Ten or so days before the school year starts, parents are doing the same arithmetic again: backpack, notebooks, supplies, clothes, shoes. And again they are waiting for the government to say how much of it someone else will cover.

The decision on the so-called school basket will be taken on Tuesday, at a government session, Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski confirmed.

How the measure works

The school basket is not a voucher and it is not cash. It is a state intervention in prices - retailers are capped at a margin around 10 percent below the usual one, on a specific list of products, for a specific period.

According to the figures presented, last year the measure saved families with two pupils around 3,000 denars, valid until 15 September.

Three thousand denars. For a family with two children. It is a real but modest number - and it is the entire point of the debate that follows.

Ten and a half percent of the household budget

According to estimates by the Federation of Trade Unions, education costs consume 10.5 percent of the expenditure of a household with two pupils.

That is the number that explains the panic every August. When a tenth of everything a family spends goes on school, a 10 percent discount on part of the list is not a solution - it is a cushion.

Education Minister Vesna Janevska noted that proposing such measures falls to the Ministry of Economy, and meetings with school supply retailers are being announced to discuss prices and consumer protection.

Meetings with retailers. Every August, the same meeting.

Municipalities are filling the gap

Local authorities already carry part of the load. Several municipalities provide free backpacks and supplies, and some give cash support for first-graders.

Which means how much help a child gets depends on which municipality they live in - understandable as local policy, uneven as a system.

The measure will be there again this year, and that is better than not having it. But the basket is an answer to a symptom: prices rise fast, wages slowly, and August is the month where the two meet at the till. The discount lasts until mid-September. The bills last all year.