Editorial Tuesday June 2, 2015

Peter Jackson, editor, The Northland Age

No free education

A WORLD-CLASS education system that is available to all regardless of class, income or anything else, has always been the foundation of the egalitarian society that is New Zealand. But it has never been free.

It is unlikely, perhaps, that the families of children who attended school in the early years of last century were asked to contribute to field trips and cultural experiences; in those days the emphasis tended to be more on learning to read, write and count than on anything extra-curricular. But sending a child to school often came at significant cost, in that it deprived the family of the child's potential to contribute to the household income. That would have been especially true of farming families. In the Far North at least it was not uncommon for children to end their formal education at around the age of 12. Some lucky ones might have stayed a year or two longer, but those who made it to secondary school were fortunate.

That had changed by the time the writer entered the system in the late 1950s. Money was still very tight for many families, but schools no doubt asked for a bob or two on special occasions, often to give children experiences that were beyond the resources of their families alone.

In recent years parents have begun to baulk at the 'donations' schools demand, some more than others. It has been agreed, it seems, that compulsion and donation are mutually exclusive, but increasingly schools have been reluctant to cover the cost of expanding pupils' horizons when their parents refuse to contribute. And now, according to a Secondary Principals' Council survey, some schools have reached crisis point.

According to the survey some schools are so strapped for cash that field trips that are integral to a student's education can no longer be afforded. One school reportedly abandoned plans for a NCEA Level 2 biology trip to the beach because it could not afford to hire a bus, necessitating an appeal to the NZQA to change the data collection assessment so the students would not automatically fail. Another reportedly changed its science curriculum by reducing experiments to cut costs, and yet another abandoned activities outside the school gates, including a kayaking standard for Year 12 phys ed students.

Parents have good cause to be grumpy when they are asked to contribute towards the cost of providing the basic curriculum, and if that is happening the Ministry of Education needs to look at the funding it provides. The taxpayer will provide $1.32 billion for schools' operational grants this financial year, which doesn't mean much to the layman, but some schools obviously do not believe that is enough. If it really isn't, it needs to be increased. The bottom line is that all schools should be adequately funded by the taxpayer to deliver the curriculum at a level that gives every student the chance to gain the qualifications they need to move on to higher education, training or paid employment.

The decile system supposedly allows for that, although the cost of providing the curriculum should not be greater for a school in a poor community than for a school in a wealthy one. The difference perhaps lies in the ability of schools in poorer communities, particularly those that are geographically remote, to attract the best teachers, but we all know how the teacher unions feel about offering financial rewards for excellence.

Years ago, when life was less complicated, solutions were more easily found. Several generations of Kaitaia College students benefited enormously in years gone by from the facts that teaching there counted as country service, and it was able to offer houses, making it attractive to teachers from overseas. When the writer attended Kaitaia College the staff included a number of immigrants, and very good teachers they were too, who chose that school because it could offer them somewhere to live and met their obligation to complete a period of country service, ie working outside the major centres, which was a condition of their coming to this country. Many of them stayed far beyond their legal obligation, more than a few spending their entire teaching careers there.

One imagines that country service has gone for a burton. These days we can't even require immigrants to settle somewhere other than Auckland, a condition that could go a long way towards easing the housing crisis that keeps us all awake at night and helping stimulate regional economies.

Meanwhile, even if some parents can't or won't pay for their kids to undertake a biology field trip, they are collectively paying a substantial whack of the total cost of educating their offspring. In 2012, the most recent year for which figures are available, they paid $357 million in donations and by fundraising, up $16 million on the previous year. It has no doubt risen significantly again since then.

Some schools obviously find it easier to raise funds than others, but one wonders if those that struggle are purely the victims of genuine family hardship. It would be fair to say that few of the Far North's schools have wealthy communities to call upon, but they seem to do okay when it comes not only to delivering the curriculum but giving their pupils extra-curricular experiences. Some have done spectacularly well - Kaitaia's Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Pukemiro sent a party of students and parents to Europe last year, to follow in the WWII footsteps of the Maori Battalion. That didn't come cheap, but was achieved by a school that was united in its commitment to giving some of its students a potentially life-changing experience and a supportive community.

There will be families that cannot meet the costs their children's schools impose upon them, and they should not be vilified, nor their children deprived, because of that. There are parents, however, who are more than happy to devolve their responsibilities at every opportunity, and refusing to pay school donations, fees or whatever they might be called may be another manifestation of that. A teacher at one Far North school told this newspaper several years ago that almost the entire roll stopped bringing lunch to school with the advent of free fruit. There is no doubt that some parents are very happy to let someone else feed their children when they could, and should, be feeding them themselves.

It beggars belief that some Far North children rely on charity for tooth brushes and paste, ostensibly because their parents cannot afford to provide them. That, surely, is less a symptom of abject poverty than of parents abrogating their most fundamental obligations to their offspring. Not to mention a stunning lack of pride.

It might well be that some schools do not cut their coat according to their cloth, but the Far North can offer plenty of examples of what a supportive community can achieve, even when, for many, money is tight. It is a worry that some schools are saying they are no longer funded sufficiently to deliver the curriculum - the ministry needs to answer that - but parents must accept that education has never been free, and that generations of parents before them, including perhaps their own, made sacrifices for their children. At the end of the day, maybe that is what has changed - sacrificing for our kids is not as fashionable as it once was, and it is the kids who pay the price of that.