We have to cut the cost of sending our children to school... starting by banning the uniform rip-off!
ACOUPLE of weeks ago I posted on Facebook about the costs of sending kids back to school: within days I was inundated with responses from parents telling their stories.
One mother – I’ll call her ‘Joan’ – told me that she has two children already in secondary school and twins starting in August. She says she is ‘stressed to bits’ worrying about where she’ll get the money to afford the basics. Uniforms for Joan’s twins alone come in at just under €500. And that’s without shoes, schoolbags, books, stationery and everything else.
A father – I’ll call him ‘Dave’ – wrote that he has two kids in primary and one in secondary. He says he dreads the day they all go into secondary school as the costs will skyrocket. Dave has spent an astonishing €1,150 so far on books and school transport. He still has to get bags and uniforms and also faces three sets of ‘administrative charges’.
And these are just two of the scores of parents who got in touch with me to share their concerns and to vent their frustration.
A recent survey by the Irish League of Credit Unions found that 78% of parents are struggling financially with back-to-school costs. Shockingly 36% are falling into debt due to costs, including many who turn to moneylenders charging enormous interest rates that put families under even more financial pressure.
Families pay on average €949 to get their children ready for primary school and €1,399 to send them to secondary school, and the vast majority of parents get no assistance at all with back-to-school costs.
So why, in 2019, just over 50 years since the introduction of free second level education, are parents paying through the nose to send their kids to school?
Choices
The stock answer from the Government, of course, is that resources are scarce: that they’re doing the best they can with what they have. I don’t accept that. I think they could be doing far more to make schooling affordable – if they’re prepared to make the choices required.
Ironically, though, one of the most seismic changes they could make – one which would prove a massive relief to struggling parents across the country – wouldn’t cost them a cent. It could be brought in tomorrow, and would have a transformational effect.
As the Irish Daily Mail has been highlighting for years, huge numbers of our schools still make parents buy school uniforms from an individual supplier. And, of course, these uniforms cost far more than the same clothes bought in any retail chain. A simple primary school crested polo shirt, for example, will be €10 or more in a specialist shop. In most retail outlets you can get three for that price. A tracksuit will be approaching €40, or a pair of trousers almost €20. Again, two or three times the price of elsewhere.
No wonder it costs almost €500 to buy uniforms for twins!
Now I do accept that uniforms are a good idea – they help create a sense of identity for a school, and prevent any competition amongst children in showing off the latest fashions. But uniforms should be simple – and all parents should have the ability to buy those basics at basic prices, and sew or iron on a school crest if appropriate. It astonishes me that this Government still allows schools to effectively force struggling parents to pay such hugely inflated sums for basic clothing – which, as we know, kids will grow out of soon enough anyway.
If Sinn Féin were in government, we would require all schools to introduce a non-crested, generic school uniform. This can and should be done through a directive to schools, but we wouldn’t hesitate to legislate if necessary. That simple step alone would save parents like Joan hundreds of euro a year – and, as I said, it wouldn’t cost taxpayers a cent.
But uniforms aren’t the only cost facing parents. Some of the other measures I propose would cost taxpayers’ money – but I believe it’s money which would be far better spent on children than on tax breaks to bailed-out banks or corporate landlords.
Legislation
First among them is the ‘voluntary contribution’ – even though we know it’s really a ‘compulsory contribution’ in all but name. It is currently not possible to quantify how much schools take in from these contributions as they are not regulated by government.
However, Sinn Féin will publish legislation in the coming weeks to do just that. We will also increase core funding to schools in order to reduce the reliance on the voluntary contribution and we would put in place measures to ensure that no child is treated differently if their parents don’t make a contribution where one is sought.
In government, Sinn Féin would budget for a Back-to-School child benefit bonus of an additional €140 per child to be paid each July, benefitting families of all incomes. This would be a double payment of child benefit to be paid to every family for each child. This annual bonus would equate to increasing child benefit by €12 per month, after three years of no child benefit increases. It would cost €174million.
We would also make school books free for all children to be done through continued increases in funding for the School Book Schemes and in line with the recent Joint Oireachtas Report on school costs which was costed at €40 million.
Sinn Féin would significantly expand the School Meals programme to ensure no child goes to school hungry. Prioritising the provision of breakfast and lunch at all DEIS schools at a cost of €64.4million, we would expand it to all schools over a term of government at a final cost of €204.4million.
And finally, we would reform and increase funding for the school transport scheme to make it more flexible and affordable for families, commencing a full review of the operation of the value for money recommendations of the scheme from a child rights perspective.
These four measures would cost less than €500million – with the cost of increasing core funding to come on top of that. I know many people would ask: ‘How can taxpayers afford that level of spending increase?’
Measures
For consecutive years, Sinn Féin has presented costed tax proposals to the Government to ensure that booming multinationals, bailed-out banks, and corporate landlords pay their fair share. One such measure we publish in our Alternative Budget each year is our proposal to collect back taxes from multinationals who had on-shore intangible assets here tax-free. This proposal alone would fund all of the above measures, and then some.
Politics is about choices. I believe we can tackle rising schools costs in a way that is progressive and fair. I certainly don’t accept that it can’t be done. Good management of public money is about choosing to prioritise hard-working households over corporate and political elites.
There is a better way for Joan and Dave – and all parents who contact their TDs or suffer in silence every summer; who end up lifting the phone to a moneylender because they just can’t meet the soaring costs of a supposedly free education.
Sinn Féin’s back to school proposals can be found at www.sinnfein.ie. The party’s Alternative Budget, will be published in the coming weeks ahead of Budget 2019.