Originally posted by Curval
It is a simple matter here of taking the education budget for a given year and divide that by the number of students. Last year the figure was closing on $19,000 per student.
Ridiculous.
I say schools here should be privatised in entirety. I cannot get anyone to explain to me why a top notch school costs me $15,000 a year and the government pathetic excuse for schools cost us taxpayers (yes we do pay tax here, just not income taxes) $19,000 per student.
I pay for both.
..and yes, I'm RANTING.
Doesn’t Bermuda have one of the highest costs of living in the world?
It should cost more to pay people to work in such an expensive place; you can’t expect people to live in their cars.
As far as the discrepancy between public and private school costs.
1. The main cost of running a school is staff salaries. Generally private and Catholic school teachers make less than public school teachers. Heck, I even make less than some local public school bus drivers. Public school teachers usually have better benefits. Public schools often pay significantly higher salaries for higher education of their teachers.
2. Public schools are required to provide special education services. Special education lowers the student to teacher ratio, ups the paper work and red tape and is generally very expensive. SPED equipment such as ramps also boosts costs. My Catholic school has almost no SPED services. My old public school had a huge SPED staff.
3. Laws are written so that public schools often have to pay top dollar for services or supplies. Private and Catholic schools often have more opportunity to shop around.
4. Private and Catholic have much better luck receiving private donations and fundraising. Wealthy alumni often remember their private and Catholic schools but forget about their public schools; generally private and Catholic school alumni are more well-to-do. My school makes a bundle from bingo twice a week. A parent recently donated $30,000 worth of servers to our school; another parent volunteers as our network technician so we don’t have to pay someone for that job. These are just a few examples. Good luck finding these kinds of opportunities for public schools.
5. Bussing may or may not be an additional public school cost.
6. Laws are written so that public schools have to complete much more paper work and deal with more red tape; forced inefficiency.
Are you ready for the main reason why your school and my school are “top notch”?
It’s not the school. It’s not the teachers. It’s not the budget. It’s not even the red tape forced upon public schools.
It’s the demographics; it’s you. It’s easy to teach kids who have a big head start and who behave. It’s difficult to teach children who are way behind and don’t know how to behave.
You and the other parents at your school are more involved in your children’s lives and education (mostly). You and the other parents at your school typically have received a higher education and place a higher value on education. “Bad seeds” in Catholic and private schools are kicked out. Public schools don’t have that option.
Quite simply: your children’s schoolmates typically are better students from “better” families.
Is that worth the price?
If you have money left to eat it probably is.
