Shameful greed

Excellent article (Stop-go: Snapshot of the two realities of lockdown, May 14) on the blue-collar workers who are indispensable in our unequal labour market. The journalists wrote sympathetically about the work of Rose Kavapalu, a cleaner who travels daily from her rental home in Ma¯ ngere to clean the school attended by hundreds of Auckland’s most privileged citizens.

St Cuthbert’s College took almost $1.9 million in wage subsidy as soon as that money was available. No financial sacrifice was required by the trust nor sought from the school’s mostly well-off clients.

Doubtless there has been no useful increase in the wages of the cleaners in working in one of the wealthiest suburbs in one of New Zealand’s wealthiest, best-endowed privately owned schools.

As an ‘‘old girl’’ boarder at that school some 70 years ago, I had always treasured the time there in its much more modest days.

Later, as CEO of the Education Review Office, I was interested to learn that its socio-economic status was not the only reason the school performed so well in recent decades. Good teaching matters; intelligent leadership by former principals made excellent use of the national curriculum.

However naively, I had never expected to be completely dismayed – ashamed, even – as I am now by its Covid-revealed unembarrassed greed. This is exactly the time when, like other wealthy private schools, the board and principal could have proved that its motto ‘‘By love serve’’ actually meant something.

Judith Aitken, Paeka¯ ka¯ riki it home only had a vague idea where their relative lay. I have no memory of even memorial services being held for individuals at that time – perhaps people were simply more stoic in those years as was the need.

Roger Gallagher, Waikanae