Parents ‘stockpiling' uniforms ahead of changes to school bonus program
Designed to ease the cost-of-living burden, the $275 million program gave families $400 for each child at a government school to be spent on uniforms, textbooks and school activities such as camps and excursions.
From Tuesday families will no longer be able to spend the money on uniforms and textbooks. The $84 million in unallocated funds is to be transferred to families' school activities accounts.
However, confusion about when the program's funds would expire led to a last-minute rush on uniform stores, with many parents thinking it was a 'use it or lose it' scheme that expired at the end of the month.
Parent Carly Brown-McErlain said while she found the process of accessing the funds straightforward, there was uncertainty among parents at her school about what would happen to the money they hadn't spent.
'It was framed that we would lose it as of June 30, so everybody started to spend it,' she said. 'It felt like, use it or lose it.'
Brown-McErlain's daughter Ayda is in year 1 at the local primary school. Brown-McErlain said that because her daughter's uniforms were largely secondhand, she decided to allocate $300 of her bonus to uniforms, including buying the school beanie and raincoat.
A mothers and children fitness instructor, Brown-McErlain said that with her four-year-old son, Albie, starting at the same school in 2027, the uniforms would set her family up well as her son would inherit his sister's uniforms.
According to Education Department figures, spending on uniforms has been the most popular way to allocate the funds, parents having spent $81.3 million on uniforms since November.
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