merrion street

Education Minister Ruairi Quinn has welcomed the commitment by the main educational publishers to give substantial discounts to schools that run book rental schemes.

The commitment was made at a meeting yesterday with representatives of the publishers which was called to discuss proposals to reduce the cost of school books for parents.

This was the second meeting with the publishers since the Minister took up office.

Mr Quinn had proposed that schools which purchase textbooks in bulk should be given a significant discount.

The majority of publishers confirmed for the Minister yesterday that schools who purchase in bulk for book rental schemes will benefit from discounts in the range 12% – 17.5%.

The Minister is also receiving assistance from the National Parents Councils which have provided the Department with information about examples of best practice of book rental schemes in operation in order to encourage more schools to introduce such schemes.

The Minister said:

My main objective in proposing these measures is to ensure that costs to students and their families are kept to a minimum and I believe that the steps achieved to-date will contribute substantially to achieving this objective.

I will continue to prioritise this issue over the coming months.

Read the full press release here.