EXPLAINER: Why school principals might not be able to introduce free book scheme

Secondary school principals have warned that they may not be able to facilitate the free school book scheme in time for this coming September, when it is due to be rolled out.

Some parents of students in Junior Cycle will not have to buy or rent any school books for the 2024/25 school year under the new scheme which was announced recently by Minister for Education, Norma Foley.

More than 212,000 students enrolled in approximately 670 secondary schools will benefit from this new Free Education Scheme.  

However, some principals in these participating schools have expressed concerns about finance and time consumption in relation to the rollout of the scheme.

“There is an expectation that principals will be able to navigate a complex e-tenders process, which takes a significant amount of time,”  said Paul Crone of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD).

“School principals don’t have that expertise and might struggle to learn that in time to roll it out for September.”

Participating schools will see post-primary students in first, second and third year given free school books and core classroom resources such as journals, copybooks, dictionaries and calculators.

As well as this, the Department of Education says that guidance has been issued to post-primary schools ahead of the rollout of the scheme and a support grant to pay for overtime for people who might need to work additional hours to get the paperwork completed will be given.

Despite these obvious, positive indicators of the scheme, some negatives have been pointed out.

Questions about whether the necessary processes will be completed in an acceptable and expected timeframe are arising among those on the ground.

For example, in layman's terms, school books for each subject would have to be purchased on behalf of first, second and third year secondary students by each participating school by September. 

This means thousands of books, costing thousands of euros, would have to be signed off on and accounted for by post-primary schools around the country in order for parents to not have to purchase such supplies ahead of the coming school year.

Inevitably, issues are beginning to arise as school principals around the country scramble to get their business in order.

“There is no margin for error, especially in terms of finance,” Mr Clone said, and it is where the crux of an issue lies within the implementation of the scheme.

“The e-tenders process is a lot more complicated than just being computer literate - we need to resource the schools adequately to deal with this,” Mr Clone concluded.