If you have children in school then you will know that one of the big expenses every September is school books. While some books can be picked up second hand at a reasonable price, many publishers bring out new editions on a regular basis so you must buy them at full price. This makes buying school books very expensive for parents, especially when they have more than one child attending school.
St Vincent de Paul have organised a petition to cut wasteful changing of schoolbooks. They are seeking public support for its campaign to reduce the publication of unnecessary new editions. It is asking parents to sign the petition which calls on the Minister for Education and Skills to set up an effective national book rental scheme.
Not only does the constant flow of unnecessary books result in substantial costs for parents but it is a complete waste as tonnes of perfectly good books have to be needlessly dumped every year. Mairead Bushnell, SVP National President says “Education is a right, and it's supposed to be free. But Ireland is one of only a few European countries to make even the poorest pay for books. It's a shocking burden on hard-pressed families.”
School book rental schemes are operating in most European countries. This is where the school buys the books and rents or loans the books out to the students in return for a small fee or deposit. A book rental scheme would help many families and reduce the number of new school book editions.
At present the Department of Education and Skills gives money to schools to spend on books, however the schools are not obliged to set up a book rental scheme. If book funding is only given to schools who have the book rental scheme, then most, if not all, schools would set up the system. Books could be reused every year and frequent new revisions of books would be a thing of the past.
The Society of St Vincent de Paul regularly sees families struggling to handle the costs that come every new school term. The SVP spends over €4m per annum supporting families with a range of education costs. They want to see a change in the schoolbook policy so that a little bit of the burden may be taken off parents.
The petition is available at www.svp.ie/books.
