Rising bitterness at under-resourced schools

Continuing under-resourcing of schools is creating an undesirable atmosphere in education that the incoming government needs to address urgently, teachers say.

"Bitterness is building up as schools have had to do more with less and parents have to contribute increasingly substantial amounts to their children's education," Post Primary Teachers' Association (PPTA) president Debbie Te Whaiti told about 200 teachers at the association's annual conference today.

"This is a festering source of dissatisfaction that needs to be attended to in the interests of public education."

Schools were struggling to make ends meet on their operations grant alone and the decline in the overseas student market was demonstrating the folly of relying on foreign fee-paying students to address the shortfall.

Ms Te Whaiti said recent studies by the Council for Educational Research (NZCER) confirmed that many schools simply needed more money.

"The next government must ensure that schools' operations funding is set at a level that reflects the far greater costs that schools incur today because of health and safety, administration, assessment and compliance."

It was also time to resource NCEA properly, Ms Te Whaiti said.

NCEA's introduction was a "sad story" that did no credit to the politicians and agencies of state responsible.

"PPTA expressed concern on a number of occasions about a range of issues connected with the way NCEA was being put into place and we were not taken very seriously.

"The resulting debacle has been a huge embarrassment for the Government, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and the Ministry of Education which was responsible for the resourcing.

"There are financial implications to making things work better that simply have to be faced if we are to have the whole system run fairly."

- NZPA