BarcelonaWith just a few days to go until September 5th, the backpack is already starting to fill up with lined textbooks, still empty folders and blank notebooks. For weeks, Catalan families have been dealing with the financial expense that comes with the start of the school year every year, but this time with an added complication. The runaway inflation of recent months has also been transferred to the prices of many of the essential products for the return to school or institute, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE) and of some of the sectors involved.
Consumer price index (CPI) categories such as stationery have become more expensive by more than 23% in the past year (see chart) if we take the latest figures from this July into account. The price increase in children’s footwear is close to 9%, while school supplies cost nearly 5% more than at the start of last year.
“We know that both the beginning of the academic year and the school year in general will be more expensive,” says Lidón Gasull, director of the Federated Associations of Student Families of Catalonia (aFFaC). It is clear from the entity that there are not enough mechanisms to deal with this inflationary context. The 2022-2023 academic year also begins with an increase in the maximum price of the school canteen, which goes from 6.33 euros to 6.54 euros per day, in those public centers where the lunch break lasts two and a half hours. The justification for Education is, precisely, the general increase in prices and the revisions of the collective agreements for this service, which have increased personnel costs.
The reuse of textbooks, one of the usual formulas to save at the beginning of the school year, will not be an option for all families this year, explains Gasull. With the changes in the curriculum to adapt to the new state education law, some schools will change them from the previous year and therefore the expense will be unavoidable. The department, however, has left three years of margin to apply the new contents. On the other hand, aFFaC is aware that some schools have on the table the possibility of raising the fee they charge families for class materials, as a reflection of the high inflation.
From Education remember that the main measure to “support families financially” is the improvement of the detection of vulnerable students, which has gone from 7% to 17% in the last pre-registration process. The centers will receive specific funding for these students, of 384 euros for public schools and 988 euros for charter schools.
Paper price soared
“There has been an impact of inflation in this campaign, but not as great as in food, because it is prepared well in advance,” explains Oriol Soler, general director of the Abacus cooperative. Despite the sharp increase in the price of paper, many of the orders have been closed for months. For this reason, he assures that on average the items in his stores have become more expensive by 6%, below the year-on-year rise of 10.3% in the CPI in Catalonia in July. The chain has set itself the goal that in each category of its assortment there are products at the same price or cheaper than last year, to mitigate the impact of inflation on customers’ pockets. However, Soler does not predict any impact on sales either. “We notice absolutely nothing, no market shutdown,” he says.
Working with plenty of time has also been the saving grace for textbook publishers, confirms Antonio Garrido, president of the Educational Content Commission of the Publishers Guild and general manager of the Edebé group. “With the supply problems we already made advance purchases,” he explains. Paper is not the only headache, because printers have also increased prices to compensate for the rising cost of electricity. Garrido admits that the increase in the cost of new books is on average 6% and that the percentage is lower for old books. “We have preferred not to be inflationary and moderate the increase by sacrificing margins,” he says.
In its last report – last year’s – the consumer organization OCU put the cost of equipping a child with everything necessary for the start of classes at around 500 euros, from clothes and footwear to textbooks and supplies. “For this year, we are still in the study phase and we have not published the data, but it is clear that it will rise”, says Esther Lorente, delegate in Catalonia of the entity. To try to save on the bill for the return to the classroom, the organization recommends reviewing what you already have at home and can be recycled, make a list with the most urgent needs and compare prices.