A child’s right to education is underpinned by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Ireland signed in 1992.
These rights also include the right to health, family life and an adequate standard of living.
Reading some of the alarming statistics released by various agencies this week, it would appear that Ireland is failing to provide these basic rights to a growing number of vulnerable children.
The Central Statistics Office revealed that half of all households in the country have had to cut back on grocery shopping due to a loss of income.
Meanwhile, the Barnardos School Costs Survey quoted one parent who said her child missed 17 days of school last year due to not having a lunch.
Despite Ireland’s pledge to uphold the rights of children, there is a child somewhere in this developed first-world country who has missed a considerable chunk of his schooling for the sake of the price of a sandwich.
There is no doubt that for working parents school costs contribute hugely to their economic woes.
According to the CSO, 28 per cent of households in the Mid West who are experiencing financial difficulty cited school or college costs as their main additional expense.
This is perhaps unsurprising as the Barnardos survey revealed that on average it costs €350 to prepare a senior infants child for school in September, this rises to €400 for fourth class and jumps to a massive €785 for a student starting first year.
In Limerick, the task of helping struggling families to meet these costs has largely been left to charity and voluntary organisations such as the St Vincent de Paul and the Indira Initiative, which is helping 600 families to buy books and uniforms for the coming school year.
Against this backdrop, there are uniform suppliers charging up to €50 for a child’s jumper just because it has a school crest sewn on, while at least two educational publishers have raised their prices this year.
As specified by the UN, education is a right not a privilege, and it should not be priced as such.
