Orange with 6Medias published on Monday 23 May 2022 at 09:21
School supplies will increase very sharply by the start of the school year in September, BFMTV explains. Oxford, market leader, even mentions an increase of 20% to 25%, leading some parents to anticipate their purchases.
At the beginning of the school year in September, the prices for school materials will rise sharply and the bill for the parents will be higher.
This is the alert from BFMTV, Monday 23rd May. Notebooks, diaries, duplicate copies: according to the Oxford brand, the European leader in the sector, the increase could be 20 to 25%, according to RTL. Inflation caused in particular by the war in Ukraine. In fact, the industry is facing a shortage of raw materials that have become too expensive to produce. Cardboard has increased in price by 180% and paper by 70%, the continuous news channel specifies.
“The price of paper is going to double within a year, so we’ve passed on some of those increases,” Martial Ardant, general manager of Hamelin, which owns the Oxford brand, told RTL. This price increase is directly linked to inflation in the energy sector. “We are seeing an increase in the price of products that go into the composition of end products,” Laurent Proy, President of the Paper Industry Federation, told BFMTV.
Associations are calling for an increase in the back-to-school allowance
In view of this current price increase, some parents calculate four months before the start of the school year. “It forces us to take control of our family budget and try to save money because education is important,” testified a mother on BFMTV’s microphone. Another confirms that it will be necessary “to do it a little in advance and from now on I think it’s the best organization to have”.
In order to cope with this, several associations are already calling for a reassessment of the back-to-school allowance (ARS). This is paid to families with one or more children due to the many expenses incurred during each September school year: purchase of materials, clothing, registration for sports or extracurricular activities… The ARS was already reassessed at the end of April to take account of the high inflation of the last to balance weeks. It is now €376.98 for children aged 6 to 10, €397.78 for children aged 11 to 14 and €411.56 for children aged 15 to 18, explains BFMTV.