Pearse Doherty
Question:321. Deputy Pearse Doherty asked the Minister for Education and Skills the annual cost of providing free school books for all children in the State. [34304/13]
View answerTuesday, 16 July 2013
Questions (321, 322)
Pearse Doherty
Question:322. Deputy Pearse Doherty asked the Minister for Education and Skills the current cost of the book rental scheme and the way it operates. [34305/13]
View answerWritten answers
I propose to take Questions Nos. 321 and 322 together.
The information sought by the Deputy is not readily available to my Department; however, one estimate from publishers' sources suggests that the Irish school book market is worth approximately €60 million per annum.
At present, my Department provided approximately €15m in total to first and second level schools by way of book grants in 2012 and the same level of funding was provided in 2013.
As the Deputy may be aware I launched new "Guidelines for Developing Textbook Rental Schemes in Schools" on 28 January last. These Guidelines provide practical advice to primary and post-primary schools on how rental schemes can be established and operated. The aim of the Guidelines is to help as many schools as possible to start such book rental programmes.
The publication of these Guidelines follows a survey of schools by the Department, and which I published in May 2012. This had a 99% response rate at primary level, and showed that 76% of primary schools operate a book rental scheme. At second level, the response rate was lower, at 44%. Of those which did respond, 88% of those in the VEC sector and 73% of those in the Community and Comprehensive sector operated a book rental scheme.
I believe these results show that we have a good foundation to build on across the country. I hope that schools that are not yet operating book rental schemes will be encouraged to use the Guidelines to introduce them. If they do, it will result in substantial savings for parents. Schools which already have rental schemes can save parents up to 80% of the cost of buying new books.
A special "Guide for Parents" was also published, to inform them of how the schemes operate and how parents can help schools to establish and run them. I have been very clear in my support for book rental schemes. All of us who are parents know how expensive textbooks can be and what a burden it places on already hard pressed families at the start of every school year.
I am pleased to see the high level of book rental schemes in operation at primary level and I believe that these Guidelines will encourage this practice across all schools in our education landscape.
I also published a Report on Textbook Rental Schemes in Schools and the Allocation of Textbook Grants by the Department of Education and Skills in May 2012. This report presented four policy options to encourage schools to establish textbook rental schemes. None of the options is ideal, each one involves a trade-off of advantages and disadvantages.
I will continue to monitor the number of schools operating book rental schemes, and if it proves necessary consider further steps to encourage schools to do so.