Jen Cummins: Parents Should Not Be School Fundraisers
Jen Cummins addressed the Dáil on a Labour Party motion about back-to-school costs, warning that hundreds of thousands of children live in poverty and parents are being forced to cover school basics. She criticised inadequate capitation grants, voluntary contributions, rising fees and the digital divide as drivers of family hardship.
Jen Cummins argued that the recent increase in the capitation grant still falls short, has not kept pace with inflation, and results in parents offsetting basic school costs. She said parents should not be asked to fund insurance, repairs or toilet rolls and called for schools to be fully state-funded.
Cummins urged an outright ban on voluntary contributions and criticised the administrative burdens that stop some schools taking up the hot school meals scheme. She described her own bill on nutritional standards and called for hot meals to be rolled out across all primary schools.
She condemned the late reintroduction of examination fees and warned that transport cost increases, uniform expenses and sudden charges hit tight family budgets. Cummins highlighted circular 3217 and welcomed a promised working group to reduce uniform costs, including low-cost badges and generic items.
Cummins described the ongoing digital divide exposed during COVID, recounting local projects that provided laptops and Wi-Fi. She stressed that children with disabilities must receive priority access to digital devices and assessments to support their learning.
She welcomed the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance but called the figure of 233,000 children in need a national disgrace. Cummins finished by wishing colleagues a restful summer while promising to continue pressing the Minister and Department on these issues.
Capitation and fundraising:
Jen Cummins argued that the recent increase in the capitation grant still falls short, has not kept pace with inflation, and results in parents offsetting basic school costs. She said parents should not be asked to fund insurance, repairs or toilet rolls and called for schools to be fully state-funded.
Voluntary contributions and meals:
Cummins urged an outright ban on voluntary contributions and criticised the administrative burdens that stop some schools taking up the hot school meals scheme. She described her own bill on nutritional standards and called for hot meals to be rolled out across all primary schools.
Costs for families:
She condemned the late reintroduction of examination fees and warned that transport cost increases, uniform expenses and sudden charges hit tight family budgets. Cummins highlighted circular 3217 and welcomed a promised working group to reduce uniform costs, including low-cost badges and generic items.
Digital divide and supports for special needs:
Cummins described the ongoing digital divide exposed during COVID, recounting local projects that provided laptops and Wi-Fi. She stressed that children with disabilities must receive priority access to digital devices and assessments to support their learning.
Closing remarks:
She welcomed the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance but called the figure of 233,000 children in need a national disgrace. Cummins finished by wishing colleagues a restful summer while promising to continue pressing the Minister and Department on these issues.
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Transcript
I'd like to thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this motion. I think it's very timely. It is the summer months when parents start to think, how will we stretch ourselves to autumn, get everything ready that we need to, and then still maybe have a holiday, organise summer camps, et cetera, et cetera. So I think it's very timely and I thank you all for your work on it. It's been very interesting to listen to the contributions so far from everybody and I think everybody recognises that there is challenges in this country with regards to poverty and ultimately that's where this stems from. It stems from the fact that there are thousands, like hundreds of thousands of children living in poverty in this country and the department is trying to implement measures to combat that, but I suppose there are differing views in terms of where and how effective that support is coming. So I'll just go through a few of the things that I think are still challenges. The capitation grant in schools did increase last year, but still hasn't reached the level that would be able to fully mean that the school is fully funded. It hasn't reached levels where it needs to be. It also hasn't taken into consideration the level of inflation. As a result of that, parents are then offsetting the cost that the schools do not have and we see fundraising happening particularly in primary schools and I'd just like to say again, I have mentioned in this house before, parents are not fundraisers for schools. They are parents of children who send their children to the school and that really is the end of that transaction and if education is truly free in this country, they don't need to fundraise. However, I will say, I think sometimes parents do like fundraising for things that give schools an extra, maybe the icing on the cake, but not for the bread and butter stuff. There should be no fundraising, parents associations, etc. fundraising to pay for the cost of insurance or toilet rolls as I heard from a few schools or anything else that should be done by the state. There should be no parents coming in to have to fix the shelf that does constantly fall down or fix the hole in the floorboard because the prefab is rotten. That shouldn't be existing in our schools. Our schools should be fully functioning, fully kitted out and fully workable and the people who are working there and people who are attending education should be working in buildings that are modern and fit for purpose and parents shouldn't be coming in to offset the cost of that and schools should not have to wait for an extremely long time to get the buildings that they so rightly deserve to be in. With regards to following on from fundraising that needs to happen for parents, voluntary contributions should be banned outright. That should just not be allowed by any schools. I have seen that parents, for example, if you look at the app that is often on parents' phone, that there will be the payments part of that app and there will always be a little notification mark there saying, yes, there's a payment outstanding, you go in and it's the voluntary contribution. The word is voluntary. So that should not be allowed to be a feature on any app whatsoever. There should never be reminder letters, you haven't paid your contribution fee or the kind of passive one. For those parents who haven't paid, no, they should just be banned because the state should fully fund the school. So we need to get rid of that and the sooner we do that, the better. We also talked about over the last while hot school meals. It's been a focus of the education committee for a long time and my first bill was introduced a number of weeks ago with regards to the nutritional value of hot school meals. That is available because there were children who were hungry coming to school and it was introduced to combat that, to make sure that there was going to be no child in our schools, in primary school, hungry. That needs to be rolled out to all primary schools and it is available to all primary schools but not all of them take it up and not all parents take it up because of that nutritional value but also because of the administrative burden on the principals. So that needs to be able to be rolled out, fully functioning, nutritious, so that every child is able to get to have a nutritious meal in school, in primary school. I would love to see that rolled out at secondary school but that's for a different day's discussion. The reintroduction of the examination fees with six weeks before it had to be paid was an absolute disgrace. If the budget in October knew that that was going to happen, that should have been notified before to parents, that this is going to be reintroduced in the springtime. Then when parents were told they had six weeks to pay. But some parents, most people, don't have such a flexible budget that they can go, I'll pay that 160 euro or however much it is. So when things are being reintroduced, there needs to be time put in for that. There was an increase in the cost for families for transport. I know the Minister said the numbers look very small but if you have a number of children, if you are very tight in your budget, any increase is going to put families at a difficulty. School uniforms. I've mentioned this several times. Sinn Féin had a motion earlier in the year to talk about school uniforms and I put on the record saying that I think uniforms for some children are very challenging. So I'd have probably a different view as to whether we should impose uniforms on children. But again, that's for a different day. The fact that that circular 3217 has been in existence for almost ten years and in most parts is not enforced. There's no point in issuing a circular if you're not going to do anything about it. So I'm delighted that the Minister said that there's going to be a working group who's going to review and hopefully strengthen that. Because I would love to see that there is nobody going in to spend hundreds of euros on a uniform when there should be iron-on logos or sticky-on ones or whatever else it is, and a uniform that is just generic, that will not cost so much money. And you see, the reason then that we have to look at how we know why things are so difficult for parents is that the Minister for Social Protection has said that he's going to give 126,000 families the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance. That equates to two hundred and thirty-three thousand children. So two hundred and thirty-three thousand children in this country need support for their clothing and for their shoes to go back to school. So I don't see that as a great achievement that we're supporting. I see it as an absolute disgrace that this amount of people need that support. So I welcome that that funding and support is there for those families, but I am still shocked. Two hundred and thirty-three thousand children. That's a lot of children aged between two and eighteen. I think it goes up to twenty-two in some cases. There is a digital divide. The digital divide is seen and was seen from COVID time in particular. My own project in Ballymun and Shaw School Completion Programme, we provided laptops, Wi-Fi. I know people still don't believe me that we provided Wi-Fi to families, but we did because they didn't have Wi-Fi at home. And that's still the case in families around this country. So there is a growing divide. Even though the Minister is saying that children don't and young people don't need laptops. But there is an advantage if your family can buy you one and you can do your work at home. You can continue your homework at home and do that. And then if you don't. So I think it's not good enough to say that schools can make up their mind about that. I think the department needs to actually decide and give guidance like they do for other things and say, they don't need it or they do need it. And if they do need it, here is the support money for that. The last thing I'd like to say is, and it continues on from the digital divide, is that there are children in this country who are in school who have disabilities who don't have access to digital devices to help them with their learning. Their school might be only granted one or they might be only able to have access to one or two assessments. That needs to be not the situation. Every child who needs digital support for learning needs to get that as a priority and it needs to be available to them. So the last thing I want to say, I don't want to eat into too much more of Deputy Hearn's time, but I want to wish everybody who is on the Education Committee and the Ministers and those who speak on a regular basis about education a very nice summer, because I think it's been a very difficult year for everybody and I really think that it's important to recognise that everybody is trying to work hard. We will keep pushing you Minister, we will keep pushing the department from this side of the chamber, but I think it's important to say I hope you have a break and thank you very much everybody.