$400 cost of 'free' schooling

By TIM WATKIN

Parents of high school students now pay close to $400 a year in fees and donations, drawing warnings about the death of free education from principals' groups.

Latest figures released by the Ministry of Education under the Official Information Act show that in 2001 parents of secondary students paid an average of $314.61 in activity fees and $75.01 in donations per student. Parents of primary school pupils paid $106.01 in activity fees and $55.70 in donations per pupil.

John Minto, chair of the Quality Public Education Coalition, slammed fees and donations as "a tax on parents". He said the Government should admit schools needed more public money, rather than leaving schools to act as tax collectors by proxy.

At the same time a PPTA paper released in the lead-up to its annual conference starting on Tuesday revealed that secondary school fundraising - including fees, donations and international student fees - was worth $252.2 million in 2001, up from $83.5 million in 1992.

That means it has almost doubled as a percentage of secondary schools' total income, from 9 per cent to over 17 per cent.

Principals' groups said secondary schools were now so seriously under-funded that the Government was no longer meeting its legal obligation to provide a free education.

The PPTA's Principals' Council and the Secondary Principals' Association said without their own fund-raising schools would be unable to deliver the core curriculum. Russell Threthewy, chair of the council, said "the Government is failing to live up to its obligations under the law".

Education Minister Trevor Mallard, writing from Brunei on his whistle-stop tour of Asia to reassure students after the collapse of the Modern Age English language school, said: "In the past the cake stall, school fair and considerable voluntary maintenance and grounds work by parents used to make a difference. That is much less common now and there is a heavier reliance on donations and ... foreign fee-paying students to fund the extras."

But Graham Young, vice-president of the association, said locally raised funds were now paying for the core curriculum, not just "the extras".

Principals pointed out that the urgency of Mr Mallard's trip showed just how dependent some schools had become on non-Government income.