Have back-to-school costs got higher?

Bags were packed and lunchboxes were filled as back-to-school season arrived with a bang. But although it is largely a happy time for the nation’s little pupils, it can also be a worrying one financially for cash-strapped parents. We asked our Facebook friends if back-to-school costs were getting higher. Here’s an edited selection of some of the comments we received.

Grace Costigan: There’s no question. All the mums and dads are feeling the pinch this year. And with a budget just weeks away, people are afraid.

Sinead Swayne: They are mostly workbooks so they can’t be used again. My son only has three readers, which can be bought secondhand, but they change the list every two years or so making it difficult to get secondhand ones. My son is only going into senior infants and his books cost

?¬85! Then we must give the school

?¬70 for photocopying etc and then you have uniform and tracksuit – it’s crazy!

Eileen Byrne: The cost of going back to school goes up each year. Us parents give out about it and newspapers go on about how hard it is on hard-pressed parents to fork out. But yet no one, especially the Government, brings a solution to it. I think there should be a book-lending scheme in all schools. It would be a lot easier. Bring down the cost of uniforms as well. There’s a big difference in price between a plain jumper and a crested one.

Joan Ward: When the e-books have VAT on them, there is no saving on a parent’s outgoings. The kids may not have to carry a couple of stone weight of books to and from school. But the e-books are licenced for one, two or three years. They are nontransferable so they cannot be passed along to a sibling. Some of them cannot even be used for revision as they are gone from the iPad after one year. We were told three weeks before the kids started back to school that we needed approx

?¬800 for iPad and books – three weeks! We should have been told last February. We had budgeted approx

?¬300 to

?¬350 for the books – not just under

?¬800. That’s without uniform or any stationary. We still need to buy workbooks, copies etc. A lotta money and so many families don’t even have a salary/wage coming in to the house. We aren’t even talking uniforms yet.

Stacey Hogg: Absolutely disgraceful. Our income is going down and outgoings going up.

Paula Swayne Storgaard: What books can a kid in senior infants have that cost so much? Can one buy secondhand books any more?

Amanda Gately: With having to get school uniforms in a certain shop, the uniforms have increased in price. Books higher every year too, but schools do try their hardest to keep costs as low as they can. Very hard time of the year for most parents, but thankfully we’re nearly there now.