PARENTS ARE being put under severe pressure to pay voluntary contributions to some schools according to parents’ representatives and charities.
A spokesperson for the National Parents Council post-primary Ms Jackie Callaghan said in some schools the contribution is not voluntary.
“We had one case where a child rang [their] home to say the parents who paid were listed up on a public notice-board and so those who hadn’t were known,” Ms Callaghan said this week.
In her experience, amounts of €150 per student are routine while “contributions have been known to be up to €500”.
Ms O’Callaghan predicted greater problems in the next few weeks as parents realise how far their reduced income needs to stretch.
“If you don’t send your child to a fee-paying school because you don’t have the money, you don’t have the money. It should be voluntary, there should never be a threat made to students or parents.”
The Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn said yesterday schools are not allowed to ask parents for the contribution before their child has been allocated a place. Speaking on RTÉ Radio he said: “It is a voluntary scheme and people cannot be punished because they don’t have the money”.
However, he said headmasters and school managers were dealing with struggling families on a daily basis and “were not in some ivory tower unaware of what’s going on”.
Asked whether tax breaks on voluntary contributions of €250 and more were benefiting schools in wealthier catchment areas, Mr Quinn said he needed to discuss the issue with the Minister for Finance.
Jim Walsh, a spokesman for St Vincent de Paul, said he couldn’t quantify how many calls the charity gets specifically in relation to the voluntary contribution but said it is a frequent topic.
“At this time of year, calls increase. People on low-income wages or social welfare can get by but when the bills increase, they come for extra help,” he said.
“It’s frustrating, you can almost predict it.”
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown councillor Victor Boyhan said he had seen strongly worded letters to parents in his constituency asking for contributions.
Responding to the comments made by Mr Quinn, he said: “He avoided the questions. He didn’t say he would issue guidelines and he didn’t say he would exempt teachers from the role of collecting money.”
Meanwhile Fianna Fáil spokesperson on education and skills Brendan Smith described the Minister’s plans for reducing costs of school-books as “disappointing”.
“If the Minister had taken decisive action when he first started talking about this issue months ago, real progress on alleviating the burden on families could have been made already. But as children head back to school this week, they and their families see no benefit.”