is low. At the last HMC (Heads’ Conference) that I went to, the best attended seminar was on the topic of what to do after headship! Many Heads are exhausted and are looking for calmer and less stressful waters.

Having said that, I do feel that UK private schools as a whole are, to some extent, reaping what they have sown. It used to be that professional parents could afford a private school, even a boarding option, but fees have ratcheted up well above inflation for a very long time now and an independent education is beyond the means of many who would traditionally have explored that option. Schools have become embroiled in an arms race for bigger and better facilities, trying to outdo each other in what they offer: a second sports hall; a new theatre that would not be out of place in the West End; boarding houses with 5 star accommodation. Were schools meant to be like that? Were they meant to be the bastions of social elitism that they have become? Many of the top schools in the UK were founded as a charitable endeavours to care for orphans and their benefactors would be astonished at what they have become.

Don’t get me wrong, the top schools in the UK are amongst the best in the world, but I think they are in some ways to blame for the predicament in which they find themselves.

Here at St. Columba’s we are seen as very expensive in the Irish context and yet our boarding fees begin at €25,000 a year, with day fees at €11,000, the price of one term at a top day school in the UK. Of course, we do get a state subsidy and I am not claiming that we are cheap but sending your child here is an aspiration that many more parents can afford than in the UK. We have very good facilities, but we are not in an arms race to outdo our competitors. We do what the best schools anywhere do… a beautiful campus, academic excellence, a very broad extra-curricular offering, a wonderful sense of tradition, all underpinned by great pastoral care.

It won’t surprise you to know that we are vigorously advertising in the UK. There are many families over there that have Irish family or Irish roots and they still want a traditional boarding education. I am hopeful that we will pick up a number of children who would have gone to a UK private school, but whose parents simply can’t afford it any more. Forecasts suggest that numbers attending private schools over there are set to shrink in the next couple of years and some smaller schools have already announced that they are closing their doors. I do not like to see friends and colleagues over there struggling but that does not mean that we are not hoping to benefit from their plight.

I believe that what we offer here is just as good as any school in the UK. As I said, I don’t mean that we can match the biggest schools over there for facilities, but we are true to our foundation, we are a safe and secure campus, we are a small school that looks out for every child that comes our way and I think that ultimately those things are more important than award-winning buildings and vanity projects.

If you add to that the breadth of the Irish Leaving Certificate curriculum, vis-à-vis the narrowness of the outdated three subject A Level option, and the imaginativeness of the Transition Year…but those are topics for another day!