Back to School in Eastern Europe

In the countries MWB works in, children are required to bring a full set of school supplies to school with them – pencils, pens, coloured pencils, markers, watercolours, scissors, a rubber, a sharpener, a ruler, folders, book covers, notebooks and more, plus a backpack. In many countries parents must also pay for textbooks.

As well as school supplies and books, parents must also pay for school trips and school meals. In Albania, parents are asked to contribute towards paying the cleaner and the night guard; in Romania they have to contribute to the cost of renovating and decorating the school building.

Children also must wear appropriate clothing and footwear. It can be difficult for families in poverty to afford shoes and often they have inadequate facilities for doing laundry at home, with some households lacking running water or a washing machine. In Romania, some children have to wait for their siblings to come home from school to be able to wear the same shoes to go to school themselves (if one goes to school in the morning and the other in the afternoon).

In some of our field countries, a year’s worth of school supplies for one child costs the equivalent of almost a month’s wages.

In Albania, for example, a family has to pay about 270 USD every year to meet the school needs of just one child. The official minimum wage is 285 USD, but most families living in poverty have no secure monthly income but take up temporary jobs here and there, so earn far less.

In Romania, school supplies cost 70-140 USD. Minimum wage is about 360 USD a month, of which two-thirds would be spent on utilities alone. Again, most of the families that MWB supports don’t receive a regular minimum wage as they do temporary jobs.

We believe that the cost of school supplies is one of the contributing reasons that children drop out of school.

The high costs are very discouraging to parents who are struggling financially, especially when there are several school-aged children in the family. Not only must they pay for school supplies, but there are other school-related expenses such transportation, which is a real issue especially in rural areas. 

Moreover, because of low wages and poor living conditions, children living in poverty often feel inferior at school. The cost of school supplies is one of the factors that contributes to children dropping out of school, but there are other factors too, such as the need to buy school meals, appropriate clothes and shoes, and issues around low self-esteem and mentality.

The field countries receive some of the supplies and bags as donated items, so an exact cost is hard to give. The cost of a backpack if it had been purchased locally, along with the school supplies, would generally cost approximately 20 – 33 USD per child.

Our $30 (AUD) Backpack initiative helps to ensure the cost to give every child the supplies they need will be covered.

In all our field countries, we provide a range of school supplies as required by local schools. Here is a sample list of the school supplies provided by MWB to children in Moldova:

• School progress journal

• Pencil case

• Watercolours

• Brushes set

• Sketchbook A4/20 sheets

• Coloured paper A4/50 sheets

• Glue stick

• Sharpener

• Pencil

• Crayons

• Blue pen

• Eraser

• Ruler

• Square notebook A5/48 sheets

• Wide lined notebook 48 sheets

• Narrow lined notebook 12 sheets

• Notebook of graph paper 12 sheets

• Corrector pen

• Marker pen

• Bag