London – June 21^st, 2010 – A standard basket of school supplies costs £195 this year, compared to £153 in 2009, a dramatic rise of 30% during a time of shrinking household budgets. This discovery comes from the annual school supplies price study by Twenga.co.uk, (http://www.twenga.co.uk) the new-generation shopping search engine.

British prices are far higher than on the continent: in Germany the regular price is £130 and in France it costs just £99.

The study is based on a basket of 16 standard supplies such as pencils, pens, erasers, notebooks, etc. It analysed the price of 181,446 back to school products for pupils in the UK, France and Germany and it shows:

• a regular price of £195 – this is an average price, technically the median price – which rose by 28% since 2009.
• a bargain price of £94 – this is the price of the bottom 25% of products, technically the first quartile figure – which rose by 29% from the 2009 price.

The marked difference between the average price and the bargain price shows that UK consumers should take care to search carefully for the best deal before next term.

“Our results confirm that prices are rising dramatically in the UK. The recovery of the pound and sustained deflation in France and Germany makes the continent a far cheaper place when returning to school.,” commented Therese Torris, VP of Content at Twenga.

Both the regular and bargain prices show a dramatic increase in the UK in 2010

British prices are far higher than in Germany and France in 2010

Methodology

Twenga put together a shopping basket of back to school equipment, choosing 16 products (see list below) used by students and marketed simultaneously across the UK, France and Germany.

The past benchmarking studies showed:

• In early June 2009, the study considered 98,939 product prices from 3,956 online shops: 1,339 in the UK, 1,060 in France and 1,557 in Germany.
• In August 2008, Twenga took 83,440 product prices from 1,924 online shops: 826 in the UK, 352 in France and 756 in Germany.

To calculate the ‘regular price’ shown in its study, Twenga added up the median price for each item. The ‘bargain price’ represents the price from the bottom quartile for each price (the lower price range) for each product. Twenga uses the median price to avoid the data becoming biased by extreme cases.

The list of school products used for the study includes: Ballpoint pens, Fountain pens, Pencils, Pencil erasers, Binders, Pen eraser rewriters, Drawing compasses, A4 notebooks, Pencil cases, School bags, Glue sticks, Academic diaries, Children’s scissors, Scientific calculators, Flat rulers, Set squares.