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Top Twelve Tip
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Hi,
I am delighted to share our practical Top Twelve Tips for schools launching
a book rental scheme (BRS). These tips cover potential issues you should
consider or choices you should make at an early stage in order to avoid the
pitfalls associated with rental schemes. While there are a number of lengthy
documents advising you on how to set up a BRS, through our experience in
dealing with over 4,000 schools and our exclusive research recently carried out
by Milward Brown, we are confident that these tips cover the key points you
really need to know at the outset.
As you know, the Department of Education and Skills issued Guidelines
for Developing Textbook Rental Schemes in Schools, which is available to
download on education.ie. These DES guidelines highlight that careful planning
and strong commitment is key, and in our experience, the proverb ‘Tús maith,
leath na hoibre’ is particularly apt where book rental is concerned, as a good
start really does halve your work in the longer term, not to mention increasing
your chance of real success!
We do recommend that you take time to read the DES Guidelines and challenge
yourself with the Who, What, Where, Why, When and How questions for every
single area to ensure you’ve got it well thought through. These Folens Top
Twelve Tips are designed to supplement the DES document by highlighting the
points critical to a successful BRS.
We are very proud of the leading top-quality programmes we have created for
primary schools in Ireland, as well as the leading literacy schemes (such as
PM, Nelson Literacy Directions, Engage Literacy, Collins Big Cat, Flying Start
to Literacy and Red Rocket, to name but a few) that we exclusively represent
in Ireland. Our Planet Maths, Reading Zone, Right Note Music and Unlocking
SESE programmes are all the leading choice in Irish schools, with Treo Nua the
second most popular. Our programmes in Handwriting, Maths, Irish skills and
English skills are all leaders too, with multiple options to suit your needs.
As the DES Guidelines highlight, we would be delighted to work with you to
supply your textbooks, which we can do either directly or through one of the
many school bookshops around the country, according to your choice.
If we can help in any way, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or
talk to your Folens Sales rep, who will be happy to help. If you don’t have their
contact details to hand, you can always find them on www.folens.ie/our-reps
I hope you find this booklet useful in setting up and improving your BRS, and
don’t be shy! We would love to hear how you get on, and your feedback will
help us add to and refine our tips.
Sincerely
Shane Stafford,
Sales & Marketing Director
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Why set up a book rental scheme in your school?
• Provides cost savings on booklists for parents.
•Ensures that all pupils have the correct book at the beginning of the
school year.
•Provides access to a wider range of material to support teaching and
learning.
Principles of good practice
Key foundations of a successful book rental scheme (BRS):
•
Emphasise collaboration, consultation and co-operation between
school and home – teamwork is key.
•
Involve as many parents as possible in discussions.
•Draw up a book rental policy following consultation with staff, students
and parents.
•
Financing the scheme – operate on a self-financing basis with costs
met by rental income supplemented by school book grants from the
Department of Education and Skills (DES).
•
Proper financial management procedures need to be applied at all
times.
•
Annual audited accounts from the rental scheme should be provided to
the board of management and published to parents.
•
Books should be owned by the school and may consist of both new
and second-hand books.
•
Pupils should retain books for one year, at the end of which the books
are returned to the school.
•Pupils should be expected to keep the books in good condition and
parents should be requested to replace or cover the costs of damaged
and/or misplaced books.
•
Annual book lists should be compiled by the rental scheme coordinator, arising from the decisions of teachers/subject departments and
school management.
•
Book rental costs to parents should be managed so that they do not
coincide with other back-to-school expenses, for example, uniform costs.
•The policy should include a regular review of the operation of the rental
scheme.
(Ref: Department of Education and Skills ‘Guidelines for Developing Textbook Rental
Schemes in Schools’)
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Our Top Twelve Tips
1.Teamwork
Don’t attempt to do this without a team (operative committee) involved.
It does need to be led by one person but a team is needed to make it
happen. Volunteers (parents, senior pupils or past pupils could be called
on) play a pivotal role in sharing the workload, and much of this is done
in the early summer period just after school year ends. Good jobs to
assign to them include covering, tagging, cataloguing, stock taking,
assessing condition, filing and bagging, but it’s usually best to keep
financial matters to a very tight group of people to ensure potentially
sensitive personal issues are never disclosed.
2. Set up key ingredients:
•
A co-ordinator, with ultimate responsibility for the scheme, is
appointed. The co-ordination and administration of the scheme is
normally undertaken by school management, teachers and/or ancillary
staff, in partnership with parents.
•An operating committee, committed to assisting in the administration
of the scheme, is established. The co-ordinator and committee are
appointed from within the school’s existing resources – these may
include both teachers and members of the parents’ association.
• A
separate bank account is opened to cater for all book rental
transactions. The accounts will be stored in the school for the same
amount of time as general school accounts and may be audited.
Records are maintained of all transactions and are reviewed annually.
•
A set of income and expenditure accounts and financial
management details of the BRS should be included within the annual
board of management accounts.
3.Choose wisely
Your BRS purchase is a commitment to a book for about five years, so
you need to choose wisely and for the right reasons.
•Content is key. Our research has proven than 99% of the decision is
on content (the book/programme and the reputation of the publisher)
and then getting that desired book at the best-value price is the
conversation to be had with the relevant publisher or bookshop.
•Our research and experience have shown that schools will normally
wait to have the funds for the book/programme they want rather than
choosing a cheaper alternative. In our experience, those that don’t
wait have very often regretted it.
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•International research shows that when implementing a guided reading
scheme, the key is to choose your core programme (which must be
an excellently levelled programme) and always lead with it, and then
build the breadth through supplementary levelled titles from other
publishers.
4.Income
4.1.
Factors determining the rental charge – The annual rental charge/
contribution is critical to ensuring that you run a healthy BRS that can
continue to function for many years. While the fee to be charged is
entirely your decision to make, we would encourage you to factor in
the following:
•The fee should be set high enough to allow you to run your scheme
and invest in replacement/new books as needed without having
to levy an extra charge on parents. Ideally, the scheme’s income
should pay for the replacements/upgrades without need for
fundraising.
•The fee should be proportionate to the amount of books/subjects
included in the scheme.
•Don’t forget that with the primary school population set to increase
over the coming years, you will likely need to buy more books each
year to meet the needs of additional students in each class. Your
income needs to fund this too.
•Setting this charge correctly will also enable you to invest in
additional literacy schemes or maths schemes for your school
without additional fund-raising from parents.
•Your aim is to reduce overall cost to parents in an easy-to-manage
manner, so a simple flat fee is good (suggest four tiers of charges:
JI & SI, 1st & 2nd, 3rd & 4th, 5th & 6th), as this is easier to manage and
budget for.
•Round sums payable in notes are much easier to manage than
having to deal with coin, so favour a charge ending in 5 or 0 to make
it easier to manage.
•Our research indicates that 24% of schools charge a refundable
deposit and 54% charge a fine, but deposits are much easier and
less confrontational to manage.
•Our research also shows that photocopying is not a viable solution for
schools. For those using workbooks, 59% request parents purchase
workbooks themselves. As an alternative the school can purchase
direct and reduce the cost and effort overall for parents.
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4.2.
Managing the money
•A separate bank account is opened to cater for all book rental
transactions.
•Deliver a finance report on an ongoing basis to the Board of
Management.
•Have a simple, secure credit/debit card payment solution on your
school website to ease the queues to pay a bill and waiting for
a receipt. Issuing every child with a unique reference number to
be quoted on payment will reduce your admin effort significantly.
Ensure this works from mobile devices, not just a PC, as more and
more of these transactions are happening on smartphones now.
• Collect the BRS fee early, ideally before books are allocated.
5. Organisation of textbooks
•This is perhaps the most labour-intensive element of running a BRS.
The members of the organising committee form the core of the team
that carries out this work; some schools also use ancillary staff and/or
assistance from students in the holiday period to complete this work.
•
The co-ordinator and operating committee need to ensure that all
practical tasks relating to the administration of the BRS are concluded
in time for the beginning of the new school year. This will include (1)
cataloguing of books, (2) covering of books and (3) maintaining
textbook records. Books can be stored in classrooms over the
summer period.
5.1 Tag it/cataloguing
ake sure you tag your BRS property in some unique way so you’ve
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got your full catalogue readily identifiable. Invest in a customised
self-inking stamp/non-removable label and don’t attach it to the cover!
Make sure you identify each book with a unique code so you know it’s
yours, as well as its history and its value.
In some schools, barcode* and scanner systems are used to keep
track of books, and these have proven to be very effective.
5.2 Cover it
To extend the life of textbooks as far as possible, protective covering
is integral to the management of successful schemes. Most schools
arrange for books to be covered/laminated in advance of rental to
ensure their durability. The cost of covering is normally included in the
rental fee (Folens offer a book-covering service when you buy directly).
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5.3 Sign for it/Maintain textbook records
•Have an agreement form signed by the parent/student for the books
they receive, the condition they are in and the expectation on them
to maintain the books with reasonable wear and tear. It is better to
be explicitly clear at the outset than arguing later on.
Maintain records of the books, and of the signed documents.
6. An IT System
If you don’t have one from the start, you will probably end up wishing
you did, and you will still have to implement one later, when it is always
more difficult. Even if you don’t invest in a specific solution, a good
spreadsheet or database will really help. Remember that you will be
trying to track all of these students and books for years to come, so
getting up and running on Day 1 with a system to help you do that is a
necessity rather than an optional extra. If you don’t, the administrative
burden at start and end of year is a lot bigger than it really needs to be.
7.The end is nigh
Remember that you need to plan for the end-of-year returns just as carefully
as you planned for the issuing of books at the start of the year. Not doing
this will make the start of next year much harder and will cause significant
issues with deposits/fines and having to buy replacement books.
You have to avoid the pile of books in plastic bags on the floor outside
your door on the last day of the school year.
•Do this at the start of the year by clearly setting out how the end-ofyear returns will take place. Explain what the student/parent has to do,
as well as when, where and how they should do it.
•Consider issuing a reminder 4–6 weeks in advance so it’s not forgotten.
Include it with details of the fees for next year or details of the deposit
refund if relevant, as these letters tend to be read and not ignored!
8. Insurance
Coming from the angle of ‘better safe than sorry’, consider if there is any
impact on your insurance if you are storing all of your books in the school
over the summer holidays. You don’t want to have an issue with a burst
pipe taking out your entire rental scheme, for example.
9. Proof Positive
Don’t forget to keep all of your invoices and order forms safely, as they
will prove invaluable in proving your investment for grant purposes. Not
having this proof will likely impact your qualification for any grant.
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10. Evolve
Don’t just continue doing the same old thing every year – review it,
identify areas where improvements could be made and implement them.
hile the earlier tips are general tips, these final 2 are specifically for
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maximising your benefit from Folens programmes and resources…
11.Thinking of changing/expanding
Ensure you talk to Folens when you are thinking of adding to or changing
your BRS. We would love to help you, and a quick early conversation
can be a great start to reducing your effort, costs and time taken. Visit
www.Folens.ie/our-reps to obtain contact details for your dedicated
salesperson.
12.Get the additional resources
Every June, you need to email your full School Booklists/Rental Lists for
each class for the coming year to Folens ([email protected]) to ensure
your school gets the correct Folensonline.ie access for everyone in your
school and access to any additional resources that may be available.
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Appendix
Barcodes – those little lines you see on your cornflakes box can really help
you! Do not underestimate the time and workload saver that a free barcode
font, a regular printer, labels and a handheld barcode scanner can deliver for
you! Your IT supplier can set you up with a barcode scanner linked to your
PC (or google ‘handheld barcode scanner Ireland’ for loads of plug-and-play
options; they cost about €100–€150 each), and you can download a free
barcode font online (such as IDAutomationHC39M). The barcode font means
you can convert any text you have into a barcode and the scanner will read that
just like the till in your supermarket. For example…
•You could barcode an alphanumeric reference code for each book. For
example, the code for your Unlocking SESE 1st class book could be
*01FOLUNLOCKSESE1_141001* or should I say
*01FOLUNLOCKSESE1_141001*
If you print that code off on a label and stick it to the book, you have a
unique identifier for that specific book now stuck on that book, i.e. 01
(1st class) FOL (Folens) UNLOCKSESE1 (Unlocking SESE 1) _141001 (it
was the 1,001st book purchased by you in 2014).
•Most schools have their roll list on a PC now, so you can easily export
your student list to Microsoft Word, create barcode lists/labels from a
combination of the child’s name & student number (to make it unique)
and print it off as a list. You can then scan this list rather than having to
re-enter their details each time.
•Most schools rate the condition of school books at the start of every
year. You can create a barcode that identifies each book’s condition,
e.g. *condition4* for a book on a 5-point condition scale from ‘Perfect’
to ‘Replace now’. This will allow you to track the status of each book at
the start of every year on your system, and as each book is individually
barcoded, you know exactly how a specific book has worn and where it
received the excessive wear.
•Then when it comes to giving a book to a student, you can scan the
barcode for the child, the unique book barcode and the code for the
condition of the book. Three beeps later, you have all the data input
accurately in your system and you have a record of which book went to
whom and what condition it was in.
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Suggested timeline for setting up a
Book Rental Scheme
Term Two (January–March)
•A co-ordinator, with ultimate responsibility for the scheme, is appointed.
•A separate bank account for the rental scheme is set up.
•An operating committee is established to assist the co-ordinator,
particularly at very intensive periods, for example in June and September.
•Booklists are distributed to teachers and any proposed changes are
requested.
•The co-ordinator, senior management and teachers finalise all decisions
regarding the book scheme for the next academic year.
•Decisions are made on costs, which books are part of the scheme, if
workbooks are included and the staged introduction of new books.
•Retail costs of books are explored, including discounts for buying in bulk
with other schools.
•Book covering options are explored.
•Parents and pupils receive the school BRS policy and application form.
Term Three (April–June)
•Parents are requested to donate or sell second-hand books to the
scheme.
•Final book lists are compiled.
•The final retail cost of books is obtained.
•The rental charge is determined for each pupil/student and a decision
is made regarding rental charges for families with more than one pupil/
student.
•Decisions made regarding the inclusion of copies and/or other materials
in the rental fee.
•A decision is made regarding payment of a deposit.
•Rental forms are distributed with a definite date for return.
•A note is sent to pupils to check the condition of books to be returned to
the scheme.
•Previous year’s books are collected.
•The condition of books is checked by the school.
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•Book rental forms are sorted and filed.
•Book deposits/fees are collected.
•Stock is checked and a decision is made on how many new books to
purchase.
• New and second-hand books are ordered, delivered and covered.
• Books are labelled with the school stamp.
•A suitable database may be used to track and record the BRS.
•A barcode system, whereby a unique barcode is generated for each
book, may be used to facilitate the rental and financial recording of the
scheme
•Books are divided into packs for distribution and stored over the summer
period in sealable containers in a damp-free environment.
• An annual review of the BRS is undertaken by all involved.
Term One (August–December)
•Each child’s name label/barcode is placed on the books.
•Books are distributed to pupils and a record is maintained.
• The remainder of fees is collected, if relevant.
•Pupils and parents are reminded that the books are the property of the
school and of best practice regarding care and maintenance of the books.
(Ref: Department of Education and Skills ‘Guidelines for Developing Textbook Rental
Schemes in Schools’)
Contact your local Folens Rep or [email protected] if you
are considering setting up a book rental scheme in
your school.