In a strategic move, the Irish government aims to introduce a crucial initiative, aimed at bringing relief in relation to financial burdens that families with school-going children face, in efforts to reduce pressures of cost of living. The government is likely to publish in its federal budget for 2025 that free books for all secondary school students will be available from school book provision to all primary school students who already benefit from an extension of this current effort.
Its greatest initiative undertaken to make education more easily accessible than ever before has been staged in conjunction with improving educational budgets. From today, school books are provided free to primary school children leaving many families in secondary school being tossed about by constantly rising educational costs.
Thomas Byrne, Minister of State for Education, said the initiative has been of great importance at primary and secondary levels. “I think the free school books initiative has been really important at primary level, and now we’re moving it into secondary level,” Byrne said during a pre-parliamentary meeting in Killiney, County Dublin. He referred to the huge implications of education, particularly under current economic pressures being faced by the families.
However, not all costs of education are included in this package. Uniforms are expensive and vary dramatically between schools with a good number insisting that some clothes are emblazoned with their crest, driving the cost even higher for the parent. Some schools do not insist on uniforms while others seek contributions to meet their running costs ranging from €10 to €200 per year. Byrne made it clear that these contributions are voluntary in nature, adding that parents need not make them while schools spend a lot of their time telling them that they are short of funds.
The move is expected to ease the plight of the parent, but presents problems for the booksellers. “It is going to force all bookselling into a supplier-driven shop, which has seriously curtailed foot traffic into independent bookshops,” said Dawn Behan, chair of Bookselling Ireland. “Schools have been given the budget depending on their enrolment and they source the books,” she said, pointing out that this change has drastically lowered the clients’ visits to the stores in summer when families traditionally shopped for school supplies.
It also plans to increase funding for free school meals to 900 primary schools in 2025, and it is going to target increasing funding for even more schools over the coming years. That is such a strategy shows that the government is indeed interested in trying to make education as accessible as possible while the economy is still quite tough.
