The PPTA want to close the door on schools wanting to integrate.
I think that to legislate to do that would result in a rush while the legislation was processed. I also think that it is wrong. Private schools are very cheap on the taxpayer, are needed as part of the network in some cities and in some cases are either innovative or fulfil specific cultural needs. Exterminating them or integrated schools might sound great rhetoric but it doesn’t make good policy sense.
Just to make it clear I think the government decision to increase the subsidies for private schools was wrong. To do it in this budget by cutting the funding of disabled kids and night classes was evil.
But the real issue is why some integrated schools are allowed to insist on donations well beyond the dues set out in their integration agreements with the crown. It was an issue in this post on Education Ownership.
Trevor – while I agree with what you’ve said, I think the content of what’s being taught at intergrated schools needs to be looked at a lot more carefully. I attend one, and am increasingly uncomfortable with some of the material and viewpoints pushed in religious education to be paid for by the taxpayer… is their any way the quality of what’s being taught at integrated schools could be more closely monitored? While I don’t agree that the door shoudl be closed on integration at all, I think it’s something that needs to be looked at.
Nicola wrote
Trevor wrote
And may I suggest that Religious Education would come under the heading of “specific cultural needs”, Nicola.
If you don’t like it you could always consider a different school.
Good post Trevor – the issue of how much an integrated school can seek in parental “donations” is one that does need looked at dispassionately.
I like the idea of “vouchers” myself – the State provides a given amount for each child’s education per annum which can be spent at any accredited educational institution. Parents can top this up if they so desire.
Nicola if you don’t want religious education don’t choose to go to that school, there are plenty of other schools around.
Integrated schools are not zoned as far as I know.
Well Trev, You can’t have it both ways, freeze their funding and then deny them the ability to raise money.
I’m too young to remember, but I recall the state integration system was introduced as a win-win – Catholic schools (particularly in lower income areas) got more funding and could afford paid teachers, and the state wouldn’t get poor education provided or school closures (and hundreds more kids to educate) as the number of people taking up religous orders severely diminished following Vatican II.
There still needs to be debate over whether a school has a special character and can integrate, or if it is a private school masquerading as a religious school to get more state funding. E.g. St Pats Stream would qualify, but HIBs might not.
Surely ‘religious school’ is an oxymoron?
You don’t ‘teach’ religion, you ‘indoctrinate’.
Stick to ‘free, secular and compulsory’ and if people want something different, let them pay for it.
A quick look at Australia, or the UK’s extraordinary funding of ‘faith’ schools under Blair’s New Labour, should be convincing.
@ Nicola and others – I think the key test is that the religious education is in line with the integration agreement. ERO has a responsibility for reviewing this which I understand the do in conjunction with nominees from the religious group.
@ GE. I think amendments make in 1999 and 2000 cover the stream/hibs point but it is still a ministerial decision. It is now academic but in my opinion the then minister should have and could have declined HIBs integration application.
@ Bernard – sorry if not clear – freeze private school funding, limit integrated school fees.
I never said that religious schools should not recieve the funding, sorry. What I meant was that the reviewing (that Trevor’s provided assurance of, cheers) needs to be a very serious part of it.
I don’t even have a problem with religious education. I just think it’s possibly getting a bit iffy where the school’s requirement to teach sexuality/health is merged in to being a part of the religious education course, and the potential messages kids could get from this, for example.
@ Delivery Boy – I don’t have a problem with having to study religion, otherwise I would have chosen a different school. To an extent, I don’t have a problem with the taxpayer payign for what IS a special cultural need. I do, however, have a problem with the state paying for kids being in situations where teachers are telling them that contraception is bad, and teaching prejudice against certain groups in society.
It is sometimes relevant to know why people participate in a blog. Prejudices are just as much part of history as other sorts of facts. My contribution is largely prejudice, based on my own limited experience. I was sent to neighbourhood schools in the later 1940s and early 1950s in common with nearly every child in suburban Wadestown. I expected to follow my mother’s example, and become a secondary school teacher, rather my father’s and go into in the civil service. Easy to see now that whatever schools girls went to, status and wealth largely depended on whom they married. There were honourable exceptions to this pattern, but I was not one. To get to the point: NZ society has never been egalitarian, yet it seemed to me, as a innocent NZ post-grad in London, that I could never fit in and this had something to do with my education. I was not the only Kiwi who felt, witnessing at close quarters something we had only dimly perceived from school stories or other sources, the British class system. Some of our ancestors had left the Mother Country to escape this. The life long advantages enjoyed by a tiny elite were inevitable as long as state funded grammar schools as well as the so-called public schools. The system, the now discredited 11 plus exam, selected a few ‘Winners’, labelled the rest ‘Losers” and spent the limited education funding accordingly. I felt better off in New Zealand (for all it backwardness & isolation) and came home after a few years. I tried other countries for a while, e.g., Ghana which had a world class secondary school system for the very few lucky ones who benefited from this. Any relevanceto current concerns in going over this past? Maybe not. Egalitarianism, however elusive & unachievable was not very long ago felt to be an element the growth of an NZ identity. Whatever our ties with the Mother Country, we did not aim to have the only excellent schools directed to retaining privilege for a tiny elite. I had no prejudices when I was young and would be happier without them now. But schools have changed out of recognition in the last 50 years. I cannot accept that it’s OK to
celebrate the BEST and deplore the WORST schools. Hard to believe, that not long ago primary schools did not bother with mission statements, they did not advertise themselves in the newspapers, nor claim that they were superior to competitors.No difference to the number of pupils and this policy, evidently divisive, costly and ultimately futile, is acceptable.. Secondary schools have always had distinctive uniforms and offered different experiences, e.g., most academic girls went to Wellington Girls’ College, but some travelled from the newly-built state houses in Wilton across town to Wellington Tech. I am an older than your other contributors, my prejudices are not all that important, but I conclude that I shall not vote for any party that promises to increase tax-payer funding to fee paying schools. The distinction between private schools and integrated ones blurs when both use uniforms, fees, curricula and other differences to mark themselves off from state schools attended by the majority of school age children. Trevor was known as an excellent Minister of Education. I am not the only voter who wishes he was stlll in that role. My prejudices stop me from accepting Trevor’s compromises. I can not vote for any policy which undermines my ideals. The New Zealand education system was formerly celebrated for it inclusiveness. IAs the Minister [yeah, right] I’ll abbolish private schools, integrated schools, even church schools. I shall stop the publication of school deciles because whatever purpose this novel practice is meant to serve, its effects are wholy adverse. However difficult, no government should get away with deepeningi the gulf between schools. Over 90% of voters still send their children to the nearest school. I would welcome any comment tho I doubt if there are still any readers. If there are, please tell Trevor that he has supporters everywhere. No place in this blog but it still puzzles me that Trevor had a bad spell for not even hitting Tau Henare when my former electorate MP, Gerry Brownlee, thumped an intruder at a National Party Conference in front of heaps of witnesses and all he had to do was say sorry.
I’ve seen a teacher who was giving religious instruction to a junior class at an integrated school on the reality and power of Jesus. The class was only year two and was of mixed ethnicity and included several Maori children. The teacher proceeded to tell the class how Jesus was “Really real,” and how “…all those Maori legends you’ve heard about – they are all just made up. Jesus is the only person who is magic.”
Fantastic. Taxpayer dollars going towards filling children’s heads with nonsense. The magical carpenter bit is probably the least of our worries. It’s the homosexuals are evil, just say no/abstinence, anti-contraception, intelligent design mumbo-jumbo that is far more damaging to the sponge-like minds of young children and teenagers.
So Patrick, to believe in Jesus and teach children at a Chritian school that Jesus is real is nonsence? Nice way to try and persecute a religeon.
I am by no means a religeous person. However if people choose to spend their money to send their kids to a school that teaches the religen they follow then I don’t hold that against them. As has already been said no one is forcing any parents to send their kids to these schools.
If the parents of those Maori families felt they weren’t happy with Christianity being taught then they could freely send them to another school. There are after all Christian Maoris out there.
Both sides have a point about the place of religion in an education system. There is an Education Act , and everybody knows that NZ schools are free, secular and compulsory, and have been since 1876 or so. Why are bloggers so angry and ungrateful?
You may well have other grounds for wanting your family to leave their local school. Religious education is a separate issue. A short note, signed by parent or guardian, gets a child out of the nutters’ classroom in state schools. Religious minorities and unbelievers have been doing this since the day the Act came in.
My problem is not quite the same. I disagree with the policy that says OK, for all their flaws and divisive social consequences, realists in the Labour Party will follow Trevor’s advice. I do not want my taxes to go to schools whose whole existence rests on their differences, some might think superiority, from their communities. I don’t want to persecute Bill English for his family’s choice: it puzzles me, though, that while Bill went St Bede’s in Chch, along with many political mates,
( Deleted Please leave MPs kids out of this blog Trevor )
I went to the Wellington Girls College, not only because I could walk there.It was generally believed to offer the best academic outcomes provided you got into the right stream and stayed there. I digress. I am seriously concerned about ithe increasing presence of “Christian” schools supported by Closed Brethren & maybe other tiny cults. I think these are cruel places because they exist solely to keep young kids away from the rest of us. I don’t like paying for the either.
The only issue I have with what you are saying Jenny is that you think a childs right to education and that educations support from the governmet should be effected by religeon.
Every child has a right to have some of their education costs subsidised. A set amount should be allowed for the education of each child. If you want something that goes beyond that feel free to pay for it. If you want your children raised in a way that matches your beliefs feel free to send them to the apropriate school. If that school incurs extra costs than you need to cover them.
You are missing the point Geek. Secular education is free. If a child wants an education then public and secular schools will enrol them for free.
I take exception to my tax dollars going towards the teaching of religion. As for me persecuting religion I am guilty as charged – not that religions themselves have ever persecuted anyone, apart from that guy called Jesus.
In a recent Metro magazine it listed, in it’s opinion, the best schools in Auckland. The usual schools were there but also a few that would surprise a few. From memory McAuley was around 16 and De La Salle was 30. These were the best performing decile 1 schools. I think James Cook High was the only other decile 1 school in the top 50. These two Catholic high schools provide quality education to some of the poorest families in Auckland. I went to De La Salle and I can assure that there is no cherry picking of students. What makes La Salle so good is that it takes students where they are with all the disadvantages that many of these students have and allows them to do the best they can. Not all students go on to be doctors or lawyers or even mayor of Manukau but given the disadvantages a lot is achieved. Funding these schools makes sense – quality education at an affordable price.
It seems that a few post above about integrated schools seem to have an undercurrent of religious prejudice. New Zealand has separation of Church and State and for good reason. However, we have come to the conclusion that the State won’t favour one religion over another. Therefore, we have Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian, and even Muslim schools. To change this approach would be quite a departure for New Zealand where the State starts to force people to accept certain belief system.
My earlier point still stands – if you cut funding for Integrated Schools, particularly low/middle income Catholic Schools – then those children will need to move back to the State Schools. Removing the funding still means it needs to go to a new school.
The question I think is not whether we should have integrated schools, but how a school needs to qualify to integrate. There are many schools (at least 100 – Trevor might have a better guess at the actual number) that would have closed over the last 30 years if it wasn’t for state funding provided by the integration process.
As an aside, almost all religions have “love thy neighbour” (or some variant) as one of their central teachings – if having religious education helps instill that ethic into more kids we’d be doing better.
my final comment here: outcomes do not always match expectations. Catholic schools and others came out of the integration debate as winners. Were they led by Pat Lynch, still an active campaigner for the rights of this group, or is he spokesman for the schools known as independent, i.e., strictly still private but also state subsidised? These are supposed to be distinct categories but the 2 groups are more alike than different. Both put a huge effort into securing still more public funding at the expense of the state system. They advertise themselves in the press and it appears that their principal drawcard is not a new one. They were established in the first place to educate a privileged minority. In the case of Wanganui, the origins are a little murky, but the school was built on probably Maori land, fair enough if the promise to educate poor Maoris had been fulfilled. No church leaders in the debates surrounding the establishment of a free, secular and universal state system, t inferior schools, a relatively depleted education supported this radical policy. Only the Catholic bishops had the power to require RC families to send their children to church schools. The local parish school where I grew up was avoided even by Catholics. It had all the characteristics of a sink school. Integration has changed all that and it depends on your perspective whether you think this is a good outcome. To my mind, the government was outdone by shrewd political operators. We now have a political deal that props integrated schools up with my money. If the political situation changes as a result of electors refusing to keep on with this arrangement which disadvantages local state schools, special funding would be withdrawn. Pat Lynch & other stress the importance of choice and the values of a Christian education. It is neither tactful, nor in the long run wise, to then go on to celebrate the image of integrated schools as special, superior, privileged and open to children of any faith lucky enough to be accepted into their relatively smaller classes. Any comments from people who have had a direct experience of these schools? I am open to persuasion.
And this is interesting – I did a bit of work to advise those involved on the process. Steve Maharey did too. Every now and again I wondered why – sort of like a direct credit to Nats trust funds. This is an example (albeit not a universally popular one) of a school(s) that would not survive if the Act was repealed :- http://www.educationforum.org.nz/documents/e_newsletter/08_09/Aug09_Westmount.html
Oops, just seen that my last rambling effort was read by someone, ‘Trevor’, who rightly censored it on the grounds that MPs kids should be exempt from attack. I meant this to be my final contrib because if I’m getting bored with the topic, what about the readers? Time to give up. What follows is not new ground: only apology & explanation. In the course of idly comparing Bill English who attended St Bede’s with many other good Catholic boys (including ex-St Thomas teacher, G Brownlee, famous for sacrificing a secure professional career in the classroom as a wood work instructor to perform selfless service for taxpayers. He worked at an obscure but perfectly adequate school for RC boys, admittedly not nearly as expensive as St Bede’s, but it’s there for less well off Catholics and anyone else who wants to pay for a church school albeit an integrated one). Catholic families whose father’s duties involve uprooting children from family homes in the south might feel that away from the local network, one was free to choose the right school for a child. Though church leaders no longer routinely threaten parishioners with all the powers of the church, some Catholic parents I know well have chosen to follow the approach Bill English’s parents and pay for their children to at St a very long way indeed from the family home. Complete consistency or family tradition might require their children of either sex to attend single sex RC schools. In the capital, these might be regarded as inferior to nearby state or private schools. The latter now has no problem welcoming practising Catholics. In spite of their special character, no private school seriously expects to waste time on religion & money when fees are already so high that some poor families struggle to keep their girls at schools like Mardsden. where most pupils couldn’t recognise the Anglican church if they fell over it. I knew nothing about blogs the day before yesterday and now discover for myself easy it is to become addicted and write rubbish. Luckily no one has to read it and it’s quick to delete. I apologise for breaking unwritten rules. I am grateful to be corrected. Yes, looks a bit abject & even cringing but this is a tricky area. I did not name any MP’s child, nor do I think they shld pay more than they already have to for adverse publicity. I’ll see if I can make a general point without causing pain. Christchurch is rightly famous for the importance of letting people know what school you went to. No secret that Bill and mates met at St Bede’s. All I meant to say was that National party members show us that some individual families , even of Ministers who are not rich and in fact quite poor because everything the rest of us enjoy (including IRD) turns out to be owned by a family trust. Though some come from backgrounds like dairy farming which are asset rich and cash poor, Ministers may choose to send their children to expensive private single sex schools if they have to live in Wellington. I don’t want to pay anything to help them even tho’ the Minister of Education and the PR for private schools patiently repeat the truth as they see it : $35 million is a tiny price for taxpayers to avert the damage done if rich but temporarily stressed families were forced on grounds of financial stringency to send their kids to state schools. This would flood them. No one would come off better. Some of the best & oldest schools are already forced to put their steep prices up so high that we do not help them their rolls will fall drastically and society would lose the richness & complexity taken for granted ever since a few schools chose to opt out of the system, assert a special character, & become ‘exclusive’ i.e., accept pupils whose parents could pay fees. Things have changed out of recognition: Sir Keith Holyoake and Norm Kirk had little in common but I understand neither stayed at school past Standard Four. Back to the elusive point: Ministers and their families want to incur their own heavy mortgages to keep big families together. Some parts of Wgtn are quite cheap to buy a house for a large family. Others are notoriously expensive, for example, Karori, in which a small minority of the more well-off find it convenient to send their girls to Marsden, an expensive single sex school, of special character but this does not means that you have to be a practising Anglican, the only distinction on which Marsden claims to have a special character. My only query, never having attended a church school myself though I claim to be Christian, is that there is presumably no compulsion for good Catholics to compel their children to go to good expensive Catholic schools if it means catching a bus when they cld walk to one nearby, in some cases possibly Marsden, a church school but not RC. Until recently, this wasn’t an issue. Priests compelled most (not all) parishioners to send their kids to the local parish school and to pay. Parents exercised their right to choose but the outcome wasn’t always happy.IPupils were ostracised by age mates, and got into fight with state school kids, who were, as now, the majority so the poor Catholics, identifiable by their uncomfortable dark uniforms, & taught by nuns who were sometimes not well qualified and did not like children. They missed out on walking to the nearest free state school and were likely to be beaten up if they met other groups of boys on the streets after school.There, it has taken me a long time to get to the point & I don’t care if, when ‘Trevor’ reads it, he has to censor it. My last note: I am sorry now that I took the taxpayers money in the 1960s, travelled to London, where I had to lived frugally but still went on holidays all over Europe. It it wasn’t my fault that my PhD is yet to be submitted tho decades have passed (Still a worthwhile topic, and who says never? a bit of help from friends and family & it may yet happen but, sadly, posthumously). My husband who the NZ taxpayer also supported indirectly got a scholarship at Birkbeck & moved on the waste the British taxpayers’ money. He improved our joint long term financial position by completing his Ph d, we returned to Chch, where I marked more so many essays for the History & Maori depts that there wasn’t much time forindependent research. Still the Ngai Tahu Claim turned up offering contracts not security and unbelievably well paid. No one wants to read why some one so narrowly qualified who still enjoys reading Mss in Maori no longer fits in with the Waitangi Tribunal. My problem: the Tribunal personnel, more sensitive to changing demands and with old members who knew me dying off, was capable of changing out of sight & I couldn’t change fast enough. I am now employed like everyone over 65 by Paula Bennett. We all live happily ever after, and who could complain about trivial things like the Waitangi Tribunal now seeing more clearly that history must subservient to the well defined grievances of claimants drawing on oral history. No time or money for backward-looking and even red neck conclusions based on what Maori wrote and were reported as saying in the 19th century. For a while there was some cash for this sort of stuff but what emerged wasn’t acceptable & the Tribunal had to suppress it. Tough and of course a waste of the tax payers’ money. Well, we g shifted from G Brownlee in Ilam to Grant in Wgtn Central. This ends like the best fairy stories, it’snot all sad, and altho I know this account has too mny ‘facts’ so it’s clearly an unreliable narrative, I’m going to post it. I know that ‘Trevor’ will have to read it first. in my previous effort no MPs’ children were named but it’s good to censor heavily. Points might emerge with more clarity when it’s shorter. Take out as much as you can but leave the happy ending. We all hope National will soon be replaced by Labour, that’s why I find red alert so exciting and try with mixed results to join in.
I thought PPTA was targetting Integrated Schools specifically. i.e. Schools should be state funded or privately funded but not a mixture of both. Hear Hear!D
And while I think of it here is an interesting Parliamentary question. HOW MANY schools have had enrolment schemes modified or created since the National took office? How many schools have advertised intentions to alter zonings in that period. (Was speaking to someone associated with Remuera Intermediate about some modifications there)
If you recall Trevor, Anne Tolley on the hustings was advocating relaxed zonings. Her ACT associate minister presumably upholds ACT policy in this area.
Could it be that we were promised relaxed zoning by the aspiring government, but the Ministry of Education continues as before? Has the new government undergone a reality check?
I would like to see everyone who complains about the integrated schools being funded to teach religious views, determine whether the religious component might be covered by the equivalent amount of the attendance dues paid. I have no idea myself. Integrated schools have to submit to full oversight of the State education system. As the Catholics have found out, keeping your attendance dues low means you end up falling behind the STate schools for facilities etc. I remember a Catholic primary school in the news a couple of years ago, they just raised enough money to replace their desks which were something like 50-70 years old.
Kudos to Trevor for that enlightened approach. It’s a pity his successor(s) in Labour appear to have had a narrower outlook, if the contrast when it came to approving roll cap increases is anything to go by. [I'll use that to qualify my comment in another thread about Labour's approach to integration. I don't know anything much about applications to integrate, I do know a bit about applications for roll cap increases]
As I articulated in the other thread I believe in a sort of voucher system, assuming it should only be applicable to schools that teach the national curriculum and are audited by ERO and meet the other Ministry requirements. Those schools also could not restrict applications except for the preference requirement of an integrated school.
Anyone who believes there is not an ideology being taught in secular schools is naiive. It just happens that it is much more controlled by the NZEI/PPTA and I believe one of the reasons for opposing integration is simply that these unions don’t have the upper hand in these schools like they do in most State schools. Also the PPTA’s claim that integrated schools are taking money away from State schools is untrue, because if the pupils were in State schools they would still have to be funded at the same rate.
My approach on roll cap increases was pretty simple – was there a need for additional places in the network – if so approve – if not decline. A good alternative if the state was otherwise building and expensive if it results in redundancies in other schools.