School funds: ‘How long do we have to wait?’
With plans to completely overhaul school funding, Jo Moir asks why the numbers don’t yet add up.
Schools are in the middle of a perfect storm. Once upon a time they could rely on dads and stay-at-home mums to help out in the classroom and run the cake stall, but not any more.
Parents do their best but it’s hard, says Post-Primary Teachers’ Association president Angela Roberts, a mother of two. ‘‘I know it’s hard, I get up at 4am to chop onions for the sausage sizzle because I can’t do the sausage sizzle at 4pm but not everyone can do that either,’’ she says.
Many schools no longer have parent-teacher associations. ‘‘Parents are too busy working to put the next meal on the table and pay the rent, or if they’re lucky, pay the mortgage.’’
At the same time, the cost of the curriculum has ballooned, and schools are also expected to cater to the needs of every child, and a range of extracurricular activities. So it’s not long before the school piggy bank is empty.
Yet successive Budget shows steady increases in education funding, from $11.6 billion in 2011 to $12.9b in 2015 and a forecast $13.2b this year.
The model is now being reviewed. That’s not about the amount of money going in, it’s about ‘‘better aligning funding with student needs to lift achievement for all pupils,’’ says Education Minister Hekia Parata.
The ministry wants to move towards a system where a standard amount would be provided for each student, but that would be tailored to what they need to learn, rather than set according to their age or which year they are in.
That would be topped up with funding for those most at risk of underachievement, to replace the current decile-based system, and extras to support smaller and isolated schools. Oh, and there would be a ‘‘global budget’’ for schools.
Critics say that despite denials from the ministry that smacks of ‘‘bulk funding’’ of teachers salaries – an idea that teachers bitterly fought 20 years ago – as well as a type of voucher funding for pupils.
Meanwhile, the May Budget froze operational funding and offered a foretaste of what may be ahead, with $43.2m over four years targeted for 150,000 kids that will go to those schools with under-achieving students.
Schools say dipping into the operational grant to cover the kids who can’t afford to pay isn’t an option any more. (According to figures supplied by Parata for every $100 of Government funding, parents and the wider community contribute about $1.80 through donations and fundraising – and contributions from parents have been static for years.)
A Ministry of Education-commissioned report on school funding says schools can no longer rely on parents to raise money or contribute to the school through donations. It’s an added bonus but far from a given.
Education gets more than spending on police, defence, transport, conservation and foreign affairs combined. The ministry and the Government say schools are provided enough money to cover the running costs and delivering the curriculum.
But one principal says in the report: ‘‘We can only afford to run a very basic curriculum (on what we receive from the Government) – very basic, we can’t afford trips, or extracurricular activities, teacher aides, sitting in classrooms with books, not much IT’’.
Another says: ‘‘The country’s future is at risk unless we do something about the tail, but we barely cover the middle and upper ability students too.’’
In 2014 Hastings Intermediate, a decile two school bumped to decile three, had more than $100,000 slashed from its budget.
Principal Andrew Shortcliffe says parents want the best for their children and that means they want them to have a rounded education, outside the classroom experiences and camps.
But without donations from parents – at most, 40 per cent pay them in low-decile schools – principals are forced to get smart with revenue-gathering. Local businesses often help out but there’s only so much money to go around, says Shortcliffe, and that means it gets competitive between schools.
So if so much more money is being poured into our country’s education, how is it so many schools are persistently failing children – sometimes for their entire school career according to Education Review Office data – and so many are crying out for more?
Labour’s Chris Hipkins said a starting point would be doing the maths on the real cost of delivering the curriculum: Parents have hit the upper ceiling on what they can afford at the same time the cost of extras has grown, he says.
But Parata says feedback has been "largely positive" and it’s an approach schools have been asking for.
It’s important to remember, she says, that while we face some challenges our system does a terrific job of educating most of our kids.
Shortcliffe says some schools are just waiting for enough money to cover the basics. ‘‘How long do we have to wait for?’’