Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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308.To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if she will issue exceptional funding to a school (details supplied) given the increased strain in trying to meet the costs associated with the shortfall of the schoolbooks grant; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [25123/24]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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In Budget 2024 over €47 million was allocated to continue implementation of the schoolbooks scheme at primary level. On the 8^thMay I announced details of year 2 of the Primary Schoolbooks Scheme which provides at a minimum free schoolbooks, workbooks, and copybooks to pupils in recognised primary and special schools. More than 555,000 pupils enrolled in approximately 3,230 primary schools, including over 130 special schools will continue to benefit from this scheme.

As outlined in the guidance published in 2023, the schoolbook grant for 2023 was calculated based on validated September 2022 enrolment figures. The guidance was informed by the engagements with all relevant stakeholders.

Funding for Exceptional Cases as outlined in the guidance catered for schools who may have received a number of pupils after 30th September. My Department received correspondence from a small number of primary schools over the course of the year, requesting additional funding where a significant increase in enrolments had occurred and the school could not meet the costs of the books from within the original funding allocation.

Those schools were contacted and the Department requests for exceptional case funding were considered on a case-by-case basis. I can confirm that correspondence was received by this school in late 2023, but the Department did not receive a response from the school following a request for additional information. As such my Department was not in a position to finalise processing of the application. Officials from my Department will make further contact with this school to clarify the position.

Revised guidance for the 2024/25 school year was published on my Department’s website at and has issued to schools.There is an exceptional circumstances funding provision under the scheme, the rules of which are outlined in Section 5.5 of the published guidance.

As part of the on-going evaluation of the scheme, all schools will be asked to provide data on their expenditure in order to inform the guidance, implementation, costs and efficiency of the scheme for future years.

Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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309.To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the reason that the schoolbooks grant was greatly reduced this year compared to last year. [25137/24]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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In Budget 2024 over €47 million was allocated to continue implementation of the schoolbooks scheme at primary level. On the 8^thMay I announced details of year 2 of the Primary Schoolbooks Scheme which provides at a minimum free schoolbooks, workbooks and copybooks to pupils in recognised primary and special schools. More than 555,000 pupils enrolled in approximately 3,230 primary schools, including over 130 special schools will continue to benefit from this scheme.

Revised guidance for the 2024/25 school year was published on my Department’s website at and has issued to schools.

As the scheme is now implemented in every recognised primary and special school it is expected that schools have used the funding provided in the 2023/24 school year to purchase stocks of schoolbooks and other classroom resources. Many of these items are now available to schools for reuse in the 2024/25 school year and in future school years. The funding allocated to the scheme in the 2024/25 school year takes account of this.

Schools have received €80 per pupil enrolled as of September 2023. It is open to schools to look at their requirements and plan their budget across each of the years collectively. They may choose to spend more than €80 per pupil in one class and in turn, spend less than that per pupil in another class. In other words, while schools receive the money at the same per capita rate for all pupils they can choose to spread that expenditure differently across the years depending on the requirements. Special schools that have students enrolled in Junior Cycle programmes have received funding at the Junior Cycle per capita rate set out under the new Junior Cycle Schoolbooks Scheme.

As part of the on-going evaluation of the scheme, all schools will be asked to provide data on their expenditure in order to inform the guidance, implementation, costs and efficiency of the scheme for future years.