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Juniors

24th Oct 2019

Research shows that most Irish children lose €100 of school supplies every year

Melissa Carton

busy school mornings

As a parent, this doesn’t surprise me.

It’s only October and already my son has misplaced most of his school supplies.

Whenever he is doing his homework he can never find his sharpener, ruler or eraser even though we only bought them last month.

Recent research revealed that the majority Irish children lose at least one school item each school year.

In fact, one of five Irish parents claim that their child loses on average €100 worth of school supplies every year!

The research, conducted by My Nametags found that unsurprisingly stationery was the item most likely to be lost (50 per cent) while sports bags (8 per cent) and travel passes (8 per cent) made up the items least likely to be lost.

The age of the child also made a difference to the cost amount of items lost, with parents reporting that 13 to 17-year old’s are losing the most throughout the school year (at a cost of €51) compared with any other child age group.

From being a teenager and constantly lending out my pens to other people in class I can see how teens might be the worse age group for it.

In relation to the daily school routine the survey also revealed that parents seem to struggle with homework as much as their children with almost half of parents reporting that doing homework is one of the hardest parts of getting back into a school routine after a holiday or break.

Getting children out of beds in the morning was also unsurprisingly difficult with 47 per cent admitting it is the most difficult part of getting back into the school routine.