We wonder how many Treasury officials send their kids to state schools or use our public health services? We wonder how many have lived on benefits or had jobs that got their hands dirty, or in which they have had to face the consequences of the stupid policy proposals they seek to inflict on the population?

Treasury advice to the National government on funding for education includes the proposal to remove the automatic adjustments to base funding which occur through demographic and other projected changes and fund these changes within the allocation of new money each year or make a case for additional funding on a year by year basis.

School rolls are projected to rise to about 2024. These are demographic changes which increase operations funding and staffing levels in a predictable manner. Currently the funding for school staffing and operations is automatically adjusted to fund the increased cost this creates.

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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?

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The April edition of the PPTA News includes a message from the president, Kate Gainsford, about a new and REDUCED funding formula that the Ministry of Education is developing for small area schools (below 200). Well that’s what it seems to be planning judging from this document  entitled Change of Class Applications (pdf) and  obtained under the Official Information Act.   Various ministers of education have been establishing new schools (even when there are surplus places at surrounding schools) as if there was no tomorrow.  

The most recent minister, Anne Tolley has belatedly realised that the cost of facilitating parental choice by providing a secondary school on every corner - where the dairy used to be - is unaffordable. So what has she done?  According to the document seven new kura kaupapa Maori have been approved by the minister to become wharekura (ie. area schools that provide education from year 1 to 15) BUT at a much lower funding rate than other are schools get.  The document says this is an interim measure but that the ministry is working (in secret it appears) on a permanent formula. This raises a number of questions:

• Should wharekura get less funding than other area schools?
• Are all schools with roll numbers below 200 going to face reductions?
• How are the interests of schools that are small because they are remote going to be safeguarded?
• Are parents going to be expected to make up the shortfall?
• Is it right to provide “choice” thorough a mechanism that reduces funding and potentially diminishes education quality?

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By Observer  

This government doesn’t seem to have the slightest commitment to the idea that employers should act in good faith or that the State Sector Act 1988 (s77A) requires schools to “operate a personnel policy that complies with the principles of being a good employer”.   

When it announced its poorly thought-through decision to can ACE (night schools) funding within the 2010 year, it appears to have had no clue as to how schools were meant to pay redundancy costs except that they should use whatever spare ACE money they had.  Even a quick risk analysis would have told them that schools would not have enough to pay if the employees had had a lengthy period of employment. 

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 By Winged Rodent

At a time when the world focuses on the dangers of climate change, the government appears to be going green -  by recycling its spending this Christmas.  
We could see the $200 million 'budget' allocated to fighting truancy and crime among teens as a form of "up-cycling” – a term coined to describe "the creation of a product with higher intrinsic value from a material at the end of its service life."  
In other words, it is taking an empty ice-cream container, covering it with glitter and calling it a present.

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