School Funding Failing Vulnerable Students

School Funding Failing Vulnerable Students – Time for a Better Way?

Schools with the greatest needs get too little to meet those needs, says PPTA president Angela Roberts.

The current school funding system is failing to support our most vulnerable students and this morning delegates at PPTA’s annual conference will discuss whether it is time for a different way.

“A needs-based model of resourcing for schools – time for a national discussion?” is a paper that looks at schools’ reliance on locally raised funds for resources such as staffing, the lack of security in school resourcing and the need to support those with behavioural and special education needs.

“When locally raised and decile related funds are added together, decile one schools have just $350 per student more than those in decile 10 schools to address their relative educational disadvantage. $350 equates to 5% of total school funding yet an Australian review (the Gonski report) recommends students from lower socio-economic backgrounds should attract an extra 50%,” Roberts said.

“Teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions, and these are determined by the resources invested in them,” Roberts said.

“As most of these resources are invested by the state, how much, and how they are delivered are political questions.”

The timing of the paper was auspicious because education minister Hekia Parata had made a number of public comments about wanting a new funding model, Roberts said.

“She appears to be talking about outcomes based funding – something similar to the model used in tertiary. The government purchases a number of, say level one NCEA credits, and the school agrees to deliver them. If the school succeeds all is well, if it fails it loses funding for the following year.”

The OECD has reviewed outcomes-based funding and warned it can lead to “gaming and perverse incentives,” Roberts said.

This year’s conference paper explores what “needs-based” could mean in terms of school resourcing and recommends PPTA seek to work with other organisations to initiate discussions on this.

The paper discusses what “needs-based” funding could actually mean and contains a number of questions which could form the basis of a national discussion about how we want to fund our schools.

PPTA’s annual conference runs from September 30 to October 2 and is an opportunity for members to debate, discuss and vote on papers that will shape PPTA policy. Decisions are made by secondary teachers for secondary teachers.

The full papers are available at: http://www.ppta.org.nz/events/annual-conference

ENDS

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