It sounds like the community has lost a real asset. And parents have lost choice – memo Heather Roy. NOt that Heather Roy would understand true parent choice anyway!!

THe state does not hesitate to squeeze “failing” schools these days, in the hope that they go way. Fair comment?

This whole closure has the reek of conservative Christchurch doing over the local darkies by taking advantage of the most stupid minister of education since Lockwood Smith.

There has been a lot of nonsense talked somewhere(?) about decile inequity, yet some of those other schools are dealing with the same decile in some of their pupils (a school’s decile rating must be an average across all their pupils). All of the schools in that area deal with pupils with the same socio economic backgrounds as pupils from Aorangi because there are communities of low socio-economic status dotted around the whole area.

Pretty obvious from that that by 2007 the Ministry has decided the school should close, they put it to the Minister who decides to defer as there is an election looming with Labour well behind in the polls. But in the meantime the school has to be kept open so they are strung along with temporary buildings. I guess if they had got their classrooms they would have been relocatables.

All that I have stated is public information that you can find on the net or on the school’s own website. I have no
insider knowledge. What do you claim that is insider knowledge? It is all public information and common sense.

I feel very sorry for this community, the kids, the fantastic staff and the BOT who have been such strong advocates for these kids. This is inequity at work and a there is a real lack of justice – all of NZ should be ringing her office (as advised by Jason Gunn this morning on his radio show) and letting her know what they think of this traversty.
Incidentally, the same radio show called her Anne Wolley – quite liked that – thought it fitted her well.

Your comment that Aorangi was created as an overflow is indeed correct – it was considered the fitting more children onto the Wairakei site was not a wise idea and yet now, 50 years later when the school is much larger than it was then, that is exactly what they plan to do. Not surprising many of the Wairakei parents aren’t keen on the idea either.

When you write a statement such as “It is a well proven fact that larger schools offer more opportunities to most children and a large school or specialist centre can be very effective at delivering niche programmes like the ones that are being talked about at Aorangi” you should consider the key concepts of “most children” and “can be” more carefully. Unless you feel you can honestly write “all children” and “are very effective” (and I give you credit for being honest enough not to do that) then I think logic would have to support the option of allowing access to a variety of educational alternatives even if they are more costly in the short term for the long term benefit – I note you had the decency not to argue that point.

Once more I note you try to simplify the argument – this time down to small vs big. If you had followed and understood the situation more accurately you would realise the size argument is only being made by the MoE and the Minister.

Aorangi and it’s many supporters very rational argument is that the services, programmes and experience that Aorangi currently provides/possesses would be extremely difficult and costly to replicate in a timely manner at other local schools. It would be naïve in the extreme to claim that children will not fall through the cracks as has happened so many times before (different governments – same ministry) and considering the research clearly indicates that one such “dropped” child will but an economic burden on the state of some $3 000 000 dollars I still fail to see any logical or rational argument for shutting the school.

And as for your ongoing argument about the duplication of resources the opposite is probably true. Aorangi is a magnet school for the relatively small number of children who need the programmes they offer. Once transferred to other local schools their needs will not change and instead the fairly labour intensive programme will need to be duplicated in the other school for a smaller number of children but at a much higher cost.

Once more – this is not a simple situation, it does not have a simple answer and the wrong decision will cost society financially and socially for years to come. As a parent of children growing up in that society I don’t want to see them facing that ongoing burden.

In a nutshell one of the things that is being implied is that a small school should be kept because large schools nearby couldn’t do a good enough job.

If that were true there should be no schools over 100 in NZ and there would be thousands more schools.

But in fact education is being delivered effectively in schools whether large or small and in reality this argument does not stack up, but small schools are more expensive to operate and have other issues. There is no simple answer to the swings and roundabouts of small vs large but there is simply no clear cut evidence to support the notion that a small school is automatically better than a large one.

I also have confidence, having had connections in the past with three of the schools that are within that close radius that we mentioned, that all of them will do their utmost for the children that moved from Aorangi when it closes, and there is no reason on that basis to suppose that there is any rational evidence for claims that these children will fall through the cracks at the other larger schools.

Aorangi School was started as an overflow from Wairakei, not because there really was a need for another school in an area that is very well served.

Ultimately the MOE are entitled to decide whether the school operates as they are paying out large sums of money to any school in NZ and have to be publicly accountable for those funds and this is the same for any school regardless that receives any public money from the government. The Labour Government closed quite a few schools in their last terms so I think Lianne is exploiting this matter mainly politically because there doesn’t seem to be any other sensible explanation.

Also has Labour ever sat on land and said they will not sell the land of a school they closed, of course not and one that comes to mind is selling land at Kingslea (which is also a school) when the community around it was campaigning for it to be closed because of their obvious interest in enhancing their own property values. That obviously is not happening here so that we can clearly rule out such suggestions. As these are public funds it is fairly obvious that we expect the government to sell that land and return the funds for taxpayer benefit and saying that is not beneficial to education is nonsensical.

It is a well proven fact that larger schools offer more opportunities to most children and a large school or specialist centre can be very effective at delivering niche programmes like the ones that are being talked about at Aorangi.

You may say crow flies is irrelevant but the fact is that people who are sending their children to Aorangi live in all sorts of different addresses and some of those are likely to be much closer to these other schools than the distances I have given which are just a guideline.