I wanted to branch out after I finish and look at teaching gifted children. Have an avid interest in giftedness and the problems this can bring. Looks like I’ll have to find the money myself to help these forgotten children. Everyone thinks these children will go far in life but that not always the case. They can sometimes just give up as they become board and disruptive if not continually challenged. Would be interesting to see what will happen to them with National standards too. Some do not test well as so self critical that they panic when it comes to tests. Or another concern is that they will be held back to do tests of their age group, which would be a waste of time if they could do it a year before hand but made to to make the school look good, but I’m going off topic. I’ll have to fork out the money myself I think once I’m working and do that part time.

@Bea
It would also help if they didn’t add on childcare subs when reporting it as this is not income. No I didn’t think I would be here by myself after 10yrs together but here we are.

@Spud. Hi nice to see you back, and yes I agree.

I agree with you, Mother. I’m sure there’s not many mothers who thought they’d be raising their kids themselves when they first started out. Those who do look down on someone on the DPB should think about what their own position would be (or the mother of their children if they’re a bloke) if a divorce happened to them.

It would be more accurate if the government, when they are reporting the cost of DPB would report the figure net of child support. For those who don’t know, when a mother is on the DPB, any child support the father pays goes direct to the government.

Villifying students.

And the rules have changed so that you can’t get an extension to go on to postgrad study except in some very specific circumstances – as happened to my husband, who decided to do his master’s thesis partly because he would be eligible to extend the allowance. When he came to enrol for it, a few months later, that was no longer the case.

Grant – I hope you also picked up on the other point in Keys speech. IE the “real skills for real jobs” dump all the ‘worthless’ courses in our varsities/techs. You know the BA’s.

Me too (just when I moved out of home too..lol). Luckily I shifted to the living costs part of the student loan seamlessley.

“Just seems like people receiving the DPB are looked down upon. People were rather happy when the TIA was scrapped which covered childcare”

The attitude shown by many in this country really depresses me. The ironic thing is, that most people with those opinions on the talkback would have benefited in some way from the social security system.

Whatever respect I had for Paula Bennett went out the window when she spoke of getting a 3% Housing Corp mortgage at 19. That, combined with the generous abatment rates, and award wages for her waitressing job ensure that the only struggle she probably had was trying to get her childs father to cough up with maintenance or have her during the weekends.

Last night I attended a night school class (NZ Sign Language) where were told that new criteria had neen introduced for classes funded as part of literacy / numeracy initiatives.

Criteria include a requirement that 80% of students enrolled at the start of classes must attend 100% of classes. Failure to meet this benchmark will result in a funding review and possible withdrawal of funding.

I’m probably being overly sensitive.
Just seems like people receiving the DPB are looked down upon. People were rather happy when the TIA was scrapped which covered childcare. All you had to do was listen to talkback radio or look at online blogs to listen to what they were saying and now they haven’t even thought about the how we could do it.