Parents are spending hundreds of pounds a year on school supplies to plug an education funding gap in the wake of no government in Northern Ireland, a headteachers’ leader has said.
Cash-strapped families have struggled to make extra "voluntary" contribution for items including stationary as headteachers face an official spending squeeze.
It is only one element of the public services feeling the effect following the collapse of Stormont power-sharing, where Northern Ireland was left with no government to make decisions.
Sinn Fein's late Stormont deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, stepped aside two years ago today in protest at his former power-sharing partner the DUP's handling of a green energy scheme.
The impasse has created a decision-making logjam – and now parents are buying around £60 worth of supplies per school child every month to plug an education funding gap, a principal has said.
Geri Cameron, president of the National Association of Head Teachers in Northern Ireland, said: "It is totally unsatisfactory, parents have had a very strong voice in telling us that it is not sustainable."
The budget for schools has reduced by about 10 per cent in real terms over the past five years. “Schools are now at crisis point,” Ms Cameron added.
Charlene Brooks, chief executive of Parenting NI, a family support organisation, added that families were expected to buy extra items like stationary and contribute to the cost of particular lessons.
She said: "Parents have made it very clear that this has had an additional financial and emotional strain. They talk about a voluntary contribution but if one parent does not make it does that mean that their child is left out of a lesson and is more vulnerable to being picked on?
"Does that mean that that child stands out from the group? There appear to be much greater expectations on parents to pay towards things that they would not have to in the past."
Scores of pubs have also closed due to unreformed red tape and taxation, while major road building projects have been delayed following the power-sharing collapse at Stormont.
The region currently holds the world record for the longest period without a sitting government, which it passed after 589 days.
With additional reporting by PA
