Families seek charity help for schoolbooks

HARD-UP families are seeking help from the St Vincent de Paul Society to buy schoolbooks.

This was claimed at a teachers’ union congress where publishing companies came under fire for constantly changing editions of textbooks.

Education Minister Ruairi Quinn was called on to initiate arrangements with publishers so that schools can operate book rental schemes.

Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) president Bernie Ruane yesterday said she had been contacted by the St Vincent de Paul Society to highlight the issuewith a view to saving money for hard-pressed parents.

The constant issuing of new editions of school texts was creating an unnecessary expense for parents, she pointed out.

And parents seeking help from the charity were not necessarily those that were unemployed, or who had medical cards.

“These are parents who have suddenly been hit by this recession and cannot cope with the ever-increasing price of school books,” Ms Ruane stated.

She insisted there was no need to keep changing editions.

Publishers had adopted a stance that was making it impossible for teachers to stay with a particular edition of a textbook for any longer than one cycle, she told delegates.

She called on the department to challenge the practice and to introduce protocols around publishing practices.

“In both Junior and Leaving Certificate cycles, new editions of books are released every other year even when no syllabus change has taken place and, in many cases, content has only been slightly reorganised as opposed to changed,” Ms Ruane said.

“This makes it very difficult for each student in a particular class group to obtain the same version of particular editions.

“The use of multiple editions is clearly detrimental to quality teaching and learning, with teachers losing a significant amount of class time providing clarification to students.”

A survey of school principals, earlier this year, showed the recession was having a high impact on the capacity of 61% of families to buy school books and classroom materials.