Approaching start of school year, families and elected officials are concerned about inflation

While in the National Assembly began the discussion of the bill on purchasing power, associations of families, parents of students and elected officials alert on the foreseeable increase in expenses for supplies and the canteen.

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Hear children count on the days before the summer holidays, teachers are used to it. But seeing them, as early as July, wonder about those who separate them from the start of the school year in September is an exercise to which they are less customary. Many teachers say they have experienced it: in the last days of the school year, even before the holidays were whistled, students, their parents, and not only those identified as the most socially difficult, had already had For horizon the month of September – and, with him, the “back -to -school expenses”, on which inflation comes to weigh.

Supplies, canteen, transport, boarding school for families who use it, reception and leisure activities: the evolution of each of these positions is observed with attention – and concern – by associations. Without forgetting that of the holidays: if the rise in prices has prompted certain households to review their summer projects, a large part of children is, as every summer, assigned under house arrest; They were 1 in 3 in this case, before the health crisis, and their proportion could increase, we are worried within the associations of elected officials. These have also bet, this summer, on the family stays offered by the day. Sign that the times are complicated …

“On our scale, it is clear: we see that families go less on vacation, or less far away, and that they do their back -to -school shopping earlier, or stagge them”, notes Emilie Kuchel, president of the Network of educational cities, with 120 municipalities. The one who is also assistant to education at the town hall of Brest makes the link between these behaviors, “reflect, she says, of a concern that rises among parents”.

“Given the context, it is quite logical that parents, especially those whose wages do not follow inflation, wonder if, by September, the cost of the” basket “of school supplies is not To fly away, “notes Chantal Huet, president of Familles de France. Summer after summer, for more than thirty years, the federation which she directs lends himself to the same exercise: to calculate the average price of a “basket” of supplies for a student at the entrance to college – their purchase, in primary, in elementary, Being often (but not always) taken care of by municipalities. 2> “complicated period”

This estimate is expected in mid-August, the date of the payment of the back-to-school allowance (ARS), aid from the family allowance fund for 3 million families, subject to resources. The ARS follows, like the other social benefits indexed to inflation, an upward trend: after a revaluation of 1.8 % in April, it could still be 4 % before September. This is, in any case, the ratio included in the bill on purchasing power during discussion in the National Assembly.

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/Media reports.