Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 28 May 2013
90. Deputy Michael Colreavy asked the Minister for Education and Skills the measures he intends to implement as part of the State support for reducing the financial burden on parents when clothing and equipping their children for school; and his plans to introduce a mandatory code of practice to better regulate the publication of school text books. [25390/13]
View answerTackling the costs associated with school is a major priority of mine and there are practical steps that schools can take to reduce these costs for parents. One such step is the establishment of Textbook Rental Schemes by schools. I am very much in favour of schools establishing such schemes. Schools that have such rental schemes can save parents up to 80% of the cost of buying new books. Because of this, I launched "Guidelines for Developing Textbook Rental Schemes in Schools" on 28 January 2013. The Guidelines provide practical advice to primary and post-primary schools on how rental schemes can be established and operated.
These Guidelines, along with a Guide for Parents to inform them of how the schemes operate and how parents can help schools to establish and run them, are currently being sent out to every school in the country and are also available on my Department's website. They were also made available for the websites of both national parents' councils, Barnardos and the society of St Vincent de Paul. In addition, I received a commitment from the Irish Educational Publishers Association to limit the publication of new editions of textbooks and to maintain editions of books in print, unchanged for at least six years. The publishers have assured me that they would sell books for rental schemes to schools at substantial discounts.
I have also previously put on the record of this House my support for any measures that can be put in place to reduce uniform costs for parents including measures such as the use of generic type uniforms or the use of "sew on" crests. I have raised this matter informally with the National Parents Council at primary level and I recommended that the National Parents Councils – Primary and Post Primary mobilise parents associations to raise this issue with school authorities. It is very important that all schools are sensitive to the financial pressures on parents in making decisions, not just about school uniforms or books, but about any matter that has cost implications for parents.
