Schools to face ban on forced 'donations'

Schools will be banned from compelling or pressuring parents to pay "donations" towards their children's education by calling them fees or levies.

Proposed Ministry of Education guidelines say the amount and timing of any payment of donations should be left to parents, and invoices should not be issued to imply these are due.

The draft guidelines follow concern that many schools are lumping in voluntary donations with legitimate charges for extra-curricular activities such as sports trips, in invoices sent to parents - often with warnings they cannot survive without these.

Matters came to a head last year - resulting in a Government call for a review of guidelines - when a Tauranga parent was served with a court notice for $742.50 in activity and subject fees for his daughter's school.

That followed a Herald survey that found state schools charging up to $740 a year in "donations", and only a handful making do without.

Research for the School Trustees Association estimated parent donations and other community contributions totalled about $500 million a year, compared with an overall operational grant to schools of around $900 million, although that funding is also under review.

But a ministry consultation document obtained by National Party education spokesman Bill English indicates that schools are likely to be required to itemise requests for donations separately on invoices.

Mr English said yesterday that the "impractical" document would threaten schools' financial viability and that, if the Government wanted to stop them charging fees, it would have to boost their funding.

The proposed new guidelines acknowledge that parents may wish to contribute to school running costs, and that boards of trustees may choose to ask them for donations.

But they say students must be treated with dignity and that at no time should they be "embarrassed or pressured" over non-payment.

Schools will be required to set out suggested donations in a prospectus or information letter to parents and to explain the uses to which they will be put. And even fees for extra-curricular activities, instead of for necessary parts of school courses, are to be called "elective parental charges" - not to be imposed unless specifically agreed to in advance by parents.

Government officials were at pains yesterday to emphasise that the proposed guidelines did not represent any change in policy guaranteeing all NZ children a free basic education.

A spokesman for Education Minister Steve Maharey called them "an operational thing" and ministry spokesman Vince Cholewa said they were being tightened simply to ensure everyone understood that compulsory fees could not be charged for core school activities.

But some school principals fear that labouring the issue will make it even harder for them to make the grade. Auckland Primary Principals Association president Malcolm Milner acknowledged that parents should not be put under pressure to pay voluntary donations.

But he believed a requirement to spell out to parents that they were not required to do so would make it harder for schools to fill a wide gap left by state underfunding.

"It would be nice if politicians admitted that they are under-funding education, but this is just par for the course of keeping it going," he said of donation requests.

"It puts principals and boards in a difficult situation with their communities when the Government is saying, 'You don't need to pay this money', and schools do need the money to keep going."

Mr Milner, who is principal of Freemans Bay School, said donations were never sought without approval from community-elected boards.

Donations accounted for about $44,000 of $280,000 in community contributions to his school, compared with a Government operational grant of around $300,000, and included some provision for extra teaching staff.

Principals Federation president Pat Newman said the new guidelines were aimed simply at clarifying existing rules, and there should be a wider debate about what parents could expect from a free education system.