BOOK RENTAL SCHEME – (BRS)

29th May 2014

BOOK RENTAL SCHEME  (BRS)

Dear Parents/Guardians,

As you may be aware from the media etc. the Department of Education and Skills introduced a Book Rental Scheme to commence in the school year 2014/15. The Minister’s thinking was to ensure that all schools will offer a rental/loan scheme to their families. To this end, a once off grant is to be given to all schools that did not operate a Book Loan/Rental scheme as of September 2013. We qualified for this scheme under the given criteria.  As a result of this, we are now going to embark on a Book Rental Scheme (BRS) at Le Chéile.

A great deal of discussion has taken place at staff, Board of Management, and committee level around how to establish this scheme and make the best use of the grant for the long term continuity and development of a worthwhile, workable system for all.

Following on from all these deliberations, a number of decisions have been made. None of these has been made lightly. We hope you will accept our decisions and the brief explanations behind them that we have given. The committee is working on forming a policy and an important part of this will be ongoing review. To this end we will be seeking feedback from you. As  always, we seek to be democratic and the committee represents both staff and parent views.

The following are the basic elements of the scheme to date –

  • We intend to start small and grow the scheme over a number of years
  • The scheme is compulsary for all families (in keeping with our ethos it is most important that all children use the same resources in an equal manner; and otherwise the administration would be extremely difficult)
  • All books will be bought new, covered professionally and clearly labelled with a number for your child. Books will be replaced in each new school year if necessary, where wear and tear might occur
  • From next year on all books introduced to the scheme will be new publications that have not been used previously in the school
  • A levy, proportionate to the amount of books/resources received will be requested for each child. Some of the resources may be electronic, for use on the interactive whiteboard or on laptops. Others may be a contribution towards a supplementary reading/maths scheme etc.
  • No deposit will be asked in relation to returning the book in the condition it was received, but we will ask people to replace a book if it is badly damaged or lost

For the coming school year –

  • For Junior Infants, 1st and 2nd classes we will be asking for €5 towards the reading scheme. For the coming school year we will not be asking for any contribution from Senior Infants as they will continue working on  the existing scheme, Sunny Street
  • For 3rd to 6th classes we will be asking for €10 for the reading scheme and an online Science programme
  • The payment required will appear on your child’s booklist this June. In the future this may be collected earlier in the calendar year

We hope we have given you a clear explanation of how the scheme will work in its initial year. No workbooks will be included in the scheme. While we appreciate that some people may have bought readers last year we suggest you now sell them on secondhand as we do not forsee asking you to buy readers again for the lifetime of the BRS. With your co-operation we anticipate this to be a long and successful one!

Yours sincerely

Rosemary Mc Gonagle (Co-ordinator)

On behalf of the BRS Committee

 

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