High cost of ‘free’ education

‘Before I put a book in their bags or a shoe on their feet I have spent more than €1,000,” says Anne Marie Murtagh from south Dublin. She is talking about the bills that will have to be paid as she gets ready to send her two children of secondary school going age and her two primary school children back through the gates of their schools come September.

She does a quick tally. Her son is heading into transition year so that will cost €700 to which she has to add an “amenity charge” of €170. There is a “voluntary” contribution of €300 in his school. “If you don’t pay that up front they ask you to fill in a standing order,” she explains, a hint of weariness in her voice.

Her slightly younger daughter who is also in secondary school will need a €230 amenity fee and a voluntary contribution of €300, added to which there will be an arts materials charge of €60. She has a boy and a girl in primary school and they will need €155 and €125 respectively. “You do the maths,” Murtagh says “It’s over two grand,” she adds.

It’s €40 over two grand in fact. And that is without a book or a pair of school tights being bought. This is despite the fact that our education system is supposed to be free.

What Murtagh will spend this summer is not out of line with what parents across the State will be expected to shell out in the weeks ahead – although the transition year cost of €700 does push her final bill somewhat to the margins.

According to an Irish League of Credit Unions survey published earlier this summer, when the cost of uniforms, books, lunches, extracurricular activities, school trips, voluntary contributions, transport and sports gear are totted up, parents of children in the primary system will spend an average of €816 per child. Parents of secondary school children will spend an average of €1,313.

The survey found uniforms to be the most expensive items: the parents of primary school children spend an average of €166 per child – up from €160 in 2014. Secondary school parents spend an average of €258 per child on uniforms, down from €266 last year.

Books were the second most expensive item on the school shopping list: primary school parents shell out €106 on books – down slightly from €107 in 2014 – and secondary school parents spend €213 on books, up significantly from €166 in 2014.

School lunches were the third most costly item. Feeding children in primary school cost €116 per child in 2015 – down from €122 in 2014 – while the cost of lunches for secondary school children was put at €147 per child, up from €134 in 2014.

Is it any wonder the credit union survey found that 81 per cent of parents of school-going children said the costs of sending their children back to school was “a significant financial burden”, while 32 per cent said they were likely to get themselves into debt to cover the cost.

“It is all quite excessive when you think about it,” Murtagh says. She points to the uniforms saying: “they don’t come cheap. The jumpers are €40 or €50 each and you have to buy them in the uniform shop. I actually have to go to three different uniform shops.”

She has other back-to-school expenses too. Her secondary school-going daughter uses an iPad instead of more old-school books. The device cost more than €500 in her first year with insurance costing a little more each year. And anyone who thinks the books and apps that come with an iPad are cheap have another think coming to them.

“The apps are about the same price as the books,” she says. “It is great that we are not sending a child out the door carrying a load of heavy books but it isn’t cheap.”

Parents also have to watch this iPad generation. “In first year, all the kids were on social media all the time on the iPads. There was a novelty to it all. The school did police it to a point and if there was any stuff like Facebook or Snapchat found on the machines then they were given detention. It settles down in second year and third year now,” she says.

She says that another €1,000 or so will be spent on books and uniforms, taking the total spend in the run-up to September to more than €3,000. And that is the after-tax figure, meaning that the household will have to earn more than €6,000 to cover the cost.

“This is for a supposedly free education. I think we have been let down by successive governments. I look at friends in the UK and it is a different world.” Book rental schemes are the norm there as are generic uniforms.

As she talks she looks at a note from one of her schools about the voluntary contribution. It says it is “vital for the operation of the school”. She stresses the words “absolutely vital” and suggests that the fact that they say that means it is hardly voluntary. “If you didn’t pay it there would be constant letters,” she says.

The credit union survey found that seven in 10 parents are expected to make a voluntary contribution, amounting to an average of €112 per child. Secondary schools are more likely to request voluntary contributions: 77 per cent have adopted this policy, compared with 70 per cent of primary schools. Parents of secondary school children are required to pay higher contributions (€140) than parents of primary school children (€82).

“I can’t see anything changing in the near future unless the country becomes rich overnight which seems unlikely,” she says.

In June the children’s charity Barnardos, which has long highlighted the high price of our education, calculated that it would cost €103.2 million to guarantee free access to education for all primary school children. This works out at €185 more per child.

If a government wanted to make this investment, it would cover all school books, school transport and classroom resources, while also restoring capitation grants to 2010 levels. This would mean schools were no longer forced to ask parents to make voluntary contributions because the funding they would be getting from the State would be enough to meet all their needs. An additional investment of €126.9 million would fund free secondary school: an extra €335 per student.

Murtagh points to changes that could be made and suggests that the one biggest things which could see costs fall would be the insistence of generic uniforms. “The work books don’t help. They can’t be part of a book rental scheme,” which is a shame.

One of the other things she advocates and indeed pushes in her children’s schools is the organisation of sale of works at the end of the school year.

“We do a uniform swap and we take the kids that can be reused from third class up. We charge a fiver for the books and then pass on anything that we sell to the kids who owned them. It means parents can get cheaper books and the kids who look after them can be rewarded”.

Counting the cost

– 80 per cent of mothers find school expensive with 61 per cent experiencing financial difficulty

– 75 per cent find school uniforms to be the most expensive aspect of the school bill

– Only 13 per cent are able to buy generic school uniforms

– Parents spend an average of €144 per term on after-school activities in primary school

Source:MummyPages