‘No one gets a fulltime aide’
Parents paying part cost of helpers at 1 in 10 state primary schools, study finds
Peducation arents are being asked to pay for at least part of the cost of teacher aides and support for their children at one in every 10 state primary schools, a new survey has found.
The survey of special needs coordinators at 572 state and integrated primary, intermediate and special schools by the NZ Educational Institute has found that parents help to fund support for their children at 57 of the schools.
More than two-thirds (69 per cent) of the special needs co-ordinators (“Sencos”) said their schools did not have enough resources to ensure that all students could participate fully in school, forcing some students to attend only part-time or when a teacher aide is available.
The Government spends $690 million a year on support for “target student groups” but the Labour, NZ First and Green Parties all advocated spending more before last year’s election, including “uncapping” the Ongoing Resourcing Scheme (ORS) which is currently capped at about 1 per cent of students.
Greerton Village School principal Anne Macintosh said this week that her school faced a deficit of $118,482 because ORS funding for its 26 ORS students was inadequate.
Education Minister Chris Hipkins and Children’s Minister Tracey Mar- tin have promised to take an “action plan for learning support” to Cabinet by October and are seeking public input at two “education summits” in Christchurch this weekend and in Auckland next week.
The survey found that 92 per cent of primary schools have a register of children with special needs, listing 20,424 children across the schools which have registers — an average of 15 per cent of the roll in each school.
As expected, only 1307 students across all schools, or about 1 per cent of all students, get ORS funding.
The others are listed as receiving funding from:
The Special Education Grant, which is paid to all schools based on their rolls (10,018 children);
Ministry of Education resource teachers for learning and behaviour (2114 children); Parents (241 children); and Accident Compensation Corporation (111 children).
NZ Educational Institute president Lynda Stuart, principal of Decile 1 May Rd School in Mt Roskill, said the parents were not necessarily paying for teacher aides. “There would be some parents that pay for support for their children, but [some of those might be] parents paying for things like (tutoring),” she said.
“I have hardly . . . seen that, but that would be because the parents I’ve worked with [couldn’t afford] it.”
Whangaparaoa mother Merryn Straker, who was paying $4000 a year to top up 11 hours a week of an ORS-funded teacher aide for her son Oscar — who has cerebral palsy — in 2015, said the family was no longer paying this year but the shortfall was “clearly not resolved”. “No one gets a fulltime teacher aide,” she said.
“You don’t know how they calculate it, you just know that at ‘very high needs’ ORS, which Oscar is, you get 10 hours. Magically this year they have given us 13 hours because he is . . . in his last year of primary.
“But I expect . . . when he goes to intermediate next year, we may have to pay something similar again.”
When the Sencos were asked whether they agreed that “my school has the resources needed to ensure that all students can participate fully in school,” 23 per cent strongly disagreed and 46 per cent disagreed — a total of 69 per cent.
Asked how many students “do not receive adequate support/funding”, 44 per cent of all Sencos said there was inadequate support for up to a fifth of their schools’ rolls, 22 per cent said it was inadequate for between a fifth and two-fifths, and 7 per cent said it was inadequate for more than two-fifths of students at their schools.
Schools are not required to have Sencos, and 48 per cent of the Sencos said they did not get any release time for their Senco work. Most are also deputy principals or hold other roles on top of their Senco work and only 10 per cent are fulltime Sencos.