Free schoolbooks: Parents are the winners, but who are the losers?
June Rahilly of Philip's Book Shop, Mallow: Free schoolbooks 'a crushing blow' for book shops. Picture: David Keane
The Government’s free schoolbooks scheme is “pulling the rug out from under” small independent book shops and even putting some out of business.
That’s according to independent book shop owners and their representative organisation Booksellers Ireland. Since the rollout of free schoolbooks for all primary school children last September, nine book shops have closed around the country, with some explicitly blaming the free school book scheme.
Irish-owned books and stationery retailer Eason claimed last September the scheme cost it €2.5m in loss of revenue last year.
Now, industry insiders fear many smaller bookshops will close with the impending expansion of free schoolbooks to 213,000 Junior Cycle students in 672 post-primary schools this September.
“It’s really sad because they’re in small communities and a book shop is great to have,” chair of Booksellers Ireland Dawn Behan told the .
“It’s hard to get one back because nobody makes big money opening a book shop. Most people do it because they love books and they want to encourage reading or give something to their community,” she said.
The biggest issue for book shops and schools alike is that the Department of Education is putting the onus on schools to organise buying the books, rather than allocating vouchers to parents to buy the books wherever and whenever they want.
Booksellers Ireland lobbied the Department of Education for a voucher system but claims they “weren’t interested in that. They just wanted to give the money to the school and let the school look after the procurement.”
If a school now needs to order books costing over €50,000, which will be the vast majority, they are obliged under EU law to put it out to tender, select a single supplier who must deliver hundreds of books to the school in a once-off delivery, by August, preferably sooner.
“Small bookshops don’t have the cash flow or the manpower to deal with the eTender system. It’s a lot of paperwork to respond to a tender in the first place. Even if you get the tender, you’re talking about having €50,000 available to buy the books in the first place to deliver to the school and then invoice the school to get the money back. It’s taken a lot of people out of the market whether they like it or not,” said Behan.
It also means less footfall in book shops throughout the summer, something which June Rahilly of Philip's Book Shop in Mallow describes as “a crushing blow” for shops like hers.
“Footfall — if you don’t have it it’s a crushing blow for shops because the novels, exam papers would have been spun out throughout the year and you’d have people coming in and out all the time, you’d have teachers ringing down telling you a class needed a novel, students coming in to pick up exam papers and stationery, calculators and you’d have a load of summer staff on site there to provide the service. If it’s all done through e-tenders or quotes it means instead of having 100 families coming in picking up things throughout the year, it’s just one drop-off at the school,” she said.
“I know from speaking to a lot of other bookshops that they’re not going to go with the e-tendering because it’s too much for them to take on. If you don’t have a big premises or warehouse trying to have all the books for 120 students and deliver them all in one go — it’s massive.
“There’ll be no need for students to come in and pick up fancy stationery or school bags and bits and pieces. The main things that kept a lot of the school bookshops going throughout the rest of the year was their summer trade and it’s been taken off us. They’re just pulling the rug out from under us,” she said.
“It’s very worrying, there’s an awful lot of tenders up on the e-Tenders website and whether they’ll get offers from shops or not is anyone’s guess,” she said.
The intangible educational and cultural contribution of a book shop to its local community has not been considered by the Government, June believes.
“A school book is the same no matter where you get it from but if you want to keep your local bookshop, your transition year work experience, all the sponsorships throughout the year, World Book Day, all these things small bookshops do. But if you’re not getting business from the local schools, it’s very hard to keep the doors open because those three months keep you going for the rest of the year.
"I definitely know of a few bookshops who were selling schoolbooks and they’re just getting out of schoolbooks completely and trying to find other areas to go in to.
"If you don’t have the business, there’s not much else you can do."
While the idea certainly eases the financial burden on parents, Dawn Behan also claims the way the scheme has been implemented “didn’t take into account small businesses, local employment and the relationships between schools and their local book shops”.
Director of the National Association for Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD) Paul Crone also received many suggestions of a voucher scheme from his members.
“They’re very worried about the relationships that they had with their local book shops, which were very positive and supportive and collaborative. They are very worried that this will put that person out of business.
We did suggest that to the department and it wasn’t picked up,” he said.
Principal of Coláiste Éamann Rís in Cork City Aaron Wolfe has similar concerns. “You could have had a great relationship with your local bookshop and now I have to put it on eTenders and maybe they might decide they’re not going to apply to that or they don’t have the capacity to apply. It’s nuts,” he told this newspaper.
There is simmering resentment among many of the 728 principals and 1,003 deputy principals tasked with buying the books through eTenders, according to Mr Crone.
“Our problem is that the schools do not have the expertise nor the capacity to do this. So, what’s happening is that principals are having to neglect other tasks to try and get this done. There’s genuine anger among principals that this is being put on them without the specialist capacity in the system,” he said.
The Department of Education has put supports in place to help schools navigate eTenders through its Schools Procurement Unit, along with funding of up to 16 administration days which staff can use to do the paperwork. But Crone would still argue that despite such support, “principals shouldn’t be doing this”.
“They’ve more important things to be doing, dealing with students, teaching and learning development, working with staff. Our big call is for specialist administrative support to be given to schools,” he said.
“Ultimately, it will be great for schools because you’ll know every student will have the correct book in front of them, it promotes equality and inclusion yet to impose that without increasing the capacity of the schools means something else has to lose out to be able to do it,” he said.
“What’s coming down the road is the free school meals project, that’s going to involve a procurement process and logistics as well. That’s not the principal’s job either,” he added.
As head of almost 800 pupils, Aaron Wolfe is scathing in his view of the Government forcing schools to organise the provision of schoolbooks, despite the obvious benefits.
“As a parent myself, I’m delighted school books are free. But eTenders is farcical because who on earth in Europe is going to apply to supply my school? Hardly a German supplier will say ‘oh we’ll supply the books to Coláiste Éamann Rís in Cork city.’ It was nonsense to put it on eTenders,” he said.
Mr Wolfe is lucky because he has two deputy principals, unlike most schools. “My heart goes out to anyone who has just one deputy because they’re having to do it themselves, it is so complex. It was landed on us very, very late and in a voluntary secondary school, you have to do it yourself.
"We have to do this in a very short time because the State exams are coming. The difference between the quotations is huge. There was a €10,000 difference between stationery quotes. It’s nuts. There’s massive disparities between the quotes.
"Now we’re having to go and get samples of the stationery. Principals generally try to get July off and get our holidays but you’ve to have the books all lined up now to come in August, how they’re going to be packaged, whether the supplier will deliver each box. I have 140 first years, not to mention my second years and third years — there’s huge work for it,” said Mr Wolfe.
There are also concerns suppliers will even be able to provide all the books in time. “It's putting a lot of pressure on school book suppliers to get a lot done in a small time. On this scale, that they all need to be delivered at the same time to the schools, I can’t see it working, it just seems impossible,” said Behan.
Could some teachers be facing students with no books in front of them come September?
“You’d hope not but you’d wonder will the publishers be able to get the books out on time?
If every school needs the same number of books, will there be enough in time?” wonders Wolfe.
In response, a Department of Education spokesperson said having schools organise books rather than giving vouchers to parents was the best way to guarantee every child received the free school books.
They refuted the scheme was resulting in book shop closures which they said were a result of many other factors affecting retailers, such as rising costs and competition from online book stores.
They also insisted schools with little experience of the eTenders process were being offered “significant additional guidance and support” by a dedicated support team, admin grants and materials such as procurement guides, webinars and training videos.
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