Schoolbook scramble: How to change the system and reduce the cost to parents

What’s the problem?

It’s the end of August. Parents are tearing their hair out trying to sort schoolbooks for the year ahead. Costs can run to hundreds of euro per child for primary and secondary schoolbooks – and nearly €1,000 for those using electronic tablets. These are significant sums for most, and an eye-watering multiplier for families with several children.

Some schools bulk buy ahead of time, making the process straightforward, though still costly. Others offer practical book-rental schemes, though not all. Now there’s a mad flurry to source books, as many parents long-finger the pain until August, trawling multiple shops and websites, chasing titles coming in and out of stock. Returns or second-hand purchases are difficult to organise.

Then there are the expensively produced workbooks (often underused by year-end), or the tricky practice of incorporating workbooks into textbooks, meaning they can’t be passed on: all hugely environmentally wasteful.

As for ebooks, a supposed saviour, they involve buying time-limited licences (that definitely can’t be shared or passed on) that include hard copies and workbooks anyway, whether you need them or not. One parent reports three unused hard copies of the same book at home, having had to shell out as each child acquired the same ebook. And that’s aside from the massive bonanza for Apple, as school after school going the tablet route opt for them.

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The entire process has been variously described as ad hoc, inefficient and expensive, wasteful of time, money and Earth’s resources.

Parent groups and social media are hopping.

“Spent €250 on books for 2 kids (Jr infants & 1st class). Five readers can be kept and passed on. Everything else will end up in the recycle bin. It’s insanity!”

“Book rental scheme is bullsh*t. The State should buy all children the books they need.”

“I don’t want to spend hours scavenging online. I suspect they will arrive just in time but it’s a chaotic, hopelessly inefficient way to do things.”

“Still feel scandalised that school books are not supplied as part of the system.”

“Recycling bin was filled a few weeks back. Easy money for some in the know. Dept should take charge. Then you buy the 55th edition of the massive biology book for the SAME syllabus that the big sister did and her perfect 54th edition goes in green bin.”

Schools and charities have schemes to help the stretched but, as another parent puts it, “Why should people have to ask for help?”

Is there a better way?

Other first-world countries with “free” education systems provide books, often at council or school district level. In the Republic it comes back to how education is structured. We’re a small country: 567,772 pupils at primary level and 362,899 at secondary level in 2018/2019. Irish schools, though State-funded, are mostly independent entities with individual patrons and boards of management.

The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) sets curriculums. The Department of Education leaves it to teachers to work out how to achieve learning outcomes. Myriad competing commercial publishers (about 10-12 of them) commission teachers to develop and write high-quality schoolbooks, often competing with others in the same subject or class. Then each school decides separately which books they want to use, and parents buy from the list at retail rates.

The Department of Education – notoriously resistant to change – does a Pontius Pilate on it all. Washing its hands of responsibility, it leaves contentious issues up to individual schools, urging them to adopt book rentals, and “phase out the use of workbooks which cannot be reused” (2017’s circular).

Why can’t the department sort it out?

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, Labour’s education spokesman (and a former teacher) is clear: “The department has a terrible reputation within politics for being incredibly conservative, that all it understands is teachers and buildings. It has a hands-off view of Irish education. It feels that the schools are run by boards of management, responsible to patron bodies. The department sets the curriculum and pays the teachers but, after that, schools are pretty much on their own.

“If they start interfering in areas such as schoolbooks, they’re getting involved in day-to-day management, and they don’t want to do that. It’s not about the money. It’s about who controls the system, and responsibilities the department does not want. In Northern Ireland, culturally it is considered crazy that you would live in a country where schoolbooks aren’t provided. When people from the North move to the Republic, they really are flabbergasted.”

Ó Ríordáin points to the “wider problem with Irish education and this transactional financial relationship that parents have with schools and teachers and principals. An awful lot of discussion is about money. Where’s the book money? Where’s the voluntary contribution, the fundraising. Money, money, money . . . Conversations should be about youth development and education.”

The department won’t get involved, he says “because it creates a precedent. Once they take responsibility for books, they’re opening the gates of taking responsibility for something else – it could be uniforms, whatever – that they would much prefer boards and patron bodies to have, because that’s how the system is set up.”

Who’s in charge?

A Department of Education spokesman doesn’t respond to whether it would seek to streamline current arrangements, but sets out how the system currently works. The department doesn’t endorse or promote particular programmes, products or publications supporting the teaching of subjects. There’s a code of practice that publishers won’t revise texts within four years, and, basically, it’s left up to individual schools.

The spokesman points to a book grant to all schools for books and rental schemes, worth €17.1 million this year; it’s up to schools how they spend it. Some 96 per cent of primary and 68 per cent of post-primary schools operate book rental. More than €150 million goes to support disadvantaged Deis schools, and this includes book grants.

So, it doesn’t sound like it’s the money?

Labour estimates it would cost the State about €40 million a year to provide schoolbooks for both primary school and secondary school level. “I am not convinced the money is the problem,” says Ó Ríordáin. “The responsibility is the problem. Once you do schoolbooks, you have to do other stuff. And the department does not want that responsibility.”

What do educational publishers say?

It’s hard to get one to talk about it. Alan Cantwell, general secretary of the Irish Educational Publishers Association, which represents most textbook publishers, says some questions put to him are commercially sensitive.

He says that in 2020 only 28 titles were revised by publishers (less than 1 per cent of titles), and there was a 2 per cent cost increase. IEPA data shows spending on textbooks dropped by €11 million in 10 years (2007-2017). Cantwell says publishers only amend titles because of curriculum reform, reflecting exam updates, or based on teacher feedback.

He didn’t respond to questions about the inflexibility and cost (given no print or distribution costs) of ebooks, or the possible waste involved in continuing to supply workbooks/hard copies with ebooks. Nor did he answer how they plan print-runs or distribution to meet demand, given the seeming free-for-all every August.

Piggy in the middle

Spare a thought for beleaguered booksellers under siege, as one describes himself. Bookshops – in particular small, independent providers – are at the sharp end of all this in August, facing the ire of frustrated parents, all for a reported 10-20 per cent mark-up (or much less if they win a rental tender).

Tom Muckian of Roe River Books in Dundalk says people conflate publishers, bookshops, schools and the Department of Education, but no one consults the bookshops. “We don’t specify the books, we don’t set the price, nor do we work for either the school or the Department of Education. We simply sell the product (much of it at really small mark-up; shops also incur significant extra staff costs at this time of year, further reducing profitability). But we end up the butt of people’s frustration when books aren’t available. Cost is an issue, but we get more complaints about books out of stock or reprinting.”

He reckons there are 600-plus schoolbook titles each year, and shops have limited storage. “Then there’s the last-minute-dot-com brigade descending on bookshops in the last few weeks of August demanding books as if we’re somehow part of the education system and are obliged to have what they want on the day they want it.”

Schoolbooks are in shops from early June, he says. While he understands criticisms of the new editions and the one-use workbooks, he says “name an industry that doesn’t use similar methods. Planned obsolescence is not specific to the schoolbook trade.”

What would it take to change things?

According to Ó Ríordáin, it would take a Minister spearheading reform, including challenging the “debilitating, undermining” financial relationship between parents and schools.

“Ministers may not want to take on officials and the department. If you don’t feel you have cover from the department in taking an initiative, it’s risky business. But I think a level of bravery across the board would be appreciated.”

He adds that the department will frequently stress constitutional protection for patron bodies that run schools, but it shouldn’t be forgotten there’s also constitutional provision for free education.

“I find it ridiculous. It would be such an easy win for everybody. Everybody in politics would support it. It would take a lot of pressure off teachers and kids and parents at this time of year.”

Ó Ríordáin does spy a slight ray of light: a 51-school pilot providing free books to Deis schools has been expanded to 100 schools. Scepticism about pilot schemes aside, could it be a slight shift in the right direction?