The high price of Ireland’s ‘free’ education

Every year for the guts of a decade, a back-to-school piece has appeared on the Pricewatch page, and every year we have highlighted how our “free” education system costs parents hundreds of euro each year.

Crested uniforms, high-priced books, bin-after-using workbooks, “voluntary” contributions: the years roll on but the words never change.

Every now and then proposals are put on a table near the corridors of power, and politicians rub their chins thoughtfully and express grave concern. Sometimes they promise to take action. Ministers come and go but little changes.

In the summer of 2013, the Joint Committee on Education and Social Protection called for schools to be prohibited from insisting students wear expensive crested uniforms. It also sought the introduction of a universal schoolbook rental scheme, and said workbooks should be banned and voluntary contributions "greatly discouraged, if not completely prohibited".

It warned that children whose parents struggle to pay for extracurricular activities or voluntary contributions were being stigmatised, and said the relationship between parents and their children's school "should be educational, not financial". The report, which was compiled by Aodhán Ó Ríordáin of the Labour Party, also criticised school patrons for what it said was "a vacuum of leadership".

While the sentiments expressed in the report were to be commended, nothing really happened. What is most frustrating is that a genuinely free primary school system could be implemented for a comparatively small amount of money. Last month the children’s charity Barnardos, which has long highlighted the high price of our education, calculated that it would cost €103.2 million to guarantee free access to education for all primary school children. This works out at €185 more per child.

If a government were willing to make this investment, it would cover all school books, school transport and classroom resources, while also restoring capitation grants to 2010 levels. An additional investment of €126.9 million would fund free secondary school: an extra €335 per student.

And the reality . . . 

Those figures are a fraction of what parents will actually have to shell out over the next six weeks or so. According to an Irish League of Credit Unions survey published last week, when the cost of uniforms, books, lunches, extracurricular activities, school trips, voluntary contributions, transport and sports gear are totted up, parents of children in the primary system will spend an average of €816 per child. Parents of secondary school children will spend an average of €1,313 per child.

Is it any wonder that the credit union survey found that 81 per cent of parents of school-going children feel that the costs of sending their children back to school is a significant financial burden, while 32 per cent say they are likely to get themselves into debt to cover the cost.

In the survey, uniforms were found to be the most expensive items: the parents of primary school children spend an average of €166 per child – up from €160 in 2014 – and secondary school parents spend an average of €258 per child on uniforms, down from €266 last year.

Books were the second most expensive item on the school shopping list: primary school parents shell out €106 on books – down slightly from €107 in 2014 – and secondary school parents spend €213 on books, up significantly from €166 in 2014.

School lunches were the third most expensive item on the list. Feeding children in primary school cost €116 per child in 2015 – down from €122 in 2014 – while the cost of lunches for secondary school children was put at €147 per child, up from €134 in 2014.

The market for school books in the State is worth €55 million. The Department of Education stumps up €15 million for books for disadvantaged schools. Parents pay the rest.

In the North, schools are given a budget to supply books to children, usually on loan. Two years ago, when he was minister for education, Ruairí Quinn secured €15 million to expand book-rental schemes in primary schools. Little else appears to have been done to alleviate this cost for parents.

Voluntary contributions

Then there are the “voluntary” contributions that schools seek from parents. The credit union survey found that seven in 10 parents are expected to make a voluntary contribution, amounting to an average of €112 per child. Secondary schools are more likely to request voluntary contributions: 77 per cent have adopted this questionable policy, compared with 70 per cent of primary schools. Parents of secondary school children are required to pay higher contributions (€140) than parents of primary school children (€82).

Unfortunately, nothing is being done to end the tyranny of the voluntary donation. Some schools put huge pressure on parents to pay up, with constant reminders sent via their children. Some even go as far as to identify, in front of their classmates, the children of parents who have not paid the contribution.

June Tinsley is the head of advocacy at Barnardos. It is easy to detect a note of despair in her voice when she's talking about the cost of education in the Republic. She asks why parents in the Republic have to pay for school books when they are free in other parts of Europe and why parent A has to spend €50 on a crested jumper when parent B who lives next door can buy one for €10 and sew a crest on to it.

“The school system is under-resourced, and parents are expected to fill in the gaps,” she says. “There is another layer of difficulty because the Department of Education has a hands-off approach to the provision of key things like school books, and it has also adopted a hands-off approach to uniform policy in all schools.”

She says that although in recent years there have been “inches of progress made and some of the costs have levelled off”, particularly with the almost glacial roll-out of voluntary book rental schemes, the “Government is not honouring its constitutional obligation to provide free education.”

She describes as “disheartening” the lip service the political classes pay to the importance of education. “They are always telling us how education is the key but then refusing to fund it. The back-to-school allowance has been absolutely decimated in what was a very mean-spirited cut. Politicians need to stop reminding us how important education is and start investing in it.”

She says that the €103 million needed to make our primary system genuinely free is “small change” compared with the €8 billion that is spent on the education system each year. “It is a no-brainer. In the scheme of things it is not a lot of money and the impact it would have would last forever.”

• The Barnardos annual school costs survey is online now. Parents can take part at barnardos.ie/schoolcosts15