Interview with the Minister of Education and Ray Newport (GM NZSTA)
©Radio New Zealand Limited (2007)
NEWZTEL NEWS: RNZ “NINE TO NOON” WEDNESDAY 14 FEBRUARY 2007
PRESENTER (KATHRYN RYAN): Yesterday we talked to the principal of Fielding High School, Roger Menzies, who’d taken the unusual step of stopping students with unpaid school fees from attending timetabled classes until their parents contacted the school. He says free education is a nonsense. What there is, is free access to education but schools aren’t funded to deliver curriculum. Mr Menzies says that the schools are forced to operate like businesses in order to survive, and they have to recover operational costs from students. So what has happened to our so-called free education? Joining me now is the General Manager of the School Trustees Association, Ray Newport, along with the Education Minister, Steve Maharey. Good morning to you both.
HON. STEVE MAHAREY (EDUCATION MINISTER): Good morning.
RAY NEWPORT (GENERAL MANAGER, SCHOOL TRUSTEES ASSOCIATION): Good morning.
PRESENTER: Ray Newport, let’s start with you. There was a sense of a good deal of frustration in our conversation with Roger Menzies yesterday, basically saying how else do I get this money out of parents. Is that a reflection of a wider frustration among principals?
NEWPORT: I think there certainly is a degree of frustration amongst principals and boards of trustees around current levels of operational funding. We’ve known for some years now that schools were struggling and I think this was a sign of a certain desperation.
PRESENTER: Well, let’s start with…
NEWPORT: Certainly not an action condoned but certainly understood.
PRESENTER: Let’s hear some evidence from you about how dependent schools are on operational… sorry, on these extra charges, be they charges for materials which the policy does allow, charges for materials for things like photography or whatever, how much are they depending on that sort of funding?
NEWPORT: Well, we’ve had independent research carried out by NZCER which looked at a group of schools, well-run, well-governed schools, and in both reports over consecutive years that research has indicated quite clearly that schools would struggle to deliver the programmes required of them if they did not actually rely on locally raised funds to top up their operational grant funding. Now, that’s a matter of concern. I also think the review of the operational grant funding that was carried out last year and a report is now out, also indicates quite clearly that there are… that schools are experiencing difficulties.
PRESENTER: Okay, which reports are we talking about, Ministry of Education or Educational Review Office reports, which ones?
NEWPORT: This is the Ministry of Education one which involved all of the other sector groups within the education sector.
PRESENTER: This report that I have in front of me says that more than… although I’m not sure that’s possible… but more than two in five schools are in the red, are in debt despite what the report says is good management of their money and raising extra funds from parents. Is that a serious figure or not?
NEWPORT: Part of the problem with the review that was carried out last year is, that the ministry was unable to separate out the locally raised funds from the Government-provided operations grant so that tends to cloud the situation. However even though the total figure included the best part of half a billion dollars of locally raised funds, schools were still struggling. Now that indicates to me that there’s a fairly serious problem.
PRESENTER: So half a billion dollars of school funding is coming directly from the pockets of parents of the school?
NEWPORT: Not necessarily straight from the pockets of parents. In some cases it comes from trusts that schools can access and other funds…
PRESENTER: So it’s all forms of fundraising?
NEWPORT: But what we would call it is, money coming from sources other than those provided by the Government.
PRESENTER: Do you have an average cost or perhaps a high and a low cost for what parents are having to pay in these sorts of activity fees or course fees?
NEWPORT: Well, we know that... not in activity and course fees… you can get a sense of what average might be paid in terms of school donations but activity fees and other charges that schools may if you like, impose on parents, essentially can be included when you pay your school donation. But equally in the case of the school that my youngsters go to, we get demands basically every week for money for something or other.
PRESENTER: All right, what are we running into, hundreds of dollars per student normally?
NEWPORT: Oh, absolutely.
PRESENTER: And so if you’ve got several kids you could be running into four figures?
NEWPORT: I would say that would be the case, yes.
PRESENTER: The ERO report also found, I understand, that every single school relied on additional funds to supplement their operations grant?
NEWPORT: Yes.
PRESENTER: Is that just normal, is it acceptable the way it is now?
NEWPORT: No, it isn’t acceptable at all. New Zealand parents will always contribute to their school, I think you can accept that that’s the Kiwi way. The big problem however is that the Government should be providing sufficient operational grant funding to provide the outcomes that the Government requires of our schools, and the locally raised funds component is really there to provide the nice-to-have extras.
PRESENTER: Well, would you consider a course in photography a nice-to-have extra?
NEWPORT: That depends whether it’s included as part of the co-curricula activity of that school.
PRESENTER: Well, I’m not talking about an after-hours course.
NEWPORT: No, no, I understand that but there are some things that happen within the school which are optionals if you like. You know, they’re not part of the core curriculum.
PRESENTER: Before I bring in the minister because I know he’s on limited time, this business of trying to recover fees, how big an issue is that for school boards? I think Roger Menzies… there were 30 students whose families… whose parents hadn’t paid last year’s additional costs of some sort of other. How big a problem is trying to recover that money from those schools?
NEWPORT: Well, we know that there is a particular difficulty and it tends to be perhaps more towards the low decile, but their ability to if you like, attract school donations from parents may sometimes be less than 50 percent. So while some schools may be reasonably successful, up in the 90 percent, some schools really struggle.
PRESENTER: Yeah, the donations word is such a nicety but in this case it’s stuff like materials for… I mean I can’t see it as a donation, I’m sorry. It seems to me a straight-out charge or fee. You want to do woodwork, you pay for these materials.
NEWPORT: Oh, that’s activity, yes, that’s right.
PRESENTER: All right, so how… what come-back do schools have when parents won’t pay it because under the policy I read, they don’t seem to be able to enforce it?
NEWPORT: What would normally happen, if it’s a materials fee for say woodwork, given that you asked that, the school would normally still provide that but the finished product that the child might make, the child would not get to take that home so they would not get to keep whatever the…
PRESENTER: Whatever the implement was. Well, that was the picture that I took from reading the policy which I must admit does seem to have a bob each way in its various clauses.
NEWPORT: That’s quite typical, yes.
PRESENTER: But that’s not the way Roger Menzies took it.
NEWPORT: No.
PRESENTER: He said how do I get this money?
NEWPORT: Yes, yes, and I think… that’s what I say, I don’t necessarily condone the action taken but I certainly understand the frustration and I think there are a number of principals and boards of trustees that grapple with that exact same problem.
PRESENTER: Would it be fair to say most?
NEWPORT: Ah, I would probably would actually, because I think the situation is getting to that point.
PRESENTER: Let’s bring in Steve Maharey now, the Education Minister. Thank you for joining us.
MAHAREY: Good morning Kathryn.
PRESENTER: Can I ask you first of all, on your views on the action that the Fielding High School principal took?
MAHAREY: I’m afraid it just can’t happen that way. While I’m sympathetic to any school saying look, we provided something and we had a deal with you last year about say doing something in a woodwork class or a cooking class or whatever and most people have paid and you particularly haven’t paid, I understand that, what we have to say is that no child should be at home as a result of that. They are required to go to school.
PRESENTER: Well, he offered supervised… supervision of them but they couldn’t go to curriculum classes, is that any better?
MAHAREY: That just can’t happen, no. I mean these kids… by law young people have to be in school, learning, and they shouldn’t be used as a football between the parents and the school, so the ministry took the right action by saying they must be back in class, learning.
PRESENTER: But if the school or the board is legally entitled to charge for the cost of materials, let’s say in the case of photography a couple of hundred dollars, can they not then legally enforce the collection of those funds?
MAHAREY: Well, it’s between them and the parents and I think yes, it’s the status of the debt. For example if we were to say look, the school wants to provide an extra experience in the woodwork class this year, or cooking, and we’ve got an agreement with the class that this is above what we want to provide normally, like we want to cook fancier food and so on, so we’ve got an agreement that you’ll bring it along or we’ll provide it so we know… we’re all transparent here, we know what’s happening, and someone doesn’t pay, then there is clearly a debt that’s incurred by the parent. They’ve agreed to pay it and they haven’t paid it. But the point I’m making is, it shouldn’t be the child who gets in the… becomes the meat in the sandwich, it should still be between the school and the parent.
PRESENTER: Well, are we now saying that what, that schools should bring in debt collectors?
MAHAREY: Well, I think it’s up… as I say, it would depend on what the nature of the debt is, but the point I’m making is at no time should the child be sent home and used as the football. It should be that they are in class and the school is talking with the parent about it. And I think you know, parents in many cases have many reasons why they might not have paid including just forgetting. You know, for a reminder at the beginning of the year they may well just pay the money.
PRESENTER: Why are we in a situation where hundreds of dollars…?
MAHAREY: I think the big driver is the worldwide driver for education costs of course is that when you and I… well, when I went to school it was the chalk and talk environment. You were around a school that was not providing ICT and the level of professional development for teachers and so on, it simply didn’t exist. So we’re in a world now where of course education is the number one priority for most governments. They realise this is where they’ve got to invest and of course every year it goes up.
PRESENTER: Well, are you investing enough in the operational grants?
MAHAREY: Well, just to give you an idea, we’ve lifted funding from 1999 at $3.8billion a year to $5.6billion this year. That’s about a 22 percent real increase over that time, so you get a sense of the amount of money that’s going in. But would I sit here today and say that I’m absolutely happy with the level of funding across the board? Of course not.
PRESENTER: Well, you’re the minister. Is it going up again?
MAHAREY: Well, I don’t think any minister anywhere in the world would be on a programme saying look, I’m absolutely delighted with the level of funding. Maybe the Norwegians would.
PRESENTER: Well, do we now admit that we don’t have a free education system any more?
MAHAREY: No, I think we’ve got to carry on striving for that because one of the most important things about the New Zealand system is that like some of the other systems that have held together like the Swedish system, it’s a real strength for a country to be holding together its public education system and guaranteeing that regardless of your background you get an education.
PRESENTER: But are you? Are you? I mean it’s not regardless of background. If I’m going to school and my parents can pay $200 for me to do photography, I get to do photography. If they can’t, I don’t.
MAHAREY: Yeah, I think things aren’t quite as bad as they are often painted. I acknowledge… and I go to a lot of schools and I’ve yet to go to a school that just tells me life is fantastic and I couldn’t use any more money. They all could use it for the reasons that I’ve just described, but if you do take the Fielding school for example, they’ve got $1.3million of working capital sitting in their budget at the present time, unexpended, and they’ve got…
PRESENTER: They can’t use that for operational costs. It’s the operational budgets that are under pressure.
MAHAREY: And they’ve got a surplus of $156,000 in their operational budget. So we’re talking about a normal kind of school if you like, that their capital which comes to them every five years or seven years depending on how they negotiate it, is there, and they’ve usually got a small surplus. Now, is that a lot of money? No it’s not. They’ll spend all of that, but most schools as ERO said, are in that position of managing to keep their head above water and move through in the way that Fielding is.
PRESENTER: Your own ministry told you that more than… I don’t know how that’s possible, but more than two in five schools are in the red despite managing their money well and raise… and raising extra funds from parents. That’s… [indistinct, interrupted]
MAHAREY: Well, I’m not sitting here on your show saying that I think the situation is one where schools are all awash with cash. That’s clearly not the case.
PRESENTER: But the question is, whether we have free education any more.
MAHAREY: Well, I think we do in practice. I mean if I go to a school, and I’ve been to two or three of them just to start off the year, and I routinely say are you asking for a donation, do you have any fees on things that you are doing, the schools that I’ve been to, and they are a variety of decile four through ten… I haven’t been to a decile one or two school this year yet… would give me the answer I usually get which is yeah, we ask for $80, we don’t get it from everybody, we ask for $100, we don’t get it from everybody. We do have a school trip this year, we will be asking for some fees for that. Now, as Ray said before, right through the history of New Zealand schooling there would have been some charges on something. The question is, can we match this drive towards increasingly expensive education through the taxpayer in a way that means that we don’t really over-balance what’s been the tradition of parents having to put something in for particular things at school.
PRESENTER: Well, where do you think that balance is sitting currently?
MAHAREY: Well, I think if I go to a school and they say to me, we’ve asked for $80 from our parents, we split that up into terms, we don’t get it from everybody but we try to get it from everybody, you’re probably talking about the New Zealand tradition of getting some money in the school…
PRESENTER: Okay, and we’ve just heard from Ray that the more normal figure runs into the hundreds and we’ve just heard from the principal at Fielding High School that’s he having to take drastic action to get money out of…
MAHAREY: But… well, let me just do the Fielding one again, $1.3million working capital, $156,000 surplus, so we know the school is well managed and the question that he’s answering of course is, I asked you for some money as a parent and I didn’t get it and I want some money back, and that’s a fair question. But right across the board… I think Ray, you and I are agreeing with probably the listeners who are hearing this, that we are under pressure as a country to carry on trying to match the expectations of education and that is putting pressure on parents to run sausage sizzles and to try and raise money. My job is to carry on trying to lift that investment. That’s why we had an operations grant review this year, to try and isolate where the pressure points were. We’re going to try and address that over the next…
PRESENTER: How long?
MAHAREY: Well, the next budget is one of the first opportunities to address that. And then we’ve got agreement with that group of people to look in particular at what we think are the big pressure points like the costs of information technology, and away we go.
PRESENTER: Well, should schools be… should schools be, as I’m reading here, 100 percent bearing the brunt of the cost of ICT? I mean this is the 21st century.
MAHAREY: No, no, they shouldn’t be.
PRESENTER: It should be the first expenditure that’s in their budget?
MAHAREY: No, in an ideal world of course… and this has accelerated through schools over the last little while. When I taught at university for example, they introduced computers for the first time and that wasn’t that long ago. So we’re talking about something that’s now… as you say, it’s become the way you run the education system and that’s exactly what the operations grant review said.
PRESENTER: Well, can you give a firm answer now that that situation of schools having to carry the whole brunt of the cost of having modern technology, will not continue from this budget?
MAHAREY: Oh, from this budget, no I can’t give you that guarantee. That would be a huge amount of money to resolve that issue. That’s why we…
PRESENTER: Two hundred and fifty five million?
MAHAREY: That’s why we’re… 255, it’s as long as a piece of string to be straight with you, Kathryn, because of course as soon as you pay that, of course the level that you could provide of ICT into a school is limitless so…
PRESENTER: Well, will you give in from this budget?
MAHAREY: No, that’s not from Government money.
PRESENTER: You can’t even afford it?
MAHAREY: But from this budget, yes, what we’re doing is trying to get… addressing this. We’ve got one of the spin-off groups from the ops grant review will continue on working on how do we get a handle on what the real costs might be reasonably for this because I’ve said on a number of platforms exactly what you’ve said, that ICT now is bread and butter, it’s like the ballpoint pen or the pencil or the quill that other generations used. We as a country have to make sure young people have access to it. But of course things do change by the way. In the old days people used to have an ambition to have every child with a laptop for example. Most schools these days would say that’s actually probably counter-
productive, you don’t need that level of input.
PRESENTER: Well, I’m sure they’d be happy with the first dollar you put into it.
MAHAREY: I think they’d be happy with any dollars and we will try our best.
PRESENTER: I thank you very much for joining us.
MAHAREY: Thanks Kathryn, good bye.
PRESENTER: That’s the Education Minister. Let me come back now to Ray Newport. Well [laughter] there’s not exactly an acknowledgement there that there’s a great funding shortfall to be made up immediately. What of the increases in recent years in the operations budget, have they been remotely realistic or not?
NEWPORT: Well, I think there’s a bit of a difficulty with the minister quoting Total Vote Education budget for the compulsory education sector. He talked about an increase from $3.8billion to 5.6. I don’t think those figures tell you a lot. No-one is disputing that there hasn’t been significant amounts of money go into the compulsory education sector. However most of that money has gone into additional teachers, meeting teachers’ pay claims, that sort of thing.
PRESENTER: Which is not a bad thing.
NEWPORT: Which is not a bad thing and it’s actually a good thing. Our problem is though, it doesn’t matter how many teachers you put in the system, it doesn’t matter how much you pay teachers, none of that resolves the fact that the money that boards of trustees get to run their school is inadequate and…
PRESENTER: This is the operations grant?
NEWPORT: The operations grant.
PRESENTER: How much more will the amount… and you haven’t been able to give me an average figure and I can understand that, but we’ve agreed it’s in the hundreds in most cases for most pupils.
NEWPORT: Yep.
PRESENTER: How much will that grow if the fundamentals aren’t tackled in the next few budgets, the fundamentals of that operational grant? Will it become entrenched and finally opened up and called what it actually is which is a fee?
NEWPORT: Well, I think it’s more serious than that because one of the… the second year of the independent research that we had done, also for the first time, indicated that there were signs that the ability to extract more money out of parents was actually… appeared to be plateauing, so what that was indicating was that we’ve sort of hit that point where…
PRESENTER: You can’t put your off-site fees up?
NEWPORT: Yes, absolutely, because what you do is, you put them up and you get less parents pay.
PRESENTER: And so you come back to where Roger Menzies is which is, are we going to have schools taking parents off to debt collectors?
NEWPORT: In some cases that could happen, and where it is actually activity-related fees. I think the whole point about this is, that this is not necessarily a new problem. We as NZSTA actually raised this issue some four years or so ago.
PRESENTER: No problem is ever new. It’s a question of when it gets resolved, if it gets resolved.
NEWPORT: That’s right.
PRESENTER: You see no signs of it being resolved in the near future?
NEWPORT: No, we have an expectation and I’m sure our members have an expectation, that the Government should address at least partly, the issue in the 2007 budget.
PRESENTER: All right, thank you…
NEWPORT: There is work to be carried on to get a greater handle on detail but we would certainly expect the matter to be totally sorted out in time for the 2008 budget.
PRESENTER: That’s Ray Newport, the General Manager of the School Trustees Association.