Families are spending on average €400 per child for returning to school, according to results of research published today.
The study, carried out by the Irish League of Credit Unions (ILCU), found the average cost for a second-level student is €470 while it costs €320 to send a child to a primary school.
Uniforms were the most expensive element of the back-to-school bill for most parents, with the cost put at an average of €229. School books cost a further €182.
The survey found almost 90 per cent of parents want to switch to laptops and e-books in the classroom to save cash.
ILCUs chief executive Kieron Brennan said the cost “is considerable and can put significant pressure on household budgets and the ability of some families to pay their essential bills”.
The survey, carried out last month among 1,000 people, found that 46 per cent of parents were able to use their monthly income to source back-to-school necessities but 54 per cent had to rely on credit cards, their savings or borrowings.
Some 7 per cent of parents will be forced to forego or delay a credit card payment to meet all back-to-school expenses for their children, incurring additional interest charges
Mr Brennan said some families were being forced to get into debt or dip into savings to afford the costs. He said there were “significant numbers of parents using their credit cards and using their savings to pay for their child’s back-to-school needs, with many parents feeling that the back-to-school allowance is not sufficient to cover costs.”
Speaking in the Dáil earlier this month the Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn said he was “actively exploring” schemes to cut the cost of books by reducing the necessity for revised editions.
He also said he was looking at the possibility of eliminating the requirement for parents to buy school uniforms from specific shops rather than having generic “grey, blue, green and red uniforms”, which can be sold for a fraction of the cost in large retail stores. He said that if schools “confined themselves to selling their badge or emblem, we could seriously address the cost issues”.
The ILCU survey also showed that 9 per cent of Irish parents send their children to a fee-paying school, with the average fees for primary education standing at €1,750. The cost for a private secondary school was reported to be an average of €4,750.