Schools lag behind inflation

Students not impressed

Schools have finally won an increase in their base operational funding, four months before the election — but teacher groups say it is still less than the rate of inflation.

The Budget increases operational grants — which pay for most school costs except teacher salaries — by 1.3 per cent from January 1.

But primary teachers’ union NZEI president Lynda Stuart said she was “really disappointed” with the increase after consumer prices rose 2.2 per cent in the year to March.

“We would have expected 2 per cent,” she said. “We’re not taking that as a win at all.”

There is also an extra $1.1 billion of capital spending over four years, including four new schools in Auckland and two elsewhere.

Education Minister Nikki Kaye’s office said Auckland’s four new schools, at locations to be disclosed next week, would fulfil a 2014 National Party election promise to build nine new schools in the region within four years.

New schools have already been announced at Kumeu, Hobsonville, Ormiston Junior College, Flat Bush South-East and Hingaia South.

Auckland capital spending will also include one school expansion, 170 more classrooms across the city, and merging Carlson School for Cerebral Palsy and Sunnydene Special School into a single school on a new site.

Early Childhood Council chief executive Peter Reynolds was unhappy because the Budget did not increase early childhood subsidies at all, except for $10 million extra a year in targeted funding for the most atrisk children.

He said parents would have to make up the shortfall at many centres. “It’s not much of a pat on the back from the Government to get a bit of a tax break and then find that it’s being taken out of your hand by childcare services because they are not getting any increase,” he said.

Instead, Finance Minister Steven Joyce has extended an experiment Tertiary students say a $20-a-week increase in accommodation benefits will help with bus fares to classes.

“It will help, yes, but I don’t think in relation to the reality of what students are going through, no,” said Matalena O’Mara, student president at Auckland’s Unitec where one in six say they “regularly go without food or other necessities”. with targeted funding for at-risk children from schools to the preschool sector.

Last year’s Budget froze the main operational grant to schools, but gave an extra $12.3m a year — equivalent to an operational funding increase of about 1 per cent — targeted to about one in six students who were classified as “at risk”.

This year’s Budget has increased that targeted funding by 2.67 per cent. Putting that on top of the 1.3 per cent general funding increase means

The Budget will increase the accommodation benefit for those receiving student allowances in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch from $40 a week to $60 from April 1 next year.

It is the first increase in Auckland since 2003. In those 14 years, the median weekly rent has risen from $327 to $531. — Simon Collins schools will get a 4 per cent increase for about one-sixth of their students.

This time early childhood services will also get $10m extra funding for children whose parents are or have been on benefits.

The new funding will be paid for the 20 per cent of the country’s 200,000 preschool students whose parents have spent longest on benefits — but only if they are in preschool services where at least 20 per cent of the children are in that most “atrisk” 20 per cent.