Ms Naomi Feely:

I thank members for the comments and queries. I will briefly address a couple of clarifying questions but I invite members to approach me after the meeting if I do not cover everything. Deputy Ó Laoghaire asked about the cost of uniforms versus that of school books. Our survey found that uniforms tended to be the higher cost. I refer members to the analysis in that regard which I have provided in our briefing paper. There were 1,400 responses to our survey.

Stepping away from that, I was blown away by the fact that parents are really annoyed about uniforms and the crested uniforms. That would have come post publication of the committee's report and I recognise that the committee dealt with that issue in its last report. It is still an issue. I wonder whether there are provisions and scope within the student and parent charter to deal with this issue in order that parents can be consulted and feed into the schools on these issues to bring that forward.

Second, there was an issue regarding guidelines. We had emphasised the need to send guidelines to secondary schools on establishing school book schemes. Our perspective was that it is clear that book schemes are taking off in primary schools. We can see that they are increasing from 50% to over 70% of primary schools while we still are seeing rates in secondary schools of approximately 40% to 44%. My colleague, Mr. Mulconry, noted earlier that as book schemes originated in primary schools, there may be an institutional or historical reason they are not taking off in secondary schools. The Department of Education and Skills, however, should be providing further guidance to encourage more book schemes at second level. We can see from the school cost data from Barnardos that the cost of schoolbooks is higher in secondary schools and as one progresses. I have provided data in our submission on the contribution to school book schemes and how that changes over the years.

Deputy Jan O'Sullivan asked a question about workbooks and whether there was a decrease. I saw a number of comments in the survey this year requesting that workbooks be done away with. It was not something that stood out in my mind but I saw a number of such comments. Workbooks are possibly still being used but I do not have concrete data to which I can point the Deputy.

On information technology, IT, everybody is coming to this from a similar perspective and we agree that we need to investigate it further. From a pedagogical point of view, we would ask how technology is being used. We can see in our survey data that parents are still spending a lot on books. As the expenditure has only fallen by €5 at primary level and by €20 at secondary level, they are still spending similar amounts. Are they using digital devices in conjunction with books? If so, what are the pedagogical impacts and outcomes of same? We would also like to know the socialisation impacts of that. We were struck by the fact that 13% of those at primary school level who were using such devices were in infant classes, which seems quite young. In taking this a step forward, we would be interested in finding out about the prevalence of the use of IT in schools. That might be an area to examine, although it is a big area to explore.

On the capitation fee, the Chairman made a good point on how one still must go in to turn on the lights etc. We might be getting that increase in the capitation fee back but it already has been sucked up with those cost of living increases such as the cost of fuel etc. Therefore, voluntary contributions are still being sought by schools from parents. We see in the survey data we have that pupils are being excluded. Diaries are being withdrawn from them and they are not given locker keys. We see evidence of that in our survey data.

An overarching point for ourselves as witnesses and for members is the issue of educational equality. This comes back to Deputy Ó Laoghaire's first point where he mentioned targeted payments. If we invested in our education system and provided enough funding, we would not need targeted payments because education would be free. We are saying strongly that we can make that first step by investing in books. Senator Ruane's point was one of the strongest. She asked what is the cost of not doing this. We say that education is an equaliser. All children should have an equal opportunity to thrive in school and this can be transformational for them. We recognise the underfunding of schools is the issue. We recognise there needs to be increased investment and that will have the knock-on effect on schools and parents as well.

If there are any other clarifying questions I am happy to answer them.