Analysis: Digital competence is an important part of modern education, yet the issue is when a national move towards this puts the responsibility on families to fund
When the Minister for Education comes to the Budget 2027 table, there will be no shortage of competing demands on funding: teacher supply, special education, school places, buildings and the continuing costs of reform. But there is another question that deserves attention because it goes to something more fundamental: what exactly counts as a cost of education?
Ireland has made an important commitment in recent years to reducing what families have to pay for their children's schooling. The expansion of the free schoolbooks scheme is the clearest example. But as education becomes increasingly digital, we are in danger of drawing an arbitrary line between the educational materials the State provides and those it expects parents to purchase.
A laptop may still look like a consumer product when it is sitting on the kitchen table, but what happens when a child needs one to participate fully in school? The ESRI working paper, The Hidden Cost of Digital Education: School Device Mandates, examines precisely this question. This research co-authored with Professor Selina McCoy involved a systematic review of the websites, policies and procurement arrangements of Ireland's 722 post-primary schools.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's News At One, a new study reports that the cost of laptops and tablets for students is creating a digital divide in schools
We found that more than 30% had a requirement for students to have their own digital device. Even among DEIS schools, where there is an enhanced focus on educational disadvantage, 17% had such a requirement.
This is not an argument against technology in education. Digital competence is an important part of modern education, and the Government's own Digital Strategy for Schools to 2027 envisages digital technology as an integral part of teaching and learning. The problem is what happens when a national move towards digital education meets a funding system in which responsibility for providing the device can fall on individual families.
The State is already investing substantially in school technology. The latest €35 million ICT grant, paid to schools in January 2026, provides each post-primary school with a €2,000 basic grant plus €30.20 per mainstream student, rising to €33.22 for students in DEIS schools. Our research highlights the gap between this school-level funding and the cost of devices that schools require individual families to purchase.
What matters is that we stop treating access to the technology required for education as purely a matter for individual household purchasing power.
That gap matters because digital education is no longer confined to the occasional computer lesson. Classroom-based assessment is embedded at Junior Cycle, while reforms to the Leaving Certificate are bringing more coursework, investigations and research tasks into students' everyday learning. Our research argues that broadband, ICT infrastructure and access to devices are consequently becoming essential components of the assessment process itself.
And yet provision remains highly decentralised. Schools have considerable autonomy over their digital strategies, while families can find themselves dealing with different requirements, suppliers and purchasing arrangements depending on the school their child attends. The research also highlights the growing role of private technology providers in this space. This is where Budget 2027 could make a difference.
The question is not necessarily whether the State should hand every secondary-school student a brand-new laptop. There are other models and schools could be properly funded to operate device-loan schemes. There could be national arrangements for maintenance, repair and replacement. There could be clearer national rules about when schools can require pupils to provide their own devices. Other European countries have already moved in different ways towards state provision, subsidised devices or lending schemes.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, Barnardos report finds parents are routinely spending €450 on digital devices for school
What matters is that we stop treating access to the technology required for education as purely a matter for individual household purchasing power. The irony is that Ireland has begun to recognise this principle elsewhere.
We have decided that a child's access to schoolbooks should not depend on whether their parents can afford them. If education is now partly delivered through a laptop or other digital device, and if that device is genuinely necessary to participate, it becomes harder to explain why the same principle should not apply.
Budget 2027 is therefore an opportunity to ask a deceptively simple question: when does a consumer product become an educational necessity? If the answer is when a child cannot fully participate in school without it, then the laptop has already crossed that line. The education budget needs to catch up with the education system.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
