by frog
I was quite astonished to see on Agenda that John Key is talking about ‘maybe’ doubling the tax payers’ subsidy to private schools. Key is saying he wants to see the government giving large taxpayer subsidies to private companies in order that they can compete with and undermine important public services.
Look at his justification:
We believe in choice, and far from undermining the system actually when you send your child to an independent school that is truly one thing where you’re completely taking the cost away from the Crown…
The argument he makes is that parents should have the right to choose which school their children can go to. Firstly this makes the false assumption that private schools are often better than public ones, whereas in fact they are on average just wealthier and have children from backgrounds more likely to succeed academically.
But the second flaw in Key’s desire to give money to wealthy private schools is that it is a strange micro response to a macro issue: If a parent is faced with two schools, a good one and poor one, it is fairly obvious which she or he is most likely to choose for their child. But if a government is faced with the same situation its answer should be to invest in the poor school. All children deserve a high quality education and the children in that school need the money more than the ones in the wealthy private school. Key is effectively arguing to take money away from our least well off students and give it to our wealthiest.
Published in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Media | Society & Culture by frog on Mon, April 14th, 2008
Tags: children, Education, Frog, frogblog, green party, greens, john key, new zealand, parents, private schools, schools, taxpayer subsidies
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Alright, I can understand the whole idea of the post (I myself am opposed to any public money going into private schools); however, the last bit worried me somewhat.
Are you suggesting that schools in poor areas should get more money than those in wealthier areas because schools in poor areas need the money more? Well, you do know that is the status quo and that the status quo is completely failing our children; the poor schools are not improving in spite of getting more money than the rich schools.
What you also fail to recognise is the value of schooling in improving the socio-economic value of an area. Avondale College was one example of where a hard working principal improved his school’s standing and helped improve the value of the Avondale area at the same time. Schools (I am talking about public ones here) should be rewarded for performance, not just socio-economics.
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Yes, frog, there is more than one way to privatise public services. Subsidising their private competitors is one. Then, when the public service appears to perform more poorly than the subsidised private one, it is much easier politically to sell off all or part of the private one, or simply resturcture and close down parts of it.
So that’s probably why no asset sales in the first term… Key would spend the first term creating the political and economic climate to make asset sales easier to manage politically in a second term.
And, as Sue Bradford pointed out this morning, National seems to have a similar agenda in place for ACC.
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Tell me toad, what is wrong with ACC having competition? Air New Zealand competes with Qantas and Pacific Blue; Meridian, Mighty River, et cetera compete with Trust Power and Contact Energy; TVNZ competes with Media Works and Sky Television. ACC having competition would be no different to the above cases.
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john-ston said: “Tell me toad, what is wrong with ACC having competition?”
What is wrong, john-ston, is that it is competition for employers who have a choice as to who their insurer is, but there is not competition for employees who get landed with whoever their employer chooses as their insurer.
The rules for cover and entitlements are set by statute, so insurers have only two ways to become more competitive – to encourage employers to maintain better workplace safety or to deny cover and entitlements that workers are legitimately entitled to receive.
Given that most ACC claimants have neither the knowledge of a very complex area of law or the resources to engage solicitors, the insurers tend to do the latter, in the knowledge that most claimants wrongfully denied cover or entitlements will eventually give up their claims. I represented a large number of claimants during the 1999-2000 accident compensation privatisation experiment, and witnessed this first hand.
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John-ston: “Rewarding” schools with more funding for doing better is not helpful. It just ensures that good schools stay good, and moderate schools get further and further behind, ghettoising our education system. Any rewards need to go directly to the responsible staff members, to encourage retention of good teachers and support staff in New Zealand schools. If schools aren’t doing well, we need to encourage better staff to those schools, making the business of turning around challenging schools into a possibility for career advancement.
I agree with you that school funding should not be based on the wealth of an area. That is an approximation at best. If at all practical, I’d much prefer it based on the wealth of the actual families sending their children to that school. There are public schools doing excellent work that are underfunded because the wealthy families in their zone tend to send their children to private schools. That’s one of the results of “believing in choice”.
You also don’t seem to realise that it is a disproportionately hard job to educate students from a poor family than it is from a rich family. Kids from a wealthy background will have books at home, access to the internet, are likely to come to school fed and with lunches and drinks to keep their attention up during the day, they are likely to have parents who supervise their homework and emphasise the importance of learning. While background is not insuperable, it is important. The decile system is a good approximation of how much extra support is needed to educate a child.
I definitely agree that giving state funding to private schools in addition to allowing them to collect fees is wrong. If private schools are willing to accept state funding for a student, they need to be willing to give up the mandatory fees for that student, too.
Paying for public services, however, is not denying you a choice. It’s actually giving you a choice- the choice to use public services. The only reason to object to public services is because they’re badly run- and if so, the only appropriate response is to run them better, not to stop investing in them at all.
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one thing at a time fwog,
leave it to me, that policy to be changed,
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also fwog,
NAT now being trained in biodiversity among our own people,
that is supporting education for groups which support themselves,
this is not about privilege, some them father love their kid so much they just send money to school fwog,
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God forbid that some kids do better than others aye Frog.
What about the fantastic idea of school vouchers?, the funding (vouchers)follows the children.
Before anybody screams at this idea simply because it is being floated by ACT you would do well to remember that this is exactly what happens in many of the loved by the left socialist Scandinavian countries.
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BB said: God forbid that some kids do better than others aye Frog.
BB, the objective has to be a school system where there are no “failures”. Every child has value, and lack of intellect, or physical or mental illness, or socio-economic circumstance, should not preclude them from maximising their potential.
Some will always do better than others at some theings, BB, because different people have different aptitudes. The problem with the current school system is that it writes some kids off as failures, rather than accepts that they might be brilliant musicians or artists or evenly amazingly competent process workers doing mundane tasks – something, funnily enough, I don’t think you or I would ever have the capacity to do, but nevertheless still an important job that is substantially underpaid.
You or I couldn’t do process work for 12 months BB, let alone as a career! Soldering he same components into the same circuit board 5 days a week (or 6, because they get paid so liittle fo 5 they need the extra money). It takes a very special person to cope with that.
Just because someone but will never be a corporate CE or senior manager or a university lecturer or lawyer or accountant doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the opportunity to maximise their potential. Destroy their confidence and disrespect their potential when they are young, you will destroy their lives, which happens far too much these days, hence teenage suicide, drug dependency etc.
So how about this, BB? Give all kids a chance. Don’t think vouchers does it though, any more than the current education system does. The real reform we need is a system that doesn’t make people failures destined for the scrapheap of existence.
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Toad
It is no wonder that the youth of today have no idea what life is all about, the reality of life is that some are going to do well and others are not.
Would it not be better to tell kids this from day one, instill in them a sense of competition and desire to be the very best they can be, yes some start life with a bit of a handicap but the bright ones will still stand out.
The problem we have at the moment is the PC brigade that will not do anything about addressing the problem households, frankly there is nothing that can or will be done for these kids until you manage to eradicate the cancer that is PC.
As for processing work, Toad you can only speak for yourself, in my time I have done some of the most mind numbingly boring jobs that you could ever imagine, it was the prospect of doing that for the next 50+ years that drove me to do something about it myself.
Kids DO have a chance Toad, it is about time we reminded them that they have one chance and that they and they alone are the masters of their own destiny, all we are doing at the moment is teaching them that the state is always going to be there to pick them up.
Vouchers are a great idea, but we need to do more, the first thing the incoming national govt should do is declare war on the teachers union, we need to have a system where the good teachers are able to earn more and the bad ones are hounded out of the education system, hell we might even entice the good ones back who have left…..if we really dream (and this will cause heart attacks inside the teachers union) we might even see more men wanting to become teachers and that is always a good thing.
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you don’t need to instill competitiveness in children, that’s like trying to instill an appetite for food.
rewarding successful teachers & principals within the public education bureaucracy is a fine idea. within a bureaucracy rewards normally involve promoting the successful individuals to positions of greater responsibility with bigger pay packets – for a principal that might mean a larger school, or it could mean a more challenging school due to low achievement. the idea is to spend the money to get the best staff to the more difficult jobs.
making kids feel like masters of their own destiny is good, telling kids they have only one chance would be distinctly counter-productive (& untrue anyway).
plus it makes them more electable if they can guarantee no sales in the upcoming term. it’s all drawn from last election’s playbook, as seen in “the hollow men”. i don’t know why nobody is waving that book at key & the nats & pointing out precisely what page it was outlined on.
vouchers are simply another way of chanelling funding to schools (public or private) chosen by the parents, if anything key’s proposal is simply a way of doing the exact same thing with less red tape.
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““Rewarding? schools with more funding for doing better is not helpful. It just ensures that good schools stay good, and moderate schools get further and further behind, ghettoising our education system. Any rewards need to go directly to the responsible staff members, to encourage retention of good teachers and support staff in New Zealand schools. If schools aren’t doing well, we need to encourage better staff to those schools, making the business of turning around challenging schools into a possibility for career advancement.?
Why would moderate schools stay moderate? Wouldn’t a reward for doing better be an encouragement to those that are underperforming at the present? The good schools of today were never always the best; Avondale College used to be a moderate school in a moderate area until Phil Raffills turned the school around.
Of course, just look at the status quo – the good schools of a decade ago are still the good schools. The moderate schools of a decade ago are still the moderate schools. The status quo isn’t working here people.
Also, I do agree with the point of rewarding good teachers, principals and so on – the current system does not allow for that (nor does it allow for the weeding out of the not so good teachers). I also wouldn’t mind seeing the challenging schools idea becoming a possibility for career advancement, particularly if it means promotion.
“I agree with you that school funding should not be based on the wealth of an area. That is an approximation at best. If at all practical, I’d much prefer it based on the wealth of the actual families sending their children to that school. There are public schools doing excellent work that are underfunded because the wealthy families in their zone tend to send their children to private schools. That’s one of the results of “believing in choice?.?
There is a reason why parents are sending their children to private schools; that would be because the private schools tend to perform far better than the public schools. While we can both agree that this is due to the private schools ability to pick and choose their students, we must also acknowledge that in this highly competitive world, parents want the best for their children.
In terms of deeming it in terms of the wealth of the actual families, that would be very difficult to do.
“You also don’t seem to realise that it is a disproportionately hard job to educate students from a poor family than it is from a rich family. Kids from a wealthy background will have books at home, access to the internet, are likely to come to school fed and with lunches and drinks to keep their attention up during the day, they are likely to have parents who supervise their homework and emphasise the importance of learning. While background is not insuperable, it is important. The decile system is a good approximation of how much extra support is needed to educate a child.?
It may be more difficult to educate students from a poor family, however, it can be done. Let us not forget again Avondale College – when Raffills first became Principal, the area wasn’t exactly what you would call upper class, yet he managed to pull the school from being a moderate one to being one of the recognised schools of Auckland. The problem is that most of the schools in South Auckland have people at the helm that do not wish to put in the hard yards to improve the lot of their students; this of course doesn’t help an already difficult situation any more.
“Paying for public services, however, is not denying you a choice. It’s actually giving you a choice- the choice to use public services. The only reason to object to public services is because they’re badly run- and if so, the only appropriate response is to run them better, not to stop investing in them at all.?
I 100% agree with you there – if something is wrong, it needs to be fixed with appropriate management. The only problem is that the status quo does not allow for that.
“The rules for cover and entitlements are set by statute, so insurers have only two ways to become more competitive – to encourage employers to maintain better workplace safety or to deny cover and entitlements that workers are legitimately entitled to receive.
Given that most ACC claimants have neither the knowledge of a very complex area of law or the resources to engage solicitors, the insurers tend to do the latter, in the knowledge that most claimants wrongfully denied cover or entitlements will eventually give up their claims. I represented a large number of claimants during the 1999-2000 accident compensation privatisation experiment, and witnessed this first hand.?
So you are saying that a government monopoly is better; one where risk isn’t really taken into account? If the structure of such a competitive environment is done properly, then there shouldn’t be an issue.
Furthermore, you fail to recognise that there are mechanisms out there to prevent people from being wrongfully denied cover. You have public embarrassment; you would have pressure from employees to employers and insurance agencies; you have Citizens Advice Bureaux that can help out, there are plenty of things. This just isn’t an area where the government should step in and have a monopoly.
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There is one other crucial difference between public schools and private schools. The approach to special needs students. Public schools only adress the special needs of slow students. Private schools also adress the needs of fast students. Fast students aren’t always the progeny of wealthy parents so their needs do need to be met by public schools. Ignoring the special needs of fast students could very easily account for the lower mean and median academic scores in public schools. The potential of fast students is being repressed (or supressed or ignored) and therefore the potential high academic scores aren’t there to raise the averages.
In short, the problem may not be money or teacher quality, it may simply be the system.
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Bill English has been banging on about voucher systems since day one, when he first came into office. He will never quit on this one.
Catholic Schools are most likely to benefit from this policy, as state-integrated catholic educators are generally not funded by huge private foundation trusts the way other (protestant-formed) church private schools are.
Interestingly, supporters of such variants as Montessori or Steiner education are not heard to complain about government funding to lower decile state schools.
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Increasing subsidies to private schools is, in all liklihood, going to cost the government money. Key can argue that it may make private education more affordable (and thus reduce the cost to the public system), but I doubt this will offset the cost to the government of increasing the subsidy. The reason I think this is that for most people (at least the people I know), private education for their children is out of reach, no matter the cost. When one has no money left after paying for food and rent etc, it doesn’t matter if private schooling costs $5000 per year or $15000 per year, it is still unaffordable.
So, the question I have is: if some parents get to pay less for their kid’s education (or alternatively, simply get more money spent on the education), who is going to pay for this?
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Yet another non-green issue for the Greens to blur their message with. Has Sue Bradford got any green credentials at all? I’d love to hear them.
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If I had a voucher or not limited by a zone I would be able to access single sex as well as coed schools. As it is I have no choice except a local mega sized coed school unless I want to pay a large amount of additional money.
In effect I am paying twice because a bureaucrat apparantly knows better than I do what is the best education for my children.
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problem with vouchers and private schools is that they are business’, they act to maximise their profit, in schools this isint neccacarily a good thing.
If you allocate the value based on the number of heads then the school just hoards students and the education level goes down. If you allocate based on test scores then you have schools that a) only accept the brighter students and those who have had less opportunities continue to loose out. b) The tests are designed to show sucesss or c) The students are taught to the standardised test and they learn hardly anything.
parents with the money to send their children to a higher priced private school with higher decile tend to send their children there, but those same children are likley to of had more educational opportunities and better domestic situations than those with lower incomes, as such it is a self fufulling prophesy, more to do with childrens expriances outside of school than within.
I went to catholic and christian private schools up until the start of my 4th form year, they were absolutly terrible in terms of education, yet everyone was from upper class and upper-middle class backgrounds.
from 4th form on i went to a public school, the educational standards were almost infinatly better, they accualy had semi-competint teachers too. that was Palmerston North Boys High School, it had students from all backgrounds, quite alot of worse off students and some total dips. but the educational standards were much higher than the best private school.
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It annoys me no end when the quality of our kids education is put aside in the rush to force a particular political ideology on the public.
The left do not like vouchers simply because the idea is being pushed by the right, this is despite the overwhelming success the voucher scheme had had in socialist Scandinavian countries.
The current system is not working, the teachers union will resist any possibility of performance pay and that is a battle the incoming national govt must fight and must win, NOTHING will change if we keep the current system.
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For the sake of balance it is probably worth comparing the voucher system in egalitarian Sweden with the massively criticised ‘No Child Left Behind‘ voucher system in the USA, which has a much less egalitarian base.
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why wouldn’t they? it’s their field of expertise
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And, as I alluded to in my post, bureaucrats have different task to parents. Parents want to educate one specific child. Bureaucrats want to educate or at least give the chance of a high quality education to all children. Replacing bureaucrats with parents won’t necessarily have a good outcome for all children.
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Personally, I am not opposed to a rethink in the way education is funded. I can see merit in a voucher system, as suggested by Big Bro et al.
However, I think we have to be honest about the motivation behind Key’s proposal to increase subsidies to private schools: the net effect will either be more money spent on private schools, or more money in the pockets of parents who send their kids to private schools (through lower fees). Is Key really concerned about education, or about cementing in the support of potential National voters?
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Blogged on this today (June 26th). Religion is a key influencer (Maxim Institute). A former National MP (Joy Quigley) is the exec director of ISNZ (Independent Schools of NZ). They all want transferable vouchers and much more private involvement in education.
The aim can only be to make money AND educate children in a context where the framing of issues and subjects can be ideologically consistent with the values of those operating the schools and free of the undesirable views (as they see it) taught in state schools. Climate change and evolution would be debatable or unfounded. The Treaty of Waitangi could be confined to a half day in Year 11….and so on.
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Why not just give them a tax rebate? Why bother with the bureacratic nonsense of vouchers? If the costs of educating their child in the private school aren’t lower than what it would cost to educate in a public school, tough!
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