The cost of living has risen sharply in recent years, and the school sector is no exception. When she received the full amount to be paid for educational materials for her children’s next school year, Valerie mightn’t believe her eyes. “It goes once morest everything that is being said at the moment regarding ecology and recycling”. The increase in the price of paper might explain this explosion in the cost of school fees.
Valérie, 50, is a mother. She lives in Walhain in Walloon Brabant with her husband and three children. Next September, her big boy will start secondary 5 and her young twins will enter secondary 1 in Gembloux.
The last school year ended, Valérie received a letter from the school containing information on compulsory fees and school supplies for the start of the first year. By compulsory fees, the school means the cost of photocopies and the various compulsory excursions and activities. And there is the shock for Valérie. It is not less than 330 euros that she will have to pay per childcounting only books and mandatory fees: “It should be even more than that, but I decided not to take the recommended dictionaries”, she told us following contacting the editorial staff of RTL info via our orange Alert us button.
Dictionaries are part of the list of books that students must have for the start of the school year. If Valérie has decided not to acquire them, on the other hand she has no choice with regard to the exercise books: “37 euros for a math book, which you can’t buy second-hand! I would never buy a book at that price for myself.” She will have to pay 215 euros per child for their books for their return to secondary school. The mother contacted the publisher of these notebooks to explain her situation to them and obtain a reduction, without result. He was also advised not to buy used: “A new edition is published every year, with modifications, and in any case, the students must take note in the notebooks so it is not possible to resell”.
Where is the ecology in all this?
The mother knows that free is too much to ask, and that’s not what she hopes for today. She wonders more regarding the ecological side of these approaches: “We’re bothered with recycling, we have to be careful with our consumption in all areas, but for mathematics, there we can buy a book for 40 euros that we can’t get second-hand”. It’s the lack of retraining opportunities that angers her. The price of photocopies too. Of the 118 euros needed for “compulsory fees”, we find 40 euros of photocopies for the year: “They are completely crazy, it’s a scandal, I don’t know who they take us for!”.
The price of paper is rising
One of the explanations is the increase in the price of paper: from 45 to 100% in one year depending on the type of paper. We told you a few months ago, this increase is explained by the paper industry, which is energy-intensive and consumes a lot of gas. The latter has increased by 25% since the invasion of Ukraine. The world of publishing is therefore affected, resulting in higher prices for comics, books and… school notebooks. For the last quarter of 2022, Belgian publishers are planning a significant increase, “from 5 to 15%“, estimates Benoît Dubois, director of the association of the Belgian editors.
I don’t know where I’m going to get this back to school fee
To these initial costs, it is also necessary to add lunches and bus subscriptions among others. These will cost him 140 euros per child. “I don’t know where I’m going to get these back-to-school fees.” Valerie works as a sales assistant in a company, she and her husband receive reasonable salaries, but this amount scares her: “We will arrive at a return to more than 1,500 euros for my three children”. A back-to-school allowance package is allocated to families, but Valérie is not convinced: “It’s nothing at all compared to the amount we have to pay, I will receive a little more than 250 euros for my three children”. She adds that school fees were lower a few years ago: “At the time, the bookshop even granted part of the rebate it received from its suppliers…”.
The spokesperson for the Minister of Education Caroline Désir, Jean-François Mahieu, was contacted by our editorial staff concerning the question of school fees. He explains that free has already been in place for kindergarten for some time, and the idea is to move towards this free in the upper years.“A supplementary budget request was submitted by the Minister to extend the free primary education measures during the last conclave. This request unfortunately did not succeed, for various reasons, but certainly not because it is not This is not a political priority in the eyes of the Minister. In this respect, the continuation of work on the modeling of cost ceilings for school trips in the primary level remains well planned. This modeling is currently undergoing a new update, thanks to the study carried out at the start of the school year by the League of Families. The Minister’s objective is to be able to present to education stakeholders in the coming months a more complete proposal for regulatory ceilings”.
An explanation that will not satisfy Valérie, but which can give hope for the future.
