Breda O’Brien: A modest proposal to ease the back-to-school pain

Every year, families struggle to meet back-to-school expenses, and every year, the media highlight it. But focusing on this hardy perennial may be distracting attention from deeper issues.

This is in no way to minimise the fear and distress felt by parents who worry about how they are going to afford to outfit their children for school. However, the real reason that some parents struggle so much at this time of year is because successive governments made no attempt to shelter children and families from the impact of austerity.

The number of children living in consistent poverty almost doubled during the recession. Consistent poverty means that you might not have a substantial meal during the day, or be able to keep warm in your house during the winter, or own a decent warm coat. As we know, in Ireland, the rates of homelessness among children have soared, as well.

Being unable to meet the costs of children returning to school is symptomatic of a deeper underlying problem. If people have an adequate income, they can budget for times of higher costs. When they don’t, any additional expense is in danger of sending them over the edge.

When people complain about the high cost of education, they are primarily complaining about the high costs of textbooks, uniforms and outings. However, it might be more constructive to complain about the chronic underfunding of Irish education, especially primary school.

Everybody knows that education is the great engine of equality, that it represents a vital route out of poverty. Everybody, apparently, except successive governments.

In 2010, primary schools received a grant of €200 a pupil. In 2016, it is €170 a pupil. If schools have to implement voluntary contributions, it is hardly surprising, given that the alternative is to fundraise using everything from cake sales to table quizzes to make up for a substantial shortfall. Many schools end up doing both.

One way to cut costs for parents is to implement a book rental scheme. In fact, by 2014, some 80 per cent of schools were already implementing book rental, but here’s an interesting fact no minister for education will want to highlight. There has been a moratorium on what are called posts of responsibility in schools since 2009, which in simple terms, are the only opportunity for promotion and involve payments made for doing a particular duty in a school above and beyond teaching.

Not replaced

As teachers retire or move on, the posts are not replaced. And guess what – in many schools, running the book rental scheme was a post. So this service will now have to be provided in some other way.

The Department of Education in its circular about book rental schemes suggests that the initial sizeable outlay to get it up and running “may be raised through loans or fundraising” but that it should eventually be self-financing.

It is breathtaking that the department would suggest that schools take out a loan or fundraise, given how strapped for cash schools already are. The rest of the circular goes on to explain how much hard work and commitment is involved, and sets out a timetable of more than 30 separate actions that need to be taken over the course of a year.

Rental scheme fairy

There is a very interesting use of the passive voice in the circular, as in “books are divided into packs for distribution and stored over the summer period in sealable containers in a damp-free environment”. Almost as if there were some kind of book rental scheme fairy who will do all these things.

Book rental schemes take the heat off the Government, but place additional burdens on the schools, which already have been hit through lack of funding and the moratorium on posts.

What is to be done in an underfunded system? A very modest increase in the grants given to schools would help enormously. It would be an investment in children and our future.

Or here’s another suggestion. All primary schools are registered charities. Changes in the charity tax back scheme in 2013 mean that donations totalling €250 or more in a calendar year (or €21 a month) are potentially worth an additional 44.9 per cent to the charity, or an extra €112.32.

This means that schools where parents can afford to pay €250 or over get additional money from the Government, but poorer schools do not.

So yet again, the advantaged win out over the disadvantaged. Why not set the amount that can be given to schools in order to reclaim tax at a much lower level, at say, €50? There would be a loss to the exchequer, but it would be invested directly in schools, and since all schools will soon have to furnish audited or certified accounts, all expenditure could be tracked to the penny.

The reason it is unlikely to happen is that other charities would immediately demand the same treatment. But surely schools are a special case which deserve special treatment? Children have been hit again and again by austerity. This measure would not redress the balance, but it would be some small help.