Carol Nolan (Laois-Offaly, Independent)
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187. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if the schoolbook grant allocation to schools is reduced if a slight increase in enrolment numbers occurs; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [27008/24]

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^th May 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 www.gov.ie/schoolbookschemes and has issued to schools.

As outlined in the guidance, the schoolbook grant for 2024/2025 is calculated based on validated September 2023 enrolment figures. If a school has a concern about funding for additional pupils who have enrolled in the school since this time, there is an exceptional cases funding provision under the scheme.

This provision allows a school to request additional funding when a significant increase in enrolments has occurred and the school cannot meet the costs of the books from within the original funding allocation or from previous surplus funding. Further information on exceptional cases is outlined in Section 5.5 of the published guidance.

Schools that wish to apply for additional funding under the exceptional cases provision should email primaryschoolbooks@education.gov.ie. As set out in the guidance certain considerations will apply and each application for funding will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

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.