Schools may refuse troubled pupils

Mainstream primary schools will be asked to take back 35 of the country's most disruptive pupils after the closure of Auckland's Waimokoia residential school - but principals say they may refuse to take them.

Education Minister Anne Tolley confirmed last week that teaching at the school, on a prime $20 million site overlooking Half Moon Bay, will end next month. The school will close formally on January 27.

She said the $3 million a year that had been spent running the school would be "ringfenced" to provide "intensive individualised support and therapy to students in their home and in their local school".

She said the money would support up to 50 children aged 7 to 13 with "severe and challenging behaviour issues". The budget works out at $60,000 per student.

But Auckland Primary Principals Association president Marilyn Gwilliam said not all mainstream schools would take the children back.

"Those children do display extreme behaviours. When a student is that bad, they can very often be a danger to themselves and others," she said.

"Under the Education Act, schools have to deal very strictly with students who behave like that because we have to keep other students and teachers safe.

"If [Waimokoia] is closing, those students legally are required to go back to their local school, but ... schools may simply refuse to re-enrol them because it's just all too hard."

Mrs Tolley called in August for submissions on whether to close the school after a series of damning reports by the Education Review Office (ERO) and the prosecution of four former staff this year for alleged offences against children at the school.

Two of the former staff were acquitted. The other two face retrials next year after hung juries.

She said a majority of the submissions she received were from school principals pleading with her to keep Waimokoia open.

But she also considered the ERO's view that there was "little proven benefit" in taking children out of their home environments for a year - the usual time in Waimokoia - and then sending them back to the same home situation.

The ERO recommended eventually closing all three residential schools for primary-aged children with behaviour problems - Westbridge (West Auckland) and McKenzie (Christchurch) as well as Waimokoia - and putting resources into more localised services.

Mrs Tolley said she decided against closing all three schools at once because of the need to build up local support first.

"We do need to prove to the schools that we are going to bring the resources with these kids," she said.

She said the $3 million saved from Waimokoia would be added to $45 million over the next five years which she plans to take from other parts of the education budget for a new "behaviour for learning action plan", to be unveiled before Christmas.

She plans to bring both items together with the $73 million now spent on resource teachers of learning and behaviour, plus the money now spent on truancy and alternative education, into an integrated fund of up to $200 million a year for children with behaviour problems.

Mrs Tolley also expects to decide before Christmas whether to close Felix Donnelly College, a Tuakau-based secondary school for 69 students with behavioural issues.