Chris Haines: Parents help to pay for education basics

The "free" education we are entitled to by law is to provide the basics - that is, curriculum-based programmes. But a study by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research into school funding has found that most effective schools cannot maintain existing programmes without non-government funding.

In other words, schools are increasingly having to rely on locally raised funds to provide basics, rather than the "extras" for which the funds are suppose to be used for.

Boards of trustees set their voluntary donation levels based on the needs of the school. The School Trustees Association could cite many examples of schools that are extremely good at managing their budget, and yet, because of persistent government underfunding in the operations grant, are increasingly forced to ask the parents and caregivers of their students to support their basic programmes.

Obviously parents (who are already paying taxes which are suppose to fund "free" education), therefore, end up taking a greater share of the Government's financial obligation, while the Government gets away with funding proportionately less.

It has been reported at various times that the parental contribution has remained static about 6 per cent. That is not comparing apples with apples. The 6 per cent comes from comparing locally raised funds with Vote Education (some $4.1 billion, most of which is teachers' salaries).

However, the operations grant component of that funding is only $900 million, and this is the figure that should be used when comparing locally raised funds with operations grants.

The Ministry of Education's figures show that locally raised funds from all sources have steadily increased as a proportion of the Government's operations grant funding, and to the point that locally raised funds (including parental contributions which are expected to top $220 million this year) now equate to more than 12 per cent of available funding to run schools.

Boards are transparent in reporting the use and allocation of funds, regardless of the income source. If parents and caregivers have concerns about how their voluntary donation is used by the school, they can ask the board for details of how the money is spent.

Furthermore, this is a focus for the Education Review Office which review schools on at least a three-year cycle, and which would be surprised to note that, according to a recent Herald editorial, it is not monitoring and reporting against education sector policy, as it is required to do under legislation.

When Associate Education Minister David Benson-Pope investigates the "outright magnitude" of the amount requested for voluntary donations, the School Trustees Association is confident he will be confronted with the evidence that we have been supplying for some time about the inadequacies of the operations grant provided by the Government.

As schools increasingly struggle to provide the basics within the $900 million operation grant funding provided by the Government, more and more of the $500 million or so of locally raised funds raised for the "extras" that make education more stimulating and interesting for our students will be used to support basic programmes that are the Government's financial responsibility.

The Herald editorial also referred to money to cover peripheral items or extras, including day trips, van rentals and camping excursions.

These are enriching educational experiences that should not be denied to any student. I am sure that many parents would not see many of these "extras" as being extras at all but simply part of the delivery of core curriculum.

Parents and caregivers have always contributed to locally raised funds to provide the "nice-to-have extras" that make schooling so much more interesting and enjoyable for students.

The School Trustees Association and, I suspect, most parents have little issue with that.

But it is clear the Government is not adequately funding boards' operations grants, and boards are increasingly having to use their locally raised funds to support basic programmes (which places greater demands on parents and caregivers). Therefore, the Government must move quickly to put the "free" back into free state education.

Boards of trustees, parents and caregivers will expect the issue to be addressed by a substantial increase in boards' operations grant funding in this year's Budget. Our free education for our students depends on it.

* Chris Haines, the president of the School Trustees Association, is responding to the Herald's view that education remains free, and that the confusion surrounding parent donations for "extras" needs clarifying.