I think I’ve learned just as much as my son has over the past month. He’s four. He started in junior infants at the beginning of September. He’s the first of my two boys to go to school.

We knew, of course, that there would be costs involved, but we didn’t know just how many costs. We had no idea how the primary-school system was structured and there wasn’t a huge amount of information out there. But we have found out quickly enough and I’d like to share some of the lessons I have learned.

Firstly, parents pay for everything – even, it would seem, the cost of rubbish. In my son’s school, the children bring home the rubbish from their lunch.

Empty or half-empty milk cartons leak all over his schoolbag, mushed-up pear cores seep and the butter on sandwich crusts joyously smears itself into every crevice. Try getting a four year-old to remember to put his rubbish in the little bag we give him.

Presumably the school needs to save money on waste-disposal charges. I assumed, perhaps stupidly, that schools would be exempt from rubbish charges.

My second lesson is that there is absolutely no feedback from the school. I don’t blame them for this and I understand that teachers probably don’t have time to send feedback home with every child.

I assume it will come at the parent-teacher meeting, but I’m so used to picking him up from preschool and aftercare and hearing how he got on. This has been a big adjustment for us. As a working mother, I’ve found it a little bit painful.

But those are relatively minor irritations. The third and most frustrating lesson comes back to an issue that has been in the headlines over the past month: the cost of uniforms. My son’s school uniform, for our local national school, consists of a crested jumper which costs €25. The school also insists on a particular tracksuit which can be bought from only one supplier.

In total, we’ve shelled out €75 on these essentials. His school jumper is wool, and handwash only. I can’t imagine anything more impractical: he’s a four-year-old boy. He gets dirty. The wool was itching him, so I asked the uniform company if there was an alternative, and they offered me an acrylic jumper – if I could wait six weeks. They told me I could get it in M&S and they would sew the crest on for me, for free. But why were parents not given this option from the outset? I saved €16.

As I write this, we have minus €50 in our bank account. In the grand scheme of things, why are parents forced to waste so much money on a very particular uniform from a particular supplier? We could buy three uniforms for the money we spent.

For kids who are from poorer backgrounds, that money could buy books, lunchboxes and shoes: things that matter.

This column gives a voice to people within the education system.Submissions by email to education@irishtimes.com