A quick lunch before I head into a Select Committee. Out in the electorate this morning, the rising tide of anger about the cuts to Adult and Community Education shows no sign of abating. Letters, emails etc are pouring in to all MPs. I think Anne Tolley will have to do something as the campaign is not going to let up. In the meantime here is an extract from one of the letters I received this week that sums up a lot of the feelings out there.
I have been involved in adult learning as a student on and off for nearly ten years and would like to tell you how much these programmes mean to me. Over the years I have learnt how to make a mosaic, I’ve dyed silk scarves, built pots out of clay, extended my knowledge of French and been taught the skills to run a small business. These courses have enabled me to learn new things and meet lots of people but they also offer me so much more. Although these things may just be considered hobbies, to me they give me a greater sense of self-esteem and a feeling of connection to my community. Night classes have taught me new skills, but also give me the opportunity to meet people from many diferent walks of life who I wouldn’t otherwise meet. Boredom is the cause of everything, and I’d hate to think what would happen if we weren’t to have such a wide range of accessible classes available to us.
The value of this kind of education is not just of in terms of increasing skills and contributing to the economy, it is about developing communities and improving the well-being of individuals. Limiting access as National are doing will do great damage to our communities.
Well hopefully Tolley won’t weaken, though you ever know with her recent laughable track record.
The taxpayer shouldn’t be subsidising these courses – put the money into schools or genuine job related training rather than feel good courses for bored housewives and pensioners. There are plenty of other providers of hobby training out there in the private sector – language schools, art schools, plus clubs and organisations. Your constituents should be less lazy about looking for free options and more willing to look after themselves.
Yes it is all very laudable that that person was able to widen her knowledge of people and the world, but why should the taxpayer foot the bill for it ?
How hard can it be for people like you to understand that ?
So why did Doctor Pita Sharples, Associate Minister of Education tell an Adult and Community Education Conference in Australia, just one week before the budget cuts were exposed, “it is second chance at learning for those who may have missed out earlier in their lives – through marginalisation; economic constraints; racism; or any of the other factors which limit access to far too many people”.
Unfortunately, it seems he didn’t say that to the Minister of Education, or if he did she wasn’t listening.
Earlier this week I attended a North Shore public meeting about the funding cuts, where around 100 people turned up. One person said that school plant eg computer suites, kitchen facilities, art rooms etc would be lying idle if they were not utilised by community education in the evenings and at weekends. Is that good use of tax payers money?
ACE funding is just 0.6% of the whole Education budget. That money goes a long way. The combined ACE funding for the whole of Rodney district is just $55,000. They run 150 courses a year, with more than 1000 people attending, in addition to funding community courses such as budgeting and healthy living for local families through the Womens Centre and Home Builders (who will now lose 80% of their funding). . Demand has increased by 35% as people lose their jobs and look for new skills, or just to stay connected.
Did you know that ESOL is affected, the Parents Centre’s antenatal classes will become unsustainable, that CABs across New Zealand will lose funding to run courses for their volunteers who in turn help their communities free of charge? Thousands of Community Groups are affected because they receive about 9% of all ACE funding and this at a time when community services funding faces an uncertain future.
Adult community education is a vital part of life long learning, which National says it supports. Learning is not just about skills for employment, although there’s never been a more important time to be supporting people into new skills. But it’s also about developing our people, social cohesion and fostering the potential of communities.
People are angry about these cuts and Tolley better start listening.
Hi,
Adult and Community educations enhances skills and teaches the very different ways of survival. It is beneficial to earn experiences of distinctive fields.
Sure, we get it, adult education is good, but why should the taxpayer pick up the bill? Why can’t those who value the service pay for it? It tells you a lot about how valuable they really feel it is if they won’t pay for it themselves.
Darien – please, have you ever been responsible for running something economic in the real world? Your lack of economic understanding is funny. Why would these resources in the school have to sit idle for lack of a (microscopic) subsidy? If the school had any entrepreneurial nouse they’d be offering full fee, high margin community courses irresepective of the subsidy, and allowing teachers to earn a nice little top up up for 2 hours of after school work a week.
And here in rodney the subsidy works out to $55 per person per year (not countimg all the delivery csots). How is that possibly the difference to a bored housewife or a pensioner doing a macrame course? What you seem to be describing above is a completely inefficient funding model that is wasteful. If there is a real economic benefit to running antenatal classes (and I accept there probably is even though the bad parents who really need to go never would) then they should be funded out of health not ACE.
I hope Tolley doesn’t back down. This is a non-issue and a beat up. Real community spirit etc in NZ has and will come out of community organsations and clubs – I don’t see ACE funding of hobby courses has much to do with this – it seems to be a social outlet for a bunch of cardigan wearing tragics.
Pantson – I will pass your comments onto the ACE network in Rodney. I am sure they will give the appropriate response.
BTW, I ran a multi-million organisation called a union, but of course workers aren’t about economics are they?
I am surprised that so few of the people submitting to this thread have heard the excellent discussion Chris Laidlaw hosted on his show back at the beginning of the month. The story that stood out for me was the elderly gentleman, whose wife became terminally ill, so he enrolled in one of the classes the Minister has mocked, so he could cook her interesting meals – she had spent her entire life cooking his meals so he felt he needed to do this for her. And guess what he met knew people as well. Quite important when your wife is dying. Please develop an understanding of social capital and social inclusion before you consign people to the lonely entertainment of the television set and say that only those who can afford to pay the full cost of adult and community education courses should be entitled to lifelong learning and interesting lives. Have none of you thought about the fact that once the courses are unsubsidised (except for literacy, numeracy and foundation skills) that they won’t be able to support co-ordinators, who organise the tutors and an extraordinary breadth of fascinating classes. Not all the courses are subsidised either. If they are full classes they pay for themselves. I despair of those who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing – especially when they are running the country. Have a listen. http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/20090705
Lianne, are you REALLY that surprised that the right-wingers only care about money?
I mean…. really?
@jarbury – to be honest there are two decisions that the Nats made in this Budget that make no sense whatsoever and they are this one – the ACE funding cuts – and the other limiting the use of the Training Incentive Allowance to Level 1-3 courses, cutting out all degrees and diplomas that actually lead to wellpaid jobs. I almost felt that Paula Bennett just misread the briefing paper which probably meant to limit the use of the TIA to Level 4 & above. It’s interesting that none of the Work & Income staff on the ground who were encouraging women into these courses of study even knew it was going to happen. Nor was there any forewarning or consultation with the ACE sector.
Yes Lianne those are the two that have stood out to me as the obvious weird decisions. For the very reason that both ACE and TIA have the potential to get people off benefits and into work. They have excellent returns on investment…. so yeah, two very bizarre decisions I agree with you completely.
[...] MP Grant Robertson blogged: Out in the electorate this morning, the rising tide of anger about the cuts to Adult and Community [...]
Outside of Wellington in the real world it is considered good form that if you want to tie dye your frocks or make an interesting macrame plant hanger that you pay for it yourself.
Have the clowns in the labour party not noticed the decade of deficits. We dont live in North Korea and I would be stunned if there is a normal lucid person in this country who couldnt afford a couple of bucks to attend a hobby course.
You will have NO chance of picking up any new votes by promoting subsidising hobby courses. If I want to persue a hobby I would expect to pay for it myself and dont expect my neighbours to cough up the money. Hard to believe how out of touch you lot have become.
Grant it must have been nice to have been able to take classes such as your correspondents at heavily discounted rates – we all individually like something for nothing. As a nation though some tough choices need to be made and it is not possible to have all the trimmings when as a nation we need to borrow for it and our income is deteriorating. A tough choice to make but congratulations to Anne Tolley for doing it. You may need to rethink some of your priorities for this country.
In the “real world” I would have thought that it makes sense to support ongoing learning – particularly when that education can be linked to future job prospects or broad well-being.
I’m not going to defend *every* course – maybe some are crap – but to simply caricature and write off the very things that Mr Robertson’s correspondent says they found useful seems pretty bigoted to me.
Furthermore, strange how in a recession National still managed to find 30+ million to blow on private schools eh David? Maybe you’re not going to criticise that decision though…
I agree we should support and encourage ongoing learning and we do through polytechs and universities etc. We no longer have surpluses to indulge the populace to persue their hobbies at our expense.
Why “data” do you not think people doing hobby courses should not pay for it themselves. My wife did an embroidery and paid for it herself, I pay for my hobbies and dont expect others too and if I cant afford it I dont do it.
Private schools, I went to one as did both my sisters and brother with no subsidy from the British government BUT I think we should do what Clinton did and have education vouchers to spend where parents think is appropriate for their own children. I Dont agree with subsidising private schools but it does take the pressure off the state system, not sure of the relevence to cake decorating, make up, how to loose 10 kilos courses.
These decisions on ACE and TIA are not only shortsighted and destructive to people and communities, they go against our NZ culture and values of giving people a hand up and a fair go, whoever they are. TIA, for example, was one of the few ways disabled people on the Invalid’s Benefit were ever going to get access to tertiary education. Now that option is closed.
Do you (Labour MP’s, or anyone I suppose) have access to stats showing how many people in ACE take what courses? Is it true (from a post on Kiwiblog) that the most popular courses are things like cake decorating? Let’s get some honest perspective on this, are we really trying to defend subsidised cake decorating courses? ‘
Thanks for the comments. Two thoughts in response. A lot of how we view this comes down to how we view state support for all education. Not every single course will be able to have a clear economic benefit. Social benefits, community connectedness is important for some people particularly those who are re-buidling or re-starting their lives. We all will benefit from those people feeling more included in their lives.
Also one of the clear lessons from adult and community education is what the policy wonks call “staircasing”. You start with what some would consider a “hobby” course and you go through, as my correspondent did, to undertaking something more ‘meaty’ like a small business course.
Finally, let’s remember that this decision by National is a choice, not a necessity. In the Education Budget $35 million extra was given to private schools when this funding was cut. If it is a question of priorities- I am with the night classes and giving ordinary NZers some opportunity.
A proper analysis might show the investment in private schools to be prudent though Grant. Perhaps looking at historic funding of them as a percentage of total education spending, maybe they’ve been left behind for a decade (I’m hypothesizing, I don’t know this for sure) and maybe investment in them actually has some return (lighter burden on state schools perhaps)?
And without stats to show how many people took cake decorating classes compared to how many took IT classes, how can we really know if ACE is money well spent or not?
What seems to get missed here is these are tight times and we are all having to cut our cloth. It would be lovely to live in a place where all hobbies are funded by the taxpayers. We dont live in utopia.
Did you ask the tie dye lady if she could afford a couple of bucks a week to pay for her own hobby ?
Its also a bit rich with the anaolgy of the public schools when we have had to tip in a billion for a train system.
Is this serious? Has it come down to Labour defending the rights of bored middle income women to do tie dye and learning a second language?
Surely money is best spent giving our children the best possible start while they are IN school? I know success and hard work are foreign words to Labour politicians and unionists – many of whom went to University simply to pad your way to the Govt trough.
Why don’t you start fighting National on some serious issues?
LabRat: I don’t know the stats on who takes what courses, but will see what we can find. As to the overall value of adult and community education, here is a link to Price Waterhouse Coopers Report done in 2008. http://tinyurl.com/mp97z8
Grant,thanks for the link to the report. I hope PWC weren’t paid too highly for their work. The assumptions they’ve used to claim annual economic benefits in the region of $6 billion appear to be that every year 409,000 different individuals take courses (no repeats year on year, since they base annual benefits predominantly on their projected increase in income over the remainder of each student’s life).
It looks PWC certainly know how to get on the gravy train that is consulting for the government.
Oh come Lianne, thats pretty weak isn’t it? Quoting and old guy with a dying wife learning how to cook and implying through misty eyes that as the typical punter taking up community education.
Community education is all well and fine when its not taking funds out of primary state functions such as education, health, core infrastructure and welfare as a last resort.
I remember when evening classes like learning to cook were run by the local school for a small fee.
Cake Decorating is not in one of the Otara schools brochure that has a night class programme. The most popular courses at that school are English (for the workplace) and Learners License.
There are some places out there that charge $800.00 for the learners license Theory course (including the test), this course charges $20.00 (excluding the $79.00 test fee – students have to go and sit their test themselves).
By the way, before someone says they go to a local Private Training Establishment to get one – they can’t… TEC also cut that funding!
It’s not about bleeding heart or sob stories, it’s about access to affordable education.