Fr. Paul Connell:

I am president of the Joint Managerial Body, JMB, and principal of St. Finian's College, Mullingar. I thank the committee for the opportunity to address members.

The JMB was founded in 1972 to represent the interests of all voluntary secondary schools in the Republic of Ireland. It advises, supports and negotiates on behalf of the boards of management and school management in the 380 voluntary secondary schools. The JMB welcomes this opportunity to participate in the examination of the rising costs faced by parents every year when sending children back to school. It is the strongly held view of the JMB that every effort must be made to ensure costs are kept to a minimum for all parents in order that children have the opportunity to fulfil their potential during their time in the education system. This issue can only be tackled by a collaborative approach by all stakeholders, including the Government.

The Government needs to recognise that the historical starvation of resources to the education system has been exacerbated by the recent and further projected budgetary reductions for schools. The country has lingered for many years in the bottom rankings of the OECD table for funding of the first and second level education system. If that was not bad enough, in 2010, schools received no increase in capitation, a 5% reduction in 2011, followed by a further 2% decrease in 2012 with a projected decrease in 2013 of 2% followed by a 1% reduction in both 2014 and 2015. These reductions in funding to schools means that a secondary school with 400 pupils lost €12,400 in income alone as a result of the budget cuts in 2011 and 2012. A secondary school of 600 pupils lost €18,600 in the same period with a school of 800 pupils losing €24,800. How is a school to replace this financial loss when basic costs such as electricity, oil, gas, water, refuse charges and insurance have soared in the same period and must be met from its capitation grant?

The regrettable answer is that management in a secondary school can only respond in one way to this loss of income and that is to seek the assistance of parents through either fund-raising ventures or voluntary contributions. Research conducted by the JMB indicates that, on average, more than 30% of a secondary school's annual expenditure must be raised through local sources. In other words, central Government has decided that the school community must raise €3 out of every €10 locally. Thus, in the view of the JMB, the main burden for parents in sending their children to school is created by the Government policy to grossly underfund schools. There are no bailouts for schools, so school management has no option but to look to parents to provide the funding to balance the school accounts on an annual basis. In addition, the loss of the summer works scheme has created more pressure for schools as now essential repairs to the school buildings must come from the already overstretched school budget. The situation is even more severe for the voluntary secondary sector when one realises that, in the case of the average 400-pupil school, a voluntary secondary school inexplicably continues to receive €90 per pupil less each year than a comparable community and comprehensive school and €212 per pupil less than a vocational school. This results from a decision by Government to underfund secondary schools at the time of the introduction of the free scheme in 1967.

Turning to the issue of procurement, the JMB welcomes the motivation behind the setting up of a national procurement service, NPS. It is in the interest of everyone associated with schools that best value for money forms the basis of all spending. However, to date, schools have found two critical problems with the NPS, namely, the slow and cumbersome process involved in establishing the service and the high levels of bureaucracy associated with the process. An over burdened school management will simply not be able to cope with the mechanics of a NPS without a major streamlining of the process. Oil and electricity make perfect sense nationally but we also have to be conscious of the local economy, which must be taken into account.

Apart from the requirement to shore up the school budget as a result of Government policy, the other main costs for parents are books and uniforms. The JMB in a submission last June to the Department of Education and Skills consultation process on school book grants and rental schemes agreed with the overall aim of this initiative, that is, to reduce the cost to parents of school books. The JMB acknowledged the progress made by the Minister in the establishment of a code of practice in respect of publishers and on the protection of funding for book grants to schools for 2012. There, nonetheless, remain some challenges to be overcome in respect of equity and implementation which require comment and these were the focus of the JMB submission. It is unarguable that book rental costs less to families than buying new texts. No school wishes to add pressure to parents but the figures released to the media stating that a year's books could be provided by schools for a tiny fraction of their cost are unrealistic. Where such is being achieved, it can safely be assumed that the scheme is well beyond its seed phase and other reliable sources of funding are being sourced.

However, the JMB acknowledges the publication of draft guidelines for book rental schemes. The staffing demands of such schemes will require engagement on the part of parents as current ancillary staffing in schools, as well as the moratorium on posts of responsibility, militates against a wholly school-staffed solution. In this respect, we welcome the engagement of the NPC in the development of these guidelines. However, the JMB must put on record the following serious reservations for schools regarding the feasibility of trying to establish a book rental scheme at this moment in time: the initial cost of setting up book rental schemes is very high - in the case of my school alone, I estimate that to be €100,000; schools do not have the resources in terms of personnel to operate the scheme - all our middle management posts have been abolished and will not be replaced; there is no space in the school to store the books; more important, the implementation of the reforms at junior cycle will result in new syllabi being introduced across 21 subjects between 2014 and 2017 so it would be ridiculous for a school to spend, say, €100,000 putting together a book grants scheme only to discover in three or four years the books were obsolete; and schools are exploring the introduction of technology such as e-books.