There is another option for those kids who do not fit into mainstream schooling. Simon Collins reports on what is needed to make it work
When every student in New Zealand schools was immunised against meningitis, an alternative education centre in Manurewa had to fight to get its students included.
Te Ara Poutama, a charitable trust which has taken in 28 of the country's most vulnerable youngsters, is used to being out of sight and out of mind.
For most of its eight years it was tucked away under a Pumpkin Patch children's clothing factory across the railway line from the Southmall shopping centre.
A year ago it took over the upstairs lease too when Pumpkin Patch moved out, occupying a large space which it has left virtually unchanged.
Even the world map painted on one wall, the only thing suggesting a school, has been left unfinished because, like all alternative education centres, its funding is for only one year at a time and its future is highly uncertain.
Although the students here are formally enrolled at James Cook High School, the managing school for the Counties-Manukau alternative education (AE) consortium, they do not have access to the school's workshops, laboratories, music rooms, playing fields, counsellors or social workers.
Neither Te Ara Poutama - "The Pathway"- manager Chantelle Foketi, who moved straight into AE after completing a youth development diploma, nor her tutors are trained teachers.
They are not in the teachers' union, the PPTA, and are isolated from professional backup.
"If we had standard testing for literacy and numeracy that all AE kids did and were re-tested every term, you could measure your progress," Foketi says.
Not only are there no such tests, but if you ask her about the Government's shiny new "national standards", you draw a blank.
"We need a social worker attached who could follow up when the kids are absent," she says.
"It would be good to get some woodworking and carpentry and even mechanics things in and get some practical learning.
"What would help would be being able to access more resources - a better relationship with schools. But when the meningitis epidemic was on we had to fight to get our kids injections at James Cook."
Adrian Schoone, who leads the national body for alternative education says it has always been seen as "a tentative solution" for youngsters who have either been booted out of school for misbehaviour or simply stopped going to school.
"There is a mindset that we don't need it, therefore it's a Band-Aid until we can think of something better," he says.
After years of neglect, Helen Clark's Labour Government finally ordered a review in 2008 because of its policy to keep all teenagers in education or training to the age of 18.
Current policy requires students to leave alternative education by the end of the year when they turn 16.
A year ago the Education Ministry reported back to National's new Education Minister Anne Tolley with a proposal to "disestablish current programmes and move to new models that support better outcomes for young people".
It found that AE's formal educational outcomes were "poor".
Moreover, the ministry said, international research showed that "aggregating [at-risk youth] in deviant peer groups tends to exacerbate deviant behaviour".
One way or another, we are failing a growing number of our young people. Youth health researcher Terry Fleming estimated there were about 1000 school-aged children out of school in Counties-Manukau alone in 2006, and says the 1820 who make it into alternative education nationally are just "the tip of the iceberg".
"For every one going into AE there are probably two or three still in schools who are pissed off and not learning much," she says.
Her study for the Counties-Manukau District Health Board found a further 500 15-year-olds in that district had been given early leaving exemptions from school, and about the same number aged 6 to 15 were simply not enrolled in any school or AE centre.
These are the young people who are already most likely to be lured into gangs and crime, and are liable to spend much of their adult lives in jail.
Principal Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft says up to 80 per cent of Youth Court offenders are not in school. "If there was a king hit to reduce youth offending, it would be to keep every young person meaningfully engaged in school," he says.
Fleming says the young people themselves actually want a better life, but come from families who struggle alternative to dropping out with gang loyalties, violence and addictions.
"Depressed kids often hurt themselves or disengage from things, and they also get angry and get destructive," Fleming explains.
"Underlying a lot of these kids' reasons for being expelled is often fighting and anger in the context of a childhood of neglect and multiple rejections."
A 2001 Auckland College of Education review found that alternative education was a response to "a global problem that the system of public education is failing to meet the challenges of demographic and social change".
First men, and now women too, have been sucked into work that keeps them away from home. Most people now live far from the extended family and the "village" that once helped to nurture their children.
Schools, from early childhood onwards, are increasingly seen as filling the void. Liz Monga, who works for Crosspower Ministries at a disused community centre in Otara, sees her AE programme as something stable in young people's lives.
"They've been let down by so many systems and family life a lot of the time," she says. "They just want a bit of stability."
A report last year by the NZ Council for Educational Research found that 80 per cent of the youngsters in AE enjoyed primary school, mainly because they had one teacher each year who knew them and cared for them.
But this changed dramatically when they got to high school and had to shuffle from class to class with teachers who barely recognised them. They either dropped out or were kicked out, and only reconnected with education when they somehow found their way into AE.
"It's better than school, you get helped out and everything from the tutors," says Henare Haimone, 14, who was referred to Te Ara Poutama after being shut out of James Cook for "too much behaviour - graffiti and that".
"When you're feeling down there's someone to talk to," says classmate Joseph Toby, 13. "School is completely different - no one would really talk to me."
Over at Crosspower, 15-year-old John Nikau says his tutors are "respectful".
Vincent Toby, 15, whose last school was Clover Park Middle School, says that when there's something on his mind he can always talk to Monga or fellow tutor Asaua Tiatia.
"I couldn't do that at Clover Park," he says. "They were all eggs."
Alternative education works for these kids partly for structural reasons. It runs on a staff:student ratio of 1:7, with a maximum of 14 students on any site in most areas. (Counties-Manukau is an exception, allowing up to 30 students to give each site a viable budget.)
The two or three tutors in each centre get to know every student, and at Crosspower Monga spends much of her time with their families.
"They know they have our support to see the success of their child. It's about empowering them and giving them the tools they need," she says.
The other part of the equation is the character of the tutors. Otara-born and bred, Monga has brought up her own four children in the area and sees her students' parents and grandparents in the street.
"I'm one of them," she says. "It's the community that raises the child, so the more people you can get that can connect to this kid, the more successful you're going to be."
Her colleague Asaua Tiatia is not just a tutor, he's also a rap artist.
"We do positive rapping, turn their talent into something positive," he says.
James Cook principal Bryan Smith says AE can't be judged by its NCEA pass rates because its students start so far behind.
"We have youngsters in AE who are 14 and 15 who have the education level you might expect at about year 4 or 5," he says.
"Their literacy is so far behind, their numeracy is so far behind, they've had so much time out of school, that even just keeping them in school is a minor miracle."
Alternative education achieves that by giving each student a sense of belonging and a sense of purpose. At Crosspower they all have to find out their personal whakapapa (ancestry) and greet each other every morning in their native tongues - languages many of them never knew before.
Their tutors help them develop life goals. All students interviewed know what they want to do when they leave.
"When this kid walks in our gates their heads are low. The parents don't know what to do, they're beside themselves," says Monga.
"By the time the interview has finished, that kid has his head raised; the parents are feeling really comfortable and are having a bit of hope."
Sarah Longbottom, an experienced teacher funded by the ASB Trust to work with the AimHi AE consortium in Otahuhu, Mangere and Otara, says tutors drawn from the communities they serve are the key to AE's success, but need better pay and support.
"The tutors would be super-lucky to get $40,000, most are on about $30,000," she says. "If you have five kids there's only so much you can do out of love."
She would like a qualification for tutors, and she believes the AimHi model of a trained teacher working across each consortium breaks down the isolation apparent at Te Ara Poutama. She would also like more resources.
"A lot more education outside the classroom, resources for kids with specific behavioural issues, basic books and pens for the kids, and computers - there is one that was donated by a friend of mine, but there are no others here."
In some form or other, alternative education is expected to survive. Tolley is due to decide on its future by July or August.
More recent ministry advice suggests that she will also nudge mainstream schools into making more effort to serve students with high needs, possibly encouraging more AE-type classes on school campuses with tutors drawn from the community.
Judge Becroft says high-needs families need support across the whole spectrum of social services.
"An AE system is going to need access to drug and alcohol counselling, anger management counselling, psychologists and probably a multi-systemic wraparound approach that will include the whole family," he says.
"I can see schools becoming the delivery hub within 20 years for a variety of social services."
SCHOOLS WITH A DIFFERENCE
* New Zealand has 163 alternative education centres from Kaitaia to Invercargill for students aged 13 to 15.
* The number of AE students has been fixed since 2000 at 1820, now exactly one per cent of the population aged 13 to 15, even though the numbers in that age group have grown by 10 per cent since then.
* Funding has been fixed at $11,100 per student in a period when consumer prices have risen 29 per cent and high-school teachers' base salaries have jumped by 37 per cent.
* Only 14 per cent of AE students return to mainstream schools and just 10 per cent achieve more than 13 level one credits in the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (80 credits are needed to "pass" level one).
STRUGGLE STREET
* A study of all 36 alternative education centres in Auckland and Northland in 2000 found that 56 per cent of the students lived in homes where their caregivers worried about not having enough money to buy food at least some of the time.
* Almost half (45 per cent) had moved house more than twice in the past year, often being passed around from one relative to another.
* More than half (52 per cent) of the girls, and 29 per cent of the boys, had been touched in a sexual way or made to do sexual things they didn't want.
* More than 60 per cent had some symptoms of depression. One out of five boys, and almost two out of five girls, had tried to kill themselves in the past year. A quarter of both sexes thought they would probably not make age 25.
SEEKING ANSWERS
Saturday: Alternative education.
Teens in Third World schooling
When the mainstream model doesn't fit
A far better alternative to dropping out
Monday: Truancy and dropouts.
School dropout levels fall over past 10 years
Tuesday: Issues of transience.
Message sinking in: switching schools bad for kids
Absenteeism often cry for help
Transient students struggle to catch up
Wednesday: Who kicks kids out?
Second chance works well for student
Expulsion seen as tool of last resort
Aorere strives to improve record
Thursday: What can be done?
Help for those who fall through cracks
Trust moves in well before students get out of control
Schools can't do it all on their own
