Private school fees in Ireland are rising by between 2% and 13%: how do schools compare?​‌

Glenstal Abbey School in Co Limerick is one of Ireland’s best known and most prestigious private schools, with past pupils including businessman John Magnier and Web Summit founder Paddy Cosgrave.

However, after almost 100 years in operation, the boarding school announced last week it would close by August 2028 amid declining demand for boarding education and the rising cost of operating.

In a statement announcing the closure, the school said it was not alone in facing these challenges, and that “boarding schools across Ireland and elsewhere are experiencing similar pressures”.

Wesley College in Dublin 16 this week also announced changes to its boarding arrangements due to declining demand. The school is to offer only five-day boarding, not seven-day.

“Over a sustained period, the boarding market in Ireland has changed considerably. We have seen this change very clearly at Wesley, where demand from our traditional market for seven-day boarding has declined significantly, while at the same time demand for five-day boarding has grown strongly,” the school said in a letter to parents.

An Irish Times analysis of the data shows how this tightening financial environment has been borne out in costs to parents, with private school fees rising by almost 25 per cent over the last five years.

Some 44 of the 48 fee-paying schools surveyed by The Irish Times raised their day fees last year, by between 2 and 13 per cent. The average increase was just over 4 per cent.

The cost of sending a child to one of these schools in day fees varies from €4,625 a year in Drogheda Grammar School to €25,296 a year in Nord Anglia International School in Leopardstown, Dublin 18. The second most expensive school for day fees is Glenstal Abbey at €14,950, while the third most expensive is the Institute of Education in Dublin 2 at €12,745.

For boarding schools, fees are highest at St Columba’s College in Dublin 16 at €31,154 for seven-day boarders, followed by Clongowes Wood in Co Kildare at €30,533 and Headfort School in Co Meath at €25,900.

One of the cheapest fee-paying schools in Dublin is Stratford College in Rathgar, which charged €5,000 per student this year, up just over 3 per cent from €4,850 last year.

Stratford, the State’s only Jewish-ethos school, has a student population of just under 200 children, which also makes it one of the smallest in the country.

This helps it to keep the costs down, says principal Nathan Barrett.

“We don’t have to hugely increase fees every year in order to keep up with a huge student body that come with it [a larger student population], huge costs and huge staff numbers as well. The building we are in used to be a house, so it’s smaller than a sprawling campus. The upkeep costs for a smaller building are smaller than they would be for other, larger schools,” Barrett says.

Like most fee-paying school in Ireland, the salaries of many teachers in Stratford are paid for by the Department of Education.

The State pays the salaries of one teacher for every 23 pupils in private schools compared with one teacher for every 19 pupils in non-fee-paying schools.

While this departmental funding accounts for a large proportion of employment costs, any additional teachers must be paid by the school itself through fees, and they do not receive capitation grants or schemes such as free schoolbooks or hot school meals.

The department spent a total of €131 million on salaries for teachers and special needs assistants in fee-paying schools for the 2022/2023 school year, and a total of €143 million for the 2023/24 school year.

The department also provides building-related grants and ICT (information and communications technology) grants to fee-paying schools, which amounted to €0.5 million in 2023 and €1.9 million in 2024.

Additional State funding is provided to support Protestant pupils who wish to attend fee-paying Protestant day and boarding schools.

There are 20 of these schools in Ireland and the means-tested grant is provided to pupils through the department’s Protestant Block Grant, which is administered by the Secondary Education Committee.

The Government funding allocated to the SEC to administer the Protestant Block Grant is €6.75 million per year.

[ State subsidies, no VAT and lower costs: how Irish private schools are attracting UK studentsOpens in new window ]

Jewish students attending Stratford College receive no similar funding assistance from Government.

However, Barrett is most frustrated that his school cannot receive State funding to open a special class, despite him campaigning for one for some time now.

“Is it that they [the department] feel that children and students who go to fee-paying schools don’t have any additional needs? I think their thinking is that fee-paying schools should be paying for these things themselves, under the impression that fee-paying schools are rolling around in lots of cash. Fee-paying schools are non-profit; they’re charities. So any money that’s there is used to run the school.

“They [fee-paying schools] don’t build up huge reserves, so we need support from the Department of Education to open these classes,” Barrett says.

When asked whether fee-paying schools could open such classes, a spokesperson for the Department of Education said the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) would “in the first instance, seek to provide special education provision in State-funded recognised schools (free-scheme schools)”.

“However, fee-charging schools may be sanctioned to open a special class provided the school meets the relevant criteria and there is identified need for places in the area that cannot be met through local free scheme schools.

“While fee-charging schools can support the provision of special education places, it is the priority of the department and the NCSE to ensure that schools in the free scheme are supported to open classes (as need arises) in the first instance,” the spokeswoman said.

Some schools did not respond to requests for comment by The Irish Times, while others declined to provide details of the day and boarding fees.

Exceptions from the data set include Blackrock College in south Co Dublin, St Michael’s College in Dublin 4 and St Mary’s College in Dublin 6 – all of which are owned by the Spiritan religious order. Rockwell College in Co Tipperary, also a Spiritan school, did not respond to The Irish Times, although details of its fee structure were obtained through other means.

Other schools that did not respond to, or declined to comment on, requests for details of their fee structure include Gonzaga College in Ranelagh, Dublin 6, Castleknock College in Dublin 15, Christian Brothers College, Cork, and Monaghan Collegiate School.