by frog
Brian Rudman seems to have found a Labour Party candidate who agrees with Green policy
All power to Viv Goldsmith, Labour’s candidate in East Coast Bays, for speaking out against the fiction that school fees are “donations”…
Ms Goldsmith, a teacher herself, says she mails off her request for fees to the minister each time she gets one and challenged people at the election rally to do likewise.
Sadly she’s ranked 67 on Labour’s list and standing in East Coast Bays’ Murray McCully, who has a majority of 7,000 votes. And she doesn’t have a lot of support from her party:
However, her party bosses might not be so pleased she’s drawn attention to the embarrassing fact that after nine years in power, Labour has still not stamped out the thinly veiled extortion too often associated with this “voluntary” giving.
The Human Rights Commission’s Report on Human Rights in New Zealand notes that:
The Education Act 1989 stipulates that every person who is not a foreign student or attending a private or integrated school is entitled to free enrolment and free education at any state school from the ages of five to 19. That is, state schools may not charge fees.
However most schools in New Zealand now charge set fees (that are legally only donations). Consumer Magazine found three years ago that of the of the 119 schools that responded its survey, only four (decile one schools) indicated they wouldn’t be asking parents for a donation. Metiria has been arguing that we need to take a two-pronged approach to the problem.
First we need to increase school funding by progressively increasing operational funding to schools to meet the full cost of funding for every student, and increasing the overall funding of TFEA so that programmes in schools are adequately funded.
Second we need to enforce the current law that prohibits schools from demanding fees by extending the requirement of ERO reports to include an assessment of fees and donations.
Rudman notes that Labour has grizzled and grumped about school fees/donations but they continue to be charged and grow in size. And National’s approach has been even worse:
Anne Tolley [National's education spokesperson, claimed] Ms Goldsmith’s refusal to pay the “voluntary” charge was “selfish and irresponsible”.
Some of the anecdotes I’ve heard over the years remind me of stories of certain churches which shame their congregations into giving by reading out the size of family “donations” at Sunday worship.
Published in Society & Culture by frog on Fri, October 31st, 2008
Tags: anne tolley, donations, Education, fees, labour party, Metiria Turei, schools, viv goldsmith
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Apparently there has been a bit of a donation revolt at my son’s school among some parents. Being a decile 10 school it receives the least funding. Many parents are sick of this income tax by stealth. The decile system is another example of the welfare state in action.
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My mother works in a Decile 10 school, (after previously working in a Decile 2 one) and funding is really a struggle there, because the families that actually send kids there aren’t as affluent as the rating would seem to suggest. Whoops.
She can also get pretty furious about the fact that disability programmes and such just aren’t funded enough to properly achieve their goals.
Oh and Bryan? Stop whining. If you were a real libertarian, you’d understand that education is the best place to set up “welfare state”-style funding. You can’t say you’re commited to equality of opportunity when you don’t let schools compensate for the fact that nearby parents probably don’t own any reference books, for instance. If you’re not a libertarian, you have no reason to be repeating tired old lines about the welfare state.
Education isn’t welfare. It (largely) prevents the need for welfare.
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Speaking of “thinly veiled extortion too often associated with this “voluntary” giving,” I wonder if Viv Goldsmith pays her ‘donation’ when she visits the Auckland Museum?
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The Education Act 1989 is pretty typical of the legislation passed in the dying days of the fourth Labour government. The rather obvious solution to chronic underfunding is increased funding. Labour’s solution for education was an Act that changed the management structure and added some new costs but didn’t provide any extra funding. In the same year the did the same thing to National Roads Board, renaming it Transit but leaving it up to good luck to povide increased funding. During the 1990s that good luck came in the form of traffic increasing faster than inflation thus providing the first real increase in road funding since 1974. A reversal of what had happened between 1974 and 1980. Coincidentally NZ’s slide down the OECD road safety rankings which began to happen in the mid-70s finally stopped in the mid-90s.
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As a Libertarian I agree with you Ari, providing good education upto the age of 19 is good for the country as it helps prevent welfare. The only way out of the working class is through education.
However a state approach to education is not a good idea, please explain why the New Zealand government holds all the answers when it comes to a childs education, should parents/children have more choice in the education they receive.
PS I voted today and it wasn’t for the Greens.
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Bryan – dreadfully sorry to hear that those Decile 10 parents are fuming over the donations required of them by their school. Poor dears. My daughter’s Decile 2 school seems to be able to scrape by without revolting parents, but I guess that’s because they not disadvantaged by the burdens your community is forced to bear.
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turnip28 – you voted just yesterday and made a foolish mistake which sadly can’t be rectified until 2011
As a Libertarian interested in education (it helps prevent welfare, you say) you ask, ” should parents/children have more choice in the education they recieve?” to which I answer, ‘Yes’ and ask you; what is stopping those parents or those children who want more choice in their educatio to make some (choices that is) There are many, many ways to ‘become educated’. What’s wrong with adding to the education they recieve from the state by involving themselves in education outside of the classroom – before and after school, weekends, school holidays – do Liberterian parents and children lack motivation and drive? Why wizzle about the schooling provided by the state when it is very simple to add to that mix in any way you choose? Turnip28?
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You haven’t answered my questions Greenfly.
Why don’t you try and answer the question. Why is the state so good at educating children?
Why shouldn’t parents have a choice in the education of their children by being allowed to decide how their share of the education budget is going to be spent.
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Something similar to the “voucher” system turnip28 is advocating was tried at tertiary institutes. The institute is paid a sum of money depending on how many students it has. The so called “bums on seats” policy. The tertiary Education Commission realised the inefficiencies of this system, and are trying to phase it out.
The results of “bums on seats” was huge bribes from institutes to students (free computers), massive oversupply of courses such as diving, ridiculous twilight golf courses, and inefficient and aggressive marketing campaigns to attract students.
The problem here is that the student was the only “client” and what students want is not necessarily what is good for education as a whole, the society, the economy, the environment, past students, present students or any of the other stakeholders in education.
It is the same with schools. The voucher system certainly sounds reasonable, but it will lead to schools aggressively competing, using funds for marketing that should be used for teaching, and pandering to the whims of parents. At the moment, parents are the most lucrative “clients” the schools have and probably most are genuinely concerned with what is best for their child. But it wont take school boards long to realise they can actually make more money from corporate clients taking advantage of the captive audience a school provides for their brainwashing than they can by pleasing the parents through providing a good education.
Private schools and tertiary institutes have their place, but it is important not to totally entrust such an important function as education to commercial interests.
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Turnip28 said:
“You haven’t answered my questions Greenfly.”
True Turnip, I’ve been busy at an exhibition promoting self-reliance under my banner’
“Real Men have Big Gardens”
You asked 2 questions:
Why (does) the New Zealand government hold all the answers when it comes to a childs education? My answer is: they don’t.
and
“should parents/children have more choice in the education they receive”
and I did my best to explain my thoughts on that issue in my first response.
Will you have a go at responding to the questions I posed to you in that same post? Looking foward to that.
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Turnip;
because private schools, like private prisons, seek to make a profit. If they can make a profit then the state is oviously paying them too much and thus it is costing the tax payer or they are ripping off the students and thus it is the students who loose.
Atleast with public schools there is no profit motive, even if there is excesive buerocracy, but that can, ironicly, be solved by adding an extra layer of beuocracy nationally to audit the actions of schools.
Greenfly,
Schools with higher decile ratings get paid less and as such are required to ask for donations from parents even if the parents cannot pay.
I my first intermediate/highschool was a chartered school with a decile rating of 6, and yet all the families were roling in the dough. I then went to a state school because the education standards were much much higher, it was decile 9, and yet most of the families could not afford school or sports uniforms, that is apart from the borders. lol.
does your daughter attend or teach at a decile 2 school? eaither way my heart goes out to her
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Sapient – yes the Decile ratings do sometimes not fit well, though I’d wager that most are appropriate. School and sports uniforms are a whole other issue worthy of debate at a time less fraught
As to my daughter, student at a Decile 2 school, she’s thriving, as did my two sons, both of whom were dux (in different years). The best thing, I think, about ‘our’ school, was the huge range of students – ethnicity, behaviour, background, ability, attitude etc. A very good ‘melting pot’ for my children to be forged in and a fair reflection of a diverse New Zealand society. Nothing is perfect and with that, let’s celebrate imperfection
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indeed greenfly, let us celebrate diversity and imperfection; for what is a perfect world if not boring?
Although i have admitedly only lightly scanned this page it seems to me that the question being addressed is the appropriatness of asking for school donations, i would of thought that since a main motivator of such things is the decile system that the ability to pay for uniforms is an issue entirly relivant.
As for your sons, there can be only one dux of each types each year (my school had three tipes; liturum, ludorum, and artium), the fact that out of the whole form your sons, not just one but two of them, managed to get dux would suggest that the cause of their thriving is outside of the school; be it genetic or environmental.
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