At-risk youth biggest losers in drastic cuts to education

Training places for at-risk young people are being cut just as the Government prepares to roll out a new "youth guarantee" scheme for 16- and 17-year-olds.

One of the country's two biggest providers of the training opportunities programme (Tops), the Salvation Army's Employment Plus, is losing 185 places spread across many of its 29 branches from Kaitaia to Balclutha.

Maori training providers, which provide another big chunk of Tops places, face cuts of up to 50 per cent.

Overall, the Tops budget is being cut by $7.6 million a year, or 8.5 per cent of the 2008-09 allocation of $89.85 million.

Association of Private Education Providers vice-president Karl Yates said that, unlike other adult education and literacy cuts that were made in this year's Budget, the Tops cuts were planned by the former Labour Government at a time when unemployment was falling.

He said his association had asked Education Minister Anne Tolley to cancel it now that youth unemployment was skyrocketing.

"But the argument is that the Government can't afford it, it's not their priority at the moment," he said.

He said the new youth guarantee scheme announced last week would not help the at-risk young people in Tops schemes.

"Tops is targeted at young people with low school qualifications and long-term unemployment," he said.

"The new youth guarantee is targeted at young people aged 16 and 17 who under normal economic conditions even last year would have had jobs by now, but haven't, and are therefore being put into training to keep them doing something.

"I support the youth guarantee. I think it's a good idea to keep the momentum of kids out of school wanting to go on and achieve things.

"But I would rather not see cuts to Tops. It's about second-chance education, and those people deserve a second chance."

Samantha Lundon, who chairs the Aotearoa Maori Providers of Training, Education and Employment (Amptee), said funded trainees at her Manurewa-based Ideal Success Academy were being cut from 45 to 31 next year.

"This year in Auckland there have been some big cuts," she said.

"In Central Auckland there is only one remaining Maori provider and she is going to see a cut of 50 per cent of her training for 2010. When that provision is gone, we have to ask, where are those people going?"

Te Atatu's Tu Tangata Academy, founded by June Mariu at Rutherford High School's Te Kotuku Marae in 1982, had its 33 Tops places cut to six at the end of last year and has closed its Tops course. It still has 10 students in alternative education.

Mrs Mariu said the cuts were based on measuring how many trainees went on to jobs or further education, and ignored the extra social work that Maori training providers did.

"Smaller classes work, Maori to Maori works, you can visit the families," she said. "That's what it takes to get the families involved."

Manukau Urban Maori Authority also lost its funding at the end of last year for driver's licence courses which trained 1500 trainees last year at Mangere's Nga Whare Waatea Marae. Manager Fran Hokianga said all courses were now user-pays and trainee numbers had more than halved.

Salvation Army Employment Plus chief executive Mark Pickering said the loss of 185 Tops places would force him to combine some courses and close others, cutting the number of trainees on an average day from 700 to about 600.

He said the puzzle was that providers such as his were being shut out of at least the first year of the youth guarantee scheme, which is restricted to organisations funded through the mainstream equivalent fulltime student system.

Youth guarantee courses must be for a full year, compared with an average of four to five months for Tops courses.

Mr Yates said only 14 of the 376 private training establishments funded by the Tertiary Education Commission were known to have been invited to take youth guarantee students.

Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics director Dave Guerin said all 19 polytechnics, except for the correspondence-based Open Polytechnic, had been invited to take part.

EDUCATION CHANGES
* Adult and community education: Cut from $16 million to $3.2 million from 2010.
* Intensive literacy and numeracy: Cut from $15.3 million to $13.9 million in 2009-10 and $10.9 million by 2012-13.
* Training opportunities programme: Cut by $7.6 million a year from $89.9 million in 2008-09.
* Youth guarantee: New scheme for 16- and 17-year-olds will cost $26 million a year.