Posted by: Silverback
on 01, Jun, 2010
Have you seen the part of Vote: Education that changes the ops funding calculation for secondary schools?
From 2011 the ops funding will be recalculated every quarter and secondary schools will have the ops funding adjusted accordingly.
The MoE website says that this is an incentive to schools to improve their retention of students.
What?
Apparently in the mind of the Ministry schools now influence the school leaving rate more than:
The state of national economy.
Or the state of the local economy
Or the needs of employers to recruit apprentices or employees in the mid year.
Or the armed forces or police with their mid-year intakes.
Or population movements
Or the collapse of a local industry
In effect schools are going to be fined for having their kids sorted and ready to move on to the next step in life.
Made the cut for intake into the Navy, Angela? Excellent we’ll fine the school when you leave.
An apprentice for your engineering firm, sir? To help take up that free trade opportunity in China? Sorry, can’t help. If we give you a student in the middle of the year, we’ll be fined.
Apparently the only time kids can leave school for any reason is at the end of the year. At any other times schools will have their funding cut. They’ll be fined.
So a 4% increase in secondary ops funding, less the 20% increase in GST, plus the reduction in ops funding due to the new calculation method equals no increase for secondary schools.
Any school unfortunate enough to have students leave during the year will probably be worse off than they were before this budget.
I’d love you to tell me that I have got it wrong, but I think that the only way I can have this wrong is if there is an as yet undetected proposal to fully compensate schools for the GST increase beyond the 4% rise announced in the budget.
I wonder which bright spark gave the Government this piece of stunning policy advice?
Perhaps the Minister has been sold a pup by a disingenuous official who has devised a way to use a superficially appealing phrase like “incentive for schools to improve their engagement with students” to claw back the money that the GST has not already got.
It just has to be stopped somehow.
What thoughts has PPTA got?
