KEY POINTS:
The head of the country's biggest school has put himself on notice.
David Hodge has to observe each of Rangitoto College's 185 teachers in class this year or risk being taken to task by the school's board of trustees.
Hodge says he and the board came up with the goal because of increasing pressures of carrying out compliance and administration demands.
"It's almost impossible to do it unless I make it absolutely a priority," says the head of the Browns Bay school. "There's so much that's dominating your time that unless you have that sort of absolute, enforced discipline, you would never do it."
Hodge says too much of principals' time is not spent on the "core business" of teaching and learning.
"Yet all the research says that's what a principal needs to do in order to raise standards," he says.
A principal of nine years who loudly sings the praises of successes of the New Zealand education system, Hodge's gripes don't stop there.
He claims the trappings of bureaucracy have grown as staff numbers at the Ministry of Education have risen. The ministry's workforce is up by about 270 full time equivalent staff in the three years to July last year to 2546.
The results, says Hodge, include more policies on career guidance, anti-bullying, healthy eating, cyber safety and pastoral care to implement and track.
It wouldn't be such a problem but he maintains the money coming in to schools hasn't risen to match the increase in duties.
Ministry figures show the school got $14.5 million from the Government in 2006, including $11 million for teacher salaries. They show the school's total income locally raised was $4.3 million, including $2.5 million from international students.
Hodge lays out a two-page document highlighting areas with "major" expense rises for schools in the past six years.
Computers and new technology cost the school more than $500,000 a year. While the Government has paid a levy in the past, Hodge says the actual cost is driven by ministry and community expectations and is much higher.
His figures show $9203 in ministry money coming in to administer the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) but - again - he puts the cost at 10 times that figure once photocopying, money-handling and staff time is taken into account.
Across the Shore at Northcote College, principal Vicki Barrie points to a line in the ministry's introduction letter to the new Ka Hikitia Maori education strategy. "Ka Hikitia - Managing for Success is not about a shift in resources, it is about a shift in thinking and behaviour. That is, it is not about new money or even more money, but rather using the money you have differently - successfully, as measured by Maori learner results and outcomes," it reads.
She says it wouldn't be such a kick in the teeth if the letter wasn't accompanied by a highlights DVD, plastic-wrapped mini-packs for teachers (complete with bookmarks and term date cards) and badges with messages such as "Wassup!" aiming to "help build enthusiasm and engagement".
The North Shore Principals' Association, of which Hodge and Barrie are members, made a very public statement about their dismay at the schools operations funding this week, writing an open letter to Education Minister Chris Carter to effectively boycott the Government's major new education plan, Schools Plus, until their worries over funding are acknowledged.
The principals detailed Government innovations they claimed were not fully funded and had increased pressure on already-stretched finances. The list of 21 items included pandemic planning, maintaining electronic student management systems and running the healthy lifestyle programme, Mission On.
National's education spokeswoman Anne Tolley met the North Shore group and though she was sympathetic, made "made no pragmatic commitment", says Hodge.
Carter disputes the principals' list of 21 initiatives, saying it was "misleading", that many of the projects are centrally funded and some targeted for low decile schools don't even run in those wealthy parts of the North Shore. "When I meet with them I am going to go line by line through that," he says.
Carter has defended the level of operations funding to schools, reiterating the Government is committed to fully resourcing the Schools Plus policy and says some schools were being "quite disingenuous about how much they claim the community is having to raise".
"I'm concerned that the impression the public will get is that we are not funding education - and we have funded it more than any other Government in New Zealand's history," he told the Weekend Herald from South America yesterday.
He says 4.4 per cent of GDP goes to schools in New Zealand, compared with Australia's 3.5 per cent.
"It's a richer country than us but we are putting more into schools as a percentage of our budget."
This year's Budget included a 5 per cent - or $171.6 million - increase over four years for schools' operations funding, including $65.3 million to help meet new technology costs. It was the biggest rise since 2001 and followed increases in each of the past two years.
Meanwhile, education spending overall has risen from $5.7 billion to $9.8 billion since 1999.
A ministry report released late in 2006 found schools were finding it harder to make ends meet and the percentage of schools recording deficits grew from 29 per cent in 1996 to 43 per cent in 2004.
An Education Review Office report released last year showed most of the 27 schools included had satisfactory financial management systems. But it found some were spending money to buy expensive equipment to keep up with neighbouring schools and win students, some going into debt to do so.
The arguments over funding of schools have simmered for 18 years over successive governments from across the political spectrum, since power was transferred to boards of trustees in Tomorrow's Schools.
Retired Wellington accountant Bruce Campbell spent six months last year writing an analysis of the funding of Wellington East Girls' College.
Campbell has sat for 18 years on the board of trustees of the school, which, he says, was one of six secondary schools used by the Ministry of Education when calculating initial operating funding model for all secondary schools in 1990.
While he believes devolving decision-making to schools is a success, he says it is undermined by funding that has now reached "alarming proportions".
"Parent funding was minimal in 1989," writes Campbell. "It has only become necessary due to continual and increasing underfunding by governments over the last 18 years."
Hodge claims the paperwork attached to contestable funding for special projects is so arduous it puts him off applying.
"If you then win them, you have to do milestone - or as someone called them millstone - report after milestone report," he says. "To be quite honest, we've given up on it because the cost of being in many of those projects actually outweighs the actual benefit of it. It's frightening."
LEADING THE CHARGE
Vicki Barrie is an unlikely face for a group of teachers taking on the system. Now just 46, she told a friend before she became a principal two years ago that she'd like to get in and out of the job without ending up on a TV current affairs show.
Safe to say, then, that the Northcote College principal doesn't seek the limelight?
"No," Barrie says, with a smile that can disarm students when she's delivering news they don't want to be on the receiving end of. "I don't quite know how I've ended up as the front person."
She ended up as the "front person" of the North Shore Principals' Association after last year carrying out an analysis of the proportion of 10 schools' "total income locally raised" excluding teacher salaries.
The project was sparked in a board of trustees meeting as the budget was being slashed - again.
"We just came to the point when we thought 'actually we can't do this any more. We are doing a disservice to our students."'
The study found on average 51 per cent of the schools' total income was raised locally, through family donations, international student fees, fundraising and money for trips that went through the financial books.
Education Minister Chris Carter disputes the calculation and said this week he viewed some schools as being "quite disingenuous" about how much the community was having to raise. Last month he told the Herald: "If you have 65 international students that gives you an extra $1 million a year. That is an opportunity for schools, and is not the community raising 51 per cent of the budget. To say 'poor me' isn't really fair - lucky them."
Since completing the study, principals of a further five schools joined the association bringing the membership to 15.
Barrie says the next step is meeting with Carter next week.
The former economics and accounting teacher laughs off the suggestion she's a fiery redhead.
"You'd have to ask other people about that," says Barrie. "I would describe myself as optimistic, if you are going to describe - in order of importance - my traits."
MONEY TO LEARN
It's a refrain parents know too well: "Mum, Dad, I need money for ... "
Barely a week goes by when school students don't come home with a notice requesting cash.
Parents know all about the financial squeeze schools face - it gets passed on to them frequently.
So it was no surprise when 15 North Shore state secondary schools this week declared war on the Government, saying that unless their "dire" funding situation was sorted out they would boycott "Schools Plus", a major policy initiative aimed at keeping students in education until age 18.
One of the refuseniks is Westlake Boys High, a decile 10 school of about 1900 pupils. It's a good school and one that our year 12 (6th form) son enjoys immensely.
So far this year, we have forked out more than $1800 in school-related expenses - and that's not including a two-week field trip to Japan.
To be fair, some of those have not been directly linked to education: bus passes ($250), a locker ($25) and sports costs (basketball fees to play in the school team this term were $120, for example).
And Westlake has chosen to funnel its top stream classes through the Cambridge Exam system ($485 in exam fees and administration costs. If our son had been taking NCEA courses this year, the exam and assessment fees would have been $75).
Stripping out the sports and travel costs, we have forked out almost $1000 so far this year. Free education? You're kidding.
- Eugene Bingham
