Parents say scrap EUR90 Junior Cert fee

The €90 fee to sit the Junior Cert exam is "grossly unfair" and should be abolished, the National Parents' Council has told an Oireachtas committee.

Exam fees and the cost of textbooks, which can run to more than €350 in fifth year, was deterring children from staying in education, the parents' organisation told the Oireachtas Education Committee.

"Anecdotal evidence tells us that people are not taking the Junior Cert because their parents cannot afford it," said Eleanor Petrie, president of the National Parents' Council (post-primary).

"We are in a situation where we are losing 1,000 students between primary and post-primary, and we don't know where they've gone."

The Junior Cert was a compulsory State exam, but students and their parents were forced to pay for it unless they had medical cards. "It is a grossly unfair, compulsory fee. If we are to encourage students to stay in school, it must be removed immediately," she said.

Fionnuala Kilfeather, of the National Parents' Council (primary), said the cost of school books was a tremendous burden on the parents of secondary and primary children.

Publishers had a vested interest in regularly changing texts, putting an enormous strain on parents who had to buy new, instead of second-hand, books. Books should be purchased by schools to reduce costs and unnecessary changing of texts.

She said, while a books grant was available, it singled out children from poorer families. Parents, she said, were often reluctant to avail of it.