Hands up if you naively thought the introduction of free schoolbooks in 2023 meant the cost of returning one’s offspring to their place of education had been vastly reduced?
I’m typing one-handed right now.
Having young children means I’m not as acquainted with the ways parents are uniquely rinsed every September. However, I was caught on the hop this year with an opportunity for my eldest to try gymnastics: €155 for just one term. At that price I’ll be expecting the asymmetric bars by Halloween.
But it’s not just the extracurricular nice-to-haves that are expensive. Though schoolbooks are free, their exorbitant cost has been replaced by the requirement of older children to have digital devices in their backpacks. (Have you seen the price of backpacks by the way? You’d swear they were spun from lotus silk.)
Then there are the various apps you must download on to these tablets. Plus a subscription on your own phone of the school’s chosen parental app so you can keep up with their deluge of notices.
Throw in school uniforms, generic or otherwise, PE kits, new shoes to fit their growing feet and there is smoke coming off your debit card.
In this week’s episode of Better with Money we get schooled by consumer affairs correspondent and Pricewatch editor Conor Pope.
“When you add up all of these various different things, according to multiple surveys, you can expect a parent of a secondary schoolchild to spend in excess of €1,000 on back-to-school costs, while a primary schoolchild will [cost] in excess of €500.
“And that’s for one child, so if you’ve got a couple of kids in secondary school and maybe another child in primary school, you’re looking at a spend around this time of year of €2,500, which is an after-tax figure.
“So for most parents, they’d have to earn five grand to cover that cost, and that’s why we talk about this every single year.”
Oof. So what are the ways parents can take the sting out of these costs?
Conor breaks down the small actions that can yield small reductions. From auditing what you have, to checking your eligibility for the back to school allowance, to (where possible) squirrelling away €20 a week between the end of January and August.
And invest in a label-maker. There is no rage like the rage of a parent whose child loses their new coat before the end of September.
- You can listen to the episode on the player above or search for Better with Money wherever you get your podcasts.
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