Teachers on attack over money woes

Schools often have to find much-needed funds themselves. Te Akau ki Papamoa school raises money to extend its playground by selling biscuits. Picture / Bay Of Plenty Times

A lack of school funding has become a festering source of dissatisfaction and must be addressed to maintain a high-quality public education, says the president of the secondary teachers' union.

Debbie Te Whaiti, head of the Post Primary Teachers Association, launched the union's annual conference in Wellington with a strongly worded attack on the Government.

Bitterness had built up as schools have been forced to do more with less, and parents had had to contribute increasingly substantial amounts to their children's education.

"The cold hard truth is that many schools simply need more money," she said.

The PPTA wants the incoming Government to set operations funding at a level that reflects the greater costs faced by schools today.

It is a call which has also been made by the School Trustees Association, and backed by evidence from the National Council for Educational Research, which shows schools cannot function effectively on state money alone.

Ms Te Whaiti said schools incurred larger costs because they had to meet different standards of health and safety, be administered more responsively, comply with a greater number of requirements and resource more complex assessment and reporting systems.

Schools were struggling to make ends meet and the decline in the overseas student market had demonstrated the folly of relying on foreign fee-paying students to address the shortfall.

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

More than 200 secondary school teachers will attend the conference.

Ms Te Whaiti said much of the extra cost was a result of the introduction of standards-based assessment under the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA).

The new system had also tarnished schools' reputations.

"NCEA has become code, albeit unfairly, for all that is perceived to be wrong with secondary education," she said.

Lack of confidence in NCEA had seen an increasing number of schools enter students for Cambridge International exams.

"Schools now find themselves under pressure to offer Cambridge International because other schools with which they compete are doing so."

New Zealand had committed to NCEA and it was time to resource it properly after the mess of last year's exams, which saw huge variations in results and prompted the eventual resignation of the chairman and chief executive of the Qualifications Authority.

Ms Te Whaiti said: "The debacle has been a huge embarrassment for the Government, the Qualifications Authority and the Ministry of Education, which was responsible for the resourcing".

The Government has released an action plan to improve NCEA and has a working party investigating the levels of operations funding.

- NZPA