A lesson in preschool scheming

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

A Government scheme that paid bounty-hunters up to $2275 a head for enrolling Maori or Pacific preschoolers - some of them non-existent - is set to roll on, despite damning new disclosures.

Boxes of files gained by the Herald and the Act Party under the Official Information Act reveal disquiet among Ministry of Education officials about horse-trading that allowed one organisation to hog $1.13 million of taxpayers' money.

Act MP Rodney Hide says the papers disclose an intense struggle by officials to "make sense" of a "dopey" political ruse to inflate education statistics, and it beggars belief that the Government is ending a freeze on new contracts in Auckland and Northland.

"They paid $1000 or more for bums on seats and they haven't even achieved the bums on the seats."

Manurewa-based Whare Akonga Learning Centres was the largest beneficiary among the 59 organisations that enrolled 5280 youngsters nationally, at a cost of just under $7 million, in the three years since 2001.

But its harvest extended further than its own contracts, as it had close links with two other Manurewa organisations that reaped $387,000 from the scheme. Both organisations fell badly short of their recruitment targets after audits found dozens of irregularities in their records. These included placing youngsters in unapproved playgroups, claiming to have introduced children to preschools that had never heard of them, and providing names that turned up on another contractor's database.

Although contracts were set at $1012.50 for each placement, with $630 deducted for every head short of negotiated targets, one of the Manurewa organisations will be left with $2275 a child unless the ministry can recover overpayments through arbitration.

The files also disclose that West Auckland's long-established Waipareira Trust, which ran a more modest programme under the scheme in 2001, complained about facing a Government funding squeeze the next year while large sums were poured into the other organisations.

Even a ministry lawyer raised alarm about the looseness of the second of two contracts to Whare Akonga - for $506,000 in 2002 to find, place and monitor 500 youngsters in early childhood education - before a payments dispute went to mediation last May.

That deal was omitted from a list of contracts that Education Minister Trevor Mallard supplied in August in answer to a parliamentary question from Act MP Deborah Coddington.

A ministry project manager complained in an internal memo in June about Whare Akonga's "bounty approach to meeting targets without sufficient attention to the quality of work ... "

Mallard disclosed then that 14 providers had failed to meet performance measures.

In July the same manager was confident she would be able to allocate $1,258,000 for Maori placements and $545,000 for Pacific children in the ministry's northern district in the 2003-04 year once "contract framework and management" concerns were addressed.

But by October she was so alarmed about audits she had commissioned of Whare Akonga and its related organisations that she was refusing to approve any new contracts in Auckland or Northland without an extensive revision of a prototype document.

She was pessimistic about being able to find appropriate contractors to take on Maori placement work and is understood to have since left the ministry, which is preparing to let new contracts while advertising for a new project manager.

The ministry says tighter controls will include a clause stating that children must remain at preschool for a minimum of three months before agents are paid, compared with a three-week minimum negotiated with Whare Akonga last year. It also says it has not rehired any contractors identified as poor performers.


The ministry has yet to sign on any new contractors, but says there are several potential candidates, although it is understood Waipareira is not among them.

That trust did not respond to Herald requests for an official comment, but one source indicated relief that it did not continue with the scheme, given the negative publicity surrounding the South Auckland contracts.

Whare Akonga argues it was hard work coaxing parents to bring children to preschools even for just one day, and it is entitled to finders' fees no matter how fleeting the attendance.

Ministry officials began insisting early last year, after becoming concerned at high dropout rates, that children stay at least four weeks before it approves payments. They reduced this to three weeks after Whare Akonga claimed it was changing the rules in mid-stream.

But the looseness of the contract meant it took extensive mediation before Whare Akonga agreed even to the three-week minimum, while continuing to assert it had a right to place children in non-approved preschools.

Whare Akonga lawyer Prue Kapua argued at mediation that dollar values should not be placed on the educational needs of Maori children, and that the main challenge was to get them out of their homes and into preschools, even if only for one day.

But, said the ministry's northern manager, Terry Bates, three weeks was "at the outer margin of acceptability".

Neither could the ministry pay for attendance at informal playgroups or unlicensed preschools without specific exemption, he said, as operating such groups was an offence.

Bates said Parliament, the public and ministers did not expect tax dollars to be spent on "informal work by mums and dads" but on more formal early education through structured, licensed or licence-exempt centres.

Among Whare Akonga's list of preschool venues was Randwick Park Community Centre in Manurewa, where it claimed fees for 41 youngsters.

Ministry staff who visited the centre in February last year could find no evidence of any preschool apart from an informal playgroup associated with a "Wahine Coffee Morning", and a mobile playgroup that wound up seven months earlier.

One coffee group mother was amazed that her son's name was on a list of children Whare Akonga claimed to have placed.

Although the ministry refused to accept invoices related to Randwick Park, it eventually agreed to pay other disputed claims, to the extent that Whare Akonga ended up just 20 children short of its target of 500, and forfeited only $12,600 of its $506,000 contract.

But the ministry declined 97 claims from one of Whare Akonga's sister organisations, Manaaki Management Services, including 27 for children not known at the preschools where they were supposed to have been placed.

A second associate, Nga Whare Akonga Trust, ended up 60 youngsters short of a target of 100 after an eligibility audit.

The ministry's files include a complaint from owners of a South Auckland bilingual preschool that Whare Akonga director Solomon Herewini bullied them after they refused to co-operate with his alleged attempts to sign up children already attending their sessions.

They said Herewini threatened to report them for not co-operating with the ministry, and that he "chased" parents of children who were already enrolled.

Such behaviour, if proven, would have been in direct contradiction of the scheme's aim of boosting Maori and Pacific development by reaching out to parents of youngsters not already receiving any formal education.

Herewini denies any wrongdoing, telling the Herald his organisation approached and worked with more than 2000 Maori children, spending more hours doing this than the Government paid for.

"At the end of the day you'll probably find the Government owes, you guys owe us, a lot more than you think - but because it's Maori, all of a sudden it's an issue about Maori bashing.

"I took it on not because of dollars [but] because I was passionate about Maori education."

But the preschool owners accuse Herewini of furnishing politicians such as Hide with a big stick with which to bash all Maori causes.

They claim they lodged their complaint after receiving at least 10 phone calls from the Education Ministry checking whether children for whom Whare Akonga claimed bounty payments were enrolled at their preschool.

"That's a racket and it's disgusting," says one of the owners, blaming the ministry for not requiring recruiters to obtain documents from preschools certifying child placements.

A kohanga reo manager similarly concerned about approaches from Whare Akonga praises the scheme's aim in trying to boost the number of Maori children in early education, but says: "When you dangle so much money you are bound to get these rip-offs - it makes you sick."

Taxpayers are not the only group to have "been robbed here," says Hide.

So have Maori and Pacific people "who didn't have money spent on education, and it was never intended to be spent on education - it was intended to be spent on bounty hunters".

Whare Akonga's links to the two other groups were first disclosed last month, after the Herald matched Companies Office records with the list of contracts Mallard provided in August.

But the list did not include Whare Akonga's second contract, which pushes the cartel's total disclosed income to $1.52 million.

The minister says officials did not know of the links when contracts included in the answer were signed, although Herewini's partner, Donna Walker, disputes this.

Herewini and Walker are listed in Companies Office records as trustees of Nga Whare Akonga Trust, which gained contracts worth $207,917.

Other Nga Whare trustees include Matiu Clendon and Kathleen Sampson, whose Manaaki Management Services was awarded a contract for $227,250.

The ministry withheld final payments of $37,968 to Manaaki and $10,125 to Nga Whare Akonga for falling short of enrolment targets.

But it has yet to recover $44,516 in alleged overpayments to the two organisations.

If overpayments are not recovered, each child placed by Nga Whare will have cost taxpayers $2275 and each child placed by Manaaki will have cost $1837.

But these were not the only organisations that had trouble meeting targets.

The Auckland Kindergarten Association managed to find and place only 10 young Pacific youngsters - its target was 30 - prompting the ministry to dock $12,000 from a contract initially set at $27,200.

This meant the association received $1520 for each child placed, but the ministry says payments were higher for Pacific children because it was even harder to get them into early education than Maori youngsters.

A Northland-based incorporated society, Te Puawaitanga, received $249,750 for placing 133 youngsters against a target of 200 - or $1878 a head.

And the Manukau People's Centre, which went into voluntary liquidation during its contract and was unable to find records for 35 children it was supposed to have enrolled, received $54,675 for 29 acknowledged placements.

Numbers up but at just what cost?

The Government credits its Promoting Participation Project, which began in 2001, with solid results in getting more Maori and Pacific children into preschools.

It paid almost $7 million over three years to 59 organisations to tap into tribal and community networks and recruit 5280 youngsters from families for whom early education may not have been a high priority.

Ministry of Education figures show that from 2001 to 2003 the proportion of first-year Maori school pupils who had been to preschool rose from 85 to 88 per cent.

This is the same level of increase for the overall population, with the participation rate rising from 91 per cent to 94 per cent.

But the increase for Pacific children is more impressive, rising 7 percentage points from 76 to 83 per cent.

Education Minister Trevor Mallard says this shows the scheme is working, despite controversy over bounty payments of more than $1000 a head for each Maori child placed in preschool and $1250 for Pacific youngsters.

"This project is single-mindedly about raising participation rates," he says.

But Act MP Rodney Hide says the figures cannot be trusted, after revelations that some contractors claimed finders' fees even if children attended just one preschool session, or in some cases none at all.