Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has urged the Government to address the huge cost of sending a child back to school. His remarks come as the children\u2019s charity, Barnardos\u2019, released its annual School Cost Survey that suggests that the huge burden on families remains the same.<\/p>\n
The Sinn F\u00e9in TD is calling for an increase the Back to School Clothing and Footwear allowance in Budget 2018 by \u20ac50 for both Primary and Secondary school children in response to the real and actual costs facing parents.<\/p>\n
Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Barnardos\u2019 School Cost Survey 2017 is a welcome addition to the debate on back to school costs that are impacting on parents. The survey suggests that despite this issue being to the fore in recent years the actual costs of sending a child to school remain the same and the costs impact most negatively on the less well off.<\/p>\n
\u201cParents spend on average \u20ac95 on school specific uniforms at primary level and between \u20ac150 and \u20ac200 for them at secondary level.<\/p>\n
\u201cParents are also spending on average between \u20ac50 and \u20ac100 on books while one-fifth (20%) of parents of secondary school pupils pay in excess of \u20ac300. The survey shows that book rental schemes are varied in what they actually cover. Thankfully voluntary contributions are said to have come down slightly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe impact of school costs means 45% of parents had to forgo other bills or cut back on daily expenses.<\/p>\n
\u201cClearly the Government are continuing to fail parents and children when it comes to school costs. The fact that parents are falling into greater debt while struggling to cover these costs should be setting off alarm bells in Government.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnother recent survey by the League of Credit Unions also found that one in four parents will have to deny their children certain school items this year as they head back to school as they don\u2019t have the money to pay for all the costs to go back to school.<\/p>\n
\u201cAccording to this survey 72% of parents with school-going children feel the back-to-school costs will be a financial burden.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Crowe continued:<\/p>\n
\u201cParents are facing into some of the most expensive months of the year with the back to school cost challenge coming at them at break neck speed. The scrambling and trying to cut corners has already begun in the hope of having additional money to send children back to school this September without having to cut other basics.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack to School costs are financially crippling families the length and breadth of the State and are particularly difficult for lone parents, low income households, and parents with more than one child of school going age.<\/p>\n
\u201cSinn F\u00e9in supports the reduction of back to school costs by increasing the School Books Grant by 30%. In Government, we would introduce legislation for schools to have generic school uniform policies to reduce back-to-school costs for families.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack to School costs has become an annual conversation and this will continue until the Government adopts a more positive and proactive steps to support struggling families.<\/p>\n
\u201cBudget 2018 affords the opportunity to do this and I am calling on Minister Richard Bruton to increase the Back to School Clothing and Footwear allowance by \u20ac50 for both Primary and Secondary School children in that budget.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dublin South West TD, Se\u00e1n Crowe, has urged the Government to address the huge cost of sending a child back to school. His remarks come as the children\u2019s charity, Barnardos\u2019, released its annual School Cost Survey that suggests that the huge burden on families remains the same. The Sinn F\u00e9in TD is calling for an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[191,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-back-to-school","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3206,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3205\/revisions\/3206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}