Sir, – While I would strongly endorse the conclusions of your editorial on schoolbooks: that making Irish education free cannot happen until Government accepts the need to cover the costs of running schools, I strongly dispute the flawed analysis which appears to blame management bodies and schools themselves for an issue driven solely by Government underfunding of the education system.
Primary schools do operate book rental schemes but their implementation is severely constrained by the clearly inadequate State funding of €11 per pupil (€21 per pupil in a Deis school) which remains unchanged since 2014. The grant barely covers the average cost of a single textbook.
Furthermore, their operation is predominantly dependent on the goodwill of school staff and volunteer parents, as no resources are provided for administration.
The fact is that Irish primary education is chronically underfunded and depends on the €46 million raised in voluntary contributions just to pay for ordinary running costs. Ireland has the largest class sizes in Europe and yet we spend less per pupil than the European Union (EU) or Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average.
Given that our education system is considered to be performing highly, is it any wonder that even before Covid-19, primary school principals were on average working 50-plus hours per week and 60 per cent reported poor psychological wellbeing due to workload and stress?
It has taken a pandemic to unlock the resources needed to properly fund the primary education system. Once it ends, we will need to see real sustained investment so that school communities are not dependent on such voluntary contributions and selling buns to each other to provide basic requirements, including heat and light, in our schools.
Investment will be required to reduce the pupil teacher ratio, to provide proper administrative supports so principals can focus on leading teaching and learning rather than fundraising and firefighting, and yes adequate investment in proper book rental schemes.
– Yours, etc,
SEAMUS MULCONRY
Catholic Primary School
Management Association,
St Patrick’s College,
Maynooth, Co Kildare.