s to:

Top Twelve Tip

Rental k o o B l u f s e c uc Setting Up a S ur School Scheme in Yo

02 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

03

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’)

04

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.

05

• 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.

06 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 M 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).

07

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.

08 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 W 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.

09

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.

10

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.

11

• 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.