Out of coverage over the weekend – and I’ve spent a bit of time reading budget documents and education articles -  and doing some thinking. Sometimes a bit dangerous as former colleagues discovered.

The Nact government’s decision to cut professional development by $36 million and to give $35 million of that to private schools is clearly one designed to repay their core constituency.

But it got me thinking about ownership in education, where private schools sit on that spectrum and whether in fact they are the most privileged.

First a bit of history. Roger Douglas as Finance Minister cut state subsidies to private schools to zero. The Bolger/Richardson government reinstated them. In the late nineties Jan Kerr, working for the private schools, commissioned a report that showed that GST on private school fees very nearly covered the subsidy. The cost, both capital and operational, of bringing kids from private schools that collapse back into the state system was considerable.

There was also some controversy at the time around schools being developed as private but with the intention of integrating. Hutt International Boys’ School was a case that costs the government millions a year.

Labour had policy and undertakings going into the 1999 election. We capped the funding. I made undertakings not to block genuine integrations – most notable with Wanganui Collegiate which at the time was suffering from the Asian financial crisis effects – and thought the integration door was about to close.

Now to the spectrum. I want to contrast Early Childhood Education and Schools.

Early Childhood starts with kindergartens, moves through community owned centres probably including kohanga reo and playcentres and then onto private centres starting with small stand alone centres and on to corporate chains where the service quality profit tradeoff is very clear.

For schools we start with state schools, move through integrated schools that are funded on a very similar basis to state schools but own or lease their buildings, through to private schools which unlike the private for profit ECE chains are generally long-standing and often – at least in origin – church related. Ownership is generally by a trust with no individual benefit. They don’t run at a long term profit and therefore the quality profit tradeoff is not an issue. The big difference is that they don’t commit to teach the New Zealand curriculum.

The group that is the most privileged is the integrated so-called ‘elite’ schools. They get the best of both worlds financially. They collect more or less full state funding and charge fees which I understand can be as high as $7k per year. Most families don’t have a chance of attending though they are nominally state schools.

So what should the policy response be? I’m not sure but probably a strict fee cap based on building depreciation or lease costs and/or a subsidy abatement regime that relates to the fees charged.

I’m interested in your views. It may just be that the government’s decision to increase private school subsidies has opened a can of possible savings or at the very least opportunities for reallocation based on fairness and equity.