Budget woes a ‘risk’ of school model

Forty-four New Zealand schools are in financial difficulty and more work needs to be done to ensure that number does not increase, says Education Minister Chris Hipkins.

The comments come after Stuff revealed the Government was forced to bail out Lower Hutt’s Naenae College and two other schools with crippling debt in excess of $1 million.

After historic Crown loans were issued to help 14 schools between 2000 and 2009, ‘‘interventions’’ were put in place if there were concerns about a school’s ability to manage its finances.

‘‘That’s something the Government’s made a pretty clear commitment to addressing and that’s obviously subject to future budget decisions.

‘‘But we know that there is more work to be done in that area,’’ Hipkins said yesterday.

Interventions meant increasing the number of school finance advisers, who provided monetary guidance to boards of trustees (BOT). They also kept tabs on schools starting to show signs of financial difficulty and reported that to the Ministry of Education.

‘‘There’s no question that school finances can be very tight, particularly in some communities where they might not be able to get financial support from parents.’’

While the number of schools in financial difficulty had dropped by 15 since 2016 when 59 schools were listed by the auditor-general as having cash problems, Hipkins said there was no guarantee that schools could be prevented from ‘‘making bad decisions’’.

‘‘That’s one of the risks of the Tomorrow Schools model actually, is that schools do get themselves into difficulty.’’

The Government did its best to ‘‘minimise the prospect of that’’.

BOTs are accountable for all aspects of a school’s performance, including decisions on financial expenditure.