When more is less it's tough finding fees

Education is an expensive business and, as JAN CORBETT reports, finding the money is a pressing task for schools as well as the Government.

By the time self-management became a reality in 1989, Ray Howarth had been teaching for 35 years and knew a thing or two about working the system.

He was the new principal of Westbrook Primary School in Rotorua and negotiated an occupancy agreement in which the Government paid for 31 maintenance projects over 10 years -- such as a $72,000 repaint of the school.

Schools without those agreements, says Mr Howarth, "were straight into the gun."

Sitting smack on the border between one of the city's wealthiest areas and one of its poorest gives Westbrook a middle-range decile (socio-economic) rating of five. With a roll of 590, the school is one of Rotorua's largest.

Initially, funding seemed generous. The school could invest money which is now earning $36,000 a year in interest. But these days the funding buys less. As a result, schools are looking for alternative revenue sources.

Mr Howarth approached the Rotorua Energy Charitable Trust for $75,000 to-wards a new computer suite, but he needs another $20,000 a year to maintain the computers.

The annual school gala earns around $10,000. Westbrook charges fees of $25 a child or $40 a family, plus a $5 stationery fee. Between 75 per cent and 80 per cent of parents pay the fees.

Dismantling the old education bureaucracy was supposed to liberate about $93 million -- money promised directly to schools.

Yet comparing school funding now with what it was before the reforms is largely useless. Not only have there been rising costs in that time but demands and expectations have increased too.

Before the reforms, schools did not contemplate computer suites; now the curriculum requires children to become proficient with information technology.

In 1992, the Government spent a little over $2 billion on schools, rising to $2.7 billion in 1997. It is expected to reach $3 billion by 2000.

But according to Dr Don Gilling, from Economic and Social Research Associates, who studied funding for the School Trustees Association, the increase represents an 8.45 per cent rise since 1990 while inflation in that time equals 14.25 per cent. Over the same period student numbers increased 9.77 per cent, meaning core operations grant funding of $722 a head in 1990 fell to $713 a head by 1997.

Bruce Adin, principal of Fairburn School, a decile-one primary in Otahuhu, says "doing the best with what you've got" is one of Tomorrow's Schools mottoes.

Initially, there was equity funding for poorer schools, but it required smart principals to make the right applications.
That was replaced by targeted funding for educational achievement (TFEA) to compensate for socio-economic disadvantage. This funding, Mr Adin says, "is what's left of New Zealand's social conscience."

He commends the TFEA funding model for recognising socio-economic disadvantage, but as always, need outstrips supply.

In the 1996 Budget the Government announced its new special education grant (SEG), for students in all schools with behaviour and/or learning difficulties. Schools at the top of the socio-economic heap get $5 extra a student; those at the bottom get $34.50 a head more.

TFEA and SEG funding has meant Fairburn School can devote eight staff to its special programmes, catering for 250 children with special needs each week.

Mr Adin says the argument with the Government is no longer about whether the playing field should be flat or tilted, but how steeply the field needs to be tilted for poor kids to score the basic educational goals.

Back in Rotorua, Sunset Primary School sits a bike ride away from Westbrook School, through the Fordlands state-house block. With a 1A decile rating, it is at the bottom of the socio-economic heap.

Principal Ros Powell says the school "runs on sausage sizzles."

Sunset Primary attracts substantial TFEA and SEG funding which is adequate, says Ros Powell, "but there's never enough to cover everything."

For instance, she would like to have a dedicated homework room, instruments for a school orchestra, jerseys for the rugby team, and a computer suite. All are out of the school's financial reach.

Sunset Primary stopped charging fees because so few families paid. Instead, it charges $20 a year for exercise books and stationery.

This year, the school formed a parent-teachers association specifically to raise funds -- selling raffle tickets and barbecuing the sausages outside supermarkets.

Ministry of Education figures show local fundraising accounts for 10.5 per cent of all schools' income. But in his study for the School Trustees Association released in July, Dr Gilling put the figure at 12 per cent.

He also found that between 1991 and 1996 local funds as a percentage of school income increased 69 per cent, while Government funding rose only 16 per cent.

For some schools -- such as Huntly West Primary where the NZEI president, Liz Patara, is based -- it is a struggle to raise $2000 a year.

For other schools, such as Aria School in the King Country, fundraising is a specialty. Last year, Aria raised $20,000.
This year, it has planted 400 pine trees on spare school land, hoping to net $3000 in 18 months. Now it is putting a deal to the local council to recycle cows' intestines into compost.

Dr Gilling also found that while the number of schools with an operating deficit is steadily declining, those with working-capital deficits -- indicating long-term financial problems -- doubled between 1993 and 1995 to 7 per cent.

And between 1994 and 1996 those whose working-capital deficits exceeded $40,000 jumped 257 per cent, suggesting to Dr Gilling "a hard core of New Zealand schools in dire financial trouble."

No school resourcing argument has been more bitter than that over bulk-funding, or what the ministry calls the fully funded option.

Only 14 per cent of schools have taken up the offer so far, but the number rises daily. Fans, such as the principal of Pt Chevalier School in Auckland, John Fleming, says bulk-funding gives the school freedom to make its own decisions.

For instance, Mr Fleming has been able to reorganise his senior staff, leaving two associate principals free to concentrate on curriculum development and student support.

Opponents, such as Kaipara College's John Graham, says flexibility results from bulk-funding being bigger funding. What happens if it is scaled back, he asks.

Further, he says, those already at the bottom of the economic heap will suffer because funding reflects the teachers' experience, not the school's needs.

Even Mr Fleming admits there is potential for fully funded schools running at a loss to use the money to obliterate the deficit, rather than giving the teachers pay rises.