Sir, – Initiatives to reduce back to school costs for parents are always welcome but it would make more sense if the free schoolbooks scheme for primary and post-primary students was funded by the Department of Social Protection in a similar way to the annual payment of the back to school clothing and footwear allowance (“Free schoolbooks for 210,000 second-level students from this autumn”, News, March 4th). Instead, the books bonanza giveaway is the pet project of Minister for Education Norma Foley with a €120 million cost to the Department of Education and with no sign of a school information and communications technology (ICT) grant this year.
We are told that the book grant for the Junior Cycle schoolbooks scheme will be paid to schools no later than March 31st this year, which is ambitions considering many schools still haven’t even received their school support services grant (worth €224.50 per student) which was due in January.
Schools will own the schoolbooks and classroom resources and they will be provided on loan to students for either the duration of a school year or for the entire three years of Junior Cycle. The scheme will cover, at a minimum, core classroom resources, which includes materials, for example copybooks, hardback notebooks, school journals and calculators required for all subjects, as well as subject-specific resource items, such as lab copybooks for science subjects or dictionaries for language subjects.
A modest administrative grant will be provided but the logistics and additional workload on schools will be immense. Tasks will include compiling booklists and budget breakdowns, adhering to procurement and tender requirements, organising e-book licences, storage of stock, covering of books, cataloguing books through a label, barcode, scanner system and organising for the return of books from students at the end of each year or at the end of the Junior Cycle, as appropriate.
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While additional funding of €90 million was provided last year in the education budget, it has fallen to €81 million this year. The €120 million being spent on books might have been better spent on the growing number of cracks at the seams in our schools, more of which will soon appear unless our schools are properly resourced to implement this latest project. – Yours, etc,
JOHN McHUGH,
Principal,
Ardscoil Rís,
Dublin 9.