Fees for school examinations should be abolished, the Society of St Vincent de Paul said yesterday.
Ireland should catch up with the rest of Europe by giving all primary school children basic, nourishing food at school, the society also said in a statement on education.
And it warned that children from poorer families could be left behind in the information technology era.
The society is to spend £200,000 in the next three years on second- and third-level scholarships for disadvantaged students.
The national president, Mr Noel Clear, yesterday presented the society's Priorities in Education document to the Minister for Education and Science, Mr al Martin.
The document says the abolition of all fees for State examinations "would not only relieve the financial burdens for poor families, but also send a clear signal about the importance of completing school courses and obtaining recognised qualifications."
Basic, nourishing food should be provided for all primary school children "to ensure that hunger and under-nourishment are not a detriment to educational achievement," it says. "Ireland is now one of the only countries in Europe not providing some form of basic meal to school-going children."
Whatever resources are allocated for information technology, "they must be such that poorer children are prioritised and not further penalised and marginalised in relation to the information society.
"Only £40 million of the recently announced £250 million spending on information technology announced by the Government is directly targeted on schools."
The society's new scholarship scheme, called the Ozanam Scholarship Initiative after its founder, Frederic Ozanam, is designed to increase disadvantaged students' participation in second- and third-level education.
It will cost £200,000 over the next three years, and already 75 students are benefiting from the scheme.
This money is in addition to the more than £250,000 per annum which the society already spends on education.