When Claire O’Rourke sat down to work out the cost of sending her four children into a new school term next month, she was stunned by the total.
The teacher who lives in Glasnevin, in Dublin, considers herself quite sensible when juggling the family’s spending with husband Peter, who works in finance.
But after crunching the numbers for The Irish Times, she was astounded by how much her back-to-school bill will amount to, how it continues to increase on previous years and what future budgets might look like.
“I am coming up with a figure of about €800 a month for four children for the entire school year,” she said. “I’m kind of shocked as I’ve never laid it out as such. That’s an average spend of €8,000 per year.”
RM Block
O’Rourke’s four children – Oscar (9), Fionn (11), Sorcha (14) and Siún (15) – attend primary and secondary schools in a system with supposedly free education. So why is she incurring such hefty costs?
Last year, there was the cost of a new iPad for Sorcha when she started a secondary school that favours technology over the free books scheme. It had to be purchased from one particular company recommended by the school because of the software it uses, and cost €604, an increase of €65 on the same iPad model purchased for Siún when she made the move to secondary.
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“Then there are PE kits in their non-uniform school, which has decided to introduce a tracksuit which costs €117.50 – that includes a hoodie, bottoms and T-shirt,” added O’Rourke. “The school is covering the cost for my TY student but I need to buy one for my second year student. Next year, I will have to buy two, and two years later, I will have to buy three each year, so that’s a cost of €350.”
O’Rourke’s voluntary contributions, which are termed “resource fees”, for the two schools come in at €340 per year – €100 per child for secondary, and €70 per child for primary.
“There was an additional fee of €30 to cover the mock Junior Cert exams last year, and we have an additional cost for the transition year of €450,” she says. “School trips amount to around €420 for the year and, in addition to this, the first school trip abroad will cost €818 for three nights in Italy.”
Her clothing budget for the four children comes in at about €1,000 but doesn’t factor in brand preferences, something she tries to steer her kids away from. Lunch for four has a rather unappetising price tag of €2,400 for the year and four Leap cards cost €100 per month.
Add after-school activities that include scouts (€1,500), gymnastics (€400), karate (€300), football (€500) and violin lessons (€300), and O’Rourke’s costs increase by €3,000.
“The free book scheme has been a godsend in primary school but for everything else we save and we try to be pretty good about keeping children’s allowance for these costs,” she said. “We know we are fortunate to be able to cover these expenses and we choose to pay for all these after school activities, or a school trip, but there are definitely people living on credit cards, and borrowing, and feeling under huge pressure when it comes to these costs.”
Zurich’s Cost of Education 2025 survey, based on information from 1,900 respondents, puts the estimated cost (the average amount parents say they spend) on sending a child to primary school at €1,442, an increase of €30 on last year’s report, and a lifetime cost of €12,920. .
Zurich puts the actual primary school cost (a more granular analysis of costs by iReach Insights) at €1,615, up €69 on last year.
Estimated costs in secondary school in 2025 come in at €2,065, down €216 on last year (possibly as a result of reduced spend on uniforms or the free books scheme being extended), while the actual calculated cost is put at €3,085, down just €5 on 2024.
Worryingly, one in four parents say they have taken out a loan to help pay for secondary education, up 4 per cent on last year.
These sentiments echo a report released last week by children’s charity Barnardos which laid bare the extreme financial pressure parents are under in its annual Back To School survey.
More than a quarter of secondary school parents (27 per cent), and 14 per cent of primary school parents use savings in order to meet back-to-school costs, while 15 per cent of secondary school parents, and nearly one in 10 of primary school parents (8 per cent) had to take out a loan or borrow from family and friends to meet school costs.
Others simply forgo paying other bills to meet school spending requirements.
The survey also found that more than three-quarters of primary and secondary school parents had been asked for a voluntary contribution, with an average fee of €87 for primary and €133 for secondary schools. The majority of parents across both sectors did not feel the contribution was all that voluntary either.
Áine Lynch, CEO of the National Parents Council, agreed.
“We know that parents who can’t afford to pay that voluntary contribution but feel pressure to pay it either get loans, often not from banks, because they’re not in that kind of financial situation where they would be able to get a loan from a bank, or they might more commonly get loans from family members to pay it, or they just can’t pay it,” she said.
“And when you think that that’s at the beginning of a new school year and that is the kind of pressure as your child starts in school, the parent who now feels they owe the school money is less likely to go to that school and say ‘I’m concerned about my child’s learning’.
“So it’s not a financial transaction only. It has the potential to negatively impact the parent-school relationship, which we know from research is critical to children doing well in school.”
While Government incentives such as the free schoolbook scheme for primary schools in 2023, and post primary from last year, are a welcome help in the annual back-to-school budgeting in non-digital schools, it’s simply not enough, with families forced to adopt more frugal lifestyles to meet the costs of uniforms, stationery, travel and trips.
Marta Strzałka, who works in banking and lives in Mullingar, in Co Westmeath, has two children in primary school, one in senior infants, and one in sixth class, so she already has an eye on secondary school costs next year.
“Kuba is 11 and Sara is 6, so this time of the year is always quite stressful because you are buying uniforms, shoes, sports clothes and stationery, which amounts to around €200,” she said.
“I am already looking to next year and having secondary school costs to budget for because I know from parents there can be costs like iPads, and uniforms are a bit more strict. At the moment, my two are allowed wear tracksuit bottoms, which I can buy in bulk in Penneys or Dunnes, along with a crested sweatshirt, which is around €25 per piece.
“Every year the charges creep up in terms of voluntary contributions, which is another €100, so I try to save where I can like reusing backpacks, lunch boxes and pencil cases and things like that.
“What I’m doing now is to try to save and budget using the Too Good To Go app, which is where supermarkets sell random bags of unsold or nearly out-of-date food at a reduced price. I got one in Aldi with meats and yoghurts, things the kids eat, so that was brilliant, and when I get bread, I can freeze it.
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“It just means I can have money put aside for school stuff, and indeed after-school activities. I’ve already paid my September fees for these classes. I know it’s my choice and a privilege to afford this for my children, but they’re expensive. For gymnastics, dancing and martial arts, I’ve paid €200 for September alone.”
There’s an additional worry for self-employed parents in that September’s school spend rolls into October’s self-assessment season, when tax bills must be paid. This is something that affects Warren Dowling, a Dublin accountant, as well as his clients.
“Some clients are conscious of the fact that school costs are generally incurred at the tail end of the summer but they also have one eye on the tax deadline, which looms large at the end of October,” he noted.
“Both my children attend different Educate Together schools, and the fact that they do not wear a uniform is seen by some as a cost-saving mechanism. However, the opposite can also be the truth. My daughter is entering secondary school and the cost attached to her non-uniformed wardrobe is so significant there has been discussion that we would be better off with a uniform.
“Having said that, I have clients who have paid several hundred euro this year for uniforms, including the school tracksuit, the school kit bag, school jacket in some cases.
“Another cost we encountered this year was a school iPad, which was almost €1,000 including its software. The main sticking point from clients on this in the past is the cost of the unit through official sources compared to purchasing the unit personally, which would be generally cheaper apparently.
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“I also have two clients who have raised a new phenomenon with me this year – the cost of transition year. Traditionally, this was generally not taken up by my generation, but today, it’s a rite of passage, including European trips. One client has told me the cost of TY itself has a contribution of €500, and a trip planned for that year is another €1,000.”
There is hope that questions around contributions, especially ones labelled voluntary, will be addressed when a long-awaited Education (Student Parent Charter) Bill 2019 comes to pass.
Lynch said the National Parents Council has recently engaged on it with the Department of Education. When enacted, it will show how school contributions are spent.
“The voluntary contribution really needs to be tackled as a priority,” she said.
“The issue of transparency is one thing, but the issue of why parents have to pay it is a bigger question. And sometimes we kind of talk about voluntary contributions as it being a financial transaction, right? But actually parents shouldn’t have a financial relationship with their school. They should have an educational relationship with their school.”
