It can't be back to school time already, can it?
No, not really. Schools won't start back for more than a month, but as with most everything nowadays - particularly things which involve the spending of money - the lead-in time is long. Some retailers - we're looking at you Aldi and Lidl - were pushing their back to school ranges at parents almost before schools had broken up. And yes that is kind of like pushing your Christmas stock before the end of the summer holidays and who would do that? Brown Thomas would do that, that's who. It won't be long now until you see furious comments appearing on social media about the opening of its Christmas shop. But that is a whole different story.
Why does the back to school season start so early?
There are a couple of schools of thought. The first - and most obvious one - is that retailers will stop at nothing to sell us stuff. If they can get us buying school uniforms and lunchboxes in June they can concentrate on getting us to buy other things in August when we should, by rights, be buying the lunch boxes and school uniforms. Another kinder explanation is that putting the back to school stuff on shelves early helps parents spread the cost of covering their children's education over several weeks rather than into a couple of panicked and hideously expensive days at the end of August.
Expensive? But I thought education in Ireland was free?
Ah no, no one really thinks that any more do they? We all know that education in Ireland is supposed to be free but as a result of generations of governmental in action and ineptitude and under-resourcing it has ended up being anything but free. More than half a century ago the then minister for education Donogh O'Malley announced that education for all the State's children at no cost was to become a constitutional obligation. Since then, Irish parents have spent more than €20 billion on educating their young, as O'Malley's vision of free schooling quickly got lost in the mists of time. And parents have picked up the tab.
How much are we talking here?
Well, if you chose to send your offspring to a fee paying school you could be looking at spending many thousands of euro each year. But we are not interested in that kind of spending on this page because opting for fee-paying schools is very much a choice some parents make and that is their prerogative but it is not a path that has to be taken. We are more interested in the public system where choosing to spend money or not spend money is not really an option. According to the annual Irish League of Credit Unions (ILCU) survey which was published last week, the average spend per primary school child in a non-fee paying school this year will be €949 while the cost of sending a child to secondary school will come in at €1,399.
Is that more or less than last year.
It is a bit of both. The secondary school costs are up slightly on a year ago while the primary school costs are down slightly.
Do parents struggle with the costs?
They absolutely do. Over three quarter of all parents polled by the ILCU said the financial costs associated with back-to-school time were burdensome while a third said they were "forced to deny their children certain school items" because they could not afford them.
What kind of things are kids not getting?
Of those who said they would have to cut some expenditure, 68 per cent said they would cut out extracurricular activities, while 30 per cent said they would not be spending on school trips. A further 29 per cent said new gym gear would have to be cut out, while 22 per cent said new shoes would be off the school list. Parents also said that they would cut back on family holidays to cover the costs.
That's depressing?
It is. Mind you so too was the finding that there is a growing demand among children for branded goods before the head back through the school gates. All told 54 per cent of parents said they were coming under pressure to buy branded goods compared with 43 per cent last year.
Apart from fancy labels, where are parents spending the money?
Well, according to the ILCU, the most expensive item at second level is books at €220 compared with a price tag of €200 last year. Uniforms and clothing is the next most expensive item at €200, up from €179 last year. School trips are set to cost parents €190 this year, compared with €159 last year. At primary school level extra-curricular activities continue to be the biggest spend at €159 up from €153 in 2018. Uniforms and clothing is the second most expensive item at €133 up from €128 last year followed by books at €123 - up just €1 on last year.
Uniforms seem pretty pricey. Can people not just buy everything in Penneys?
Weirdly, school uniforms are the one thing that Penneys does not traditionally sell. The other retailers have stepped into that space in a big way however and there are some genuinely remarkable deals out there. Aldi, for example is selling a two pack of polo shirts for €2. A two-pack of white shirts are the same price as are the traditional school-going trousers and skirts. The cost of two pinafores is €7.99 while a pair of grand looking shoes is €6.99. The prices in Lidl are - if anything - even more remarkable. It is promising a complete school uniform for a fiver. "Dress the kids from top to bottom for under a fiver," the promo says. Mind you, that price does not include shoes or socks so maybe they want us to send our offspring to school barefoot like in the good old days. Marks & Spencer also sells good value - and possibly better quality - uniforms as do Dunnes and Tesco.
With these kinds of prices, why are parents spending so much on uniforms?
Why indeed? One of the reasons is that some schools still insist on children coming to school in crested uniforms bought in specialist shops. These uniforms tend to be considerably more expensive than the generic options bought in mainstream retailers. Advocates say the quality of the clothes bought through such channels is higher and that may well be the case but it is hard to argue in favour of spending €40 on a green jumper when a similarly green jumper is selling elsewhere for a €4.
But the bespoke uniforms have elaborate crests stitched into the fabric, that's better right?
Is it? We understand the desire schools have to have their own crests but are unconvinced that crest needs to be embroidered onto the jumpers and the coats and the tracksuits. It would make more sense to make crests available via patches that could be sewn or ironed on to clothes. The affect would be virtually the same yet the cost to parents would fall dramatically. If there are 800,000 children heading back to school in next month and 10 per cent of them moved from crested jumpers to generic ones, then the collective savings for parents would be almost €3 million. And that is only on the jumpers.
Surely schools can't make parent buy clothes is particular places, can they?
They actually can. Irish schools - or most of them at any rate - operate like mini-fiefdoms and despite the fact that they are almost entirely funded by the tax payer, they are controlled by boards of management who still call the shots. The Department of Education can encourage schools to make changes but under the rules as they stand it has to stop short of imposing changes.
Could the Department not change the rules and take back control?
Of course it could but it has little interest in doing that. By ceding control of the schools to boards of management and the like generations ago it meant it did not have to deal with staffing issues - other than paying wages - or ongoing maintenance and the other fiddly (but incredible important) issues that our schools have to manage. We'd like to describe that as a win win but it is more of a win, lose, lose. The Department of Education wins while the parents and the schools lose.
So has the Department done anything to help parents with costs?
It has certainly talked about it a lot and there has been some hand wringing. In 2017 it sent a so-called circular to all schools. That was signed by the then Minister for Education, Richard Bruton and it called on all school authorities to adopt "principles of cost-effective practice". Among the measures schools were directed to introduce were generic uniforms; mandatory book-rental schemes; a ban on workbooks; iron-on or sew-on crests; and the provision of lists of all items parents would have to buy for their children with indications of the likely costs at the best value stores.
And did this circular make much difference?
Maybe a little but it certainly has not made a whole lot of difference to the costs faced by parents.
School books are expensive too, right?
Absolutely. After uniforms, books are the most expensive item for Irish parents. The market for school books is over €50 million each year and while the Department covers the costs in disadvantaged schools elsewhere parents are expected to pay up. People with kids in primary school will a little less than €100 on them, while secondary school parents will spend more than €200.
What about book rental schemes?
They are brilliant. But by no means universal. If schoolbook rental schemes were mandatory, parents could save a fortune and the system is simple. At beginning of the school year parents pay a rental fee to the school and the child gets their textbooks for free. At the end of the year, if the books are returned unblemished, much of the fee can be returned. It is cheap and simple and would save parents hundreds of millions of euro over the next few years if the State stepped in an managed the scheme like they do in Northern Ireland. And the savings would just keep coming for ever. Despite the fact that such schemes makes so much sense many primary-school parents do not have access to a book rental scheme and even more parents of children in secondary school have no access.
Of course single use work books can't be part of rental schemes can they?
Right. That is one reason workbooks have described as the work of the devil. They are used once and discarded. They are a waste of money, costing at least €10 a pop and are very bad for the environment.
Are books - work and otherwise - the reason school bags so heavy?
For sure. And the weight of the books is a real issue for Irish children. A study published a couple of years ago found that almost one in three primary school children's bags weigh so much that the kids struggle to walk to school with the things on their backs.
Maybe they could leave their books at school?
Ah yes, but then how would they do their homework. Irish schools continue to be obsessed with homework despite the fact that by any measure it is a cruel punishment of questionable educational merit. Take Finland. It might be cold and dark and depressed but it has one of the best education systems in the world. And can homework take the credit? No. Finnish secondary school students do less than 30 minutes' homework a day - and many do none at all. So maybe Ireland should stop blighting its children's lives by making them do ridiculous amounts of homework when they should be outside playing, or inside playing, or reading books. They will have plenty of time to be chained to a desk and a laptop when they get older.
Why do we still have books? Should everything not be digital now?
The jury is still out on that score. While tablets and the like are interactive and light and have been adopted by many schools they come at a cost. Parents won't have much change out of €700, in some instances. There are also serious question marks as to their educational merit.
According to a report from our Education Editor Carl O’Brien earlier this year giving school students access to iPads, laptops or e-books in the classroom appears to hurt their learning although putting technology in the hands of a teacher is associated with more positive results.
He reported on the findings of a major report by the consulting firm McKinsey on the performance of 15-year-old students across Europe. It was based on an analysis of data gathered as part of Pisa (Programme for International Student Assessment).
In some countries, adding one teacher computer per classroom had more than 10 times the impact on improving educational performance of adding a student computer to that same classroom. Giving students access to e-books, tablet computers and laptops inside the classroom was associated with significantly lower educational performance in the review. He did point out that the results only evaluated hardware, not software, and only described the impact of education technology as currently implemented.
Are voluntary contributions still a thing?
Sadly they are. In the normal world, the word "voluntary" is defined as something which is "done, made, brought about, undertaken of one's own accord or by free choice". In the world of the Irish school, it means something quite different and many schools continue to 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. In many cases, the blame rests with the State. For too long it has deprived too many schools of the money they need to operate leaving them with no option but to raise money from other sources.
And when do schools start back?
The good news for children is they still have at least five weeks of the summer ahead of them with most schools not starting back until the end of August, just in time for the sun to start shining again.
