No support for bulk funding proposal

No support for bulk funding proposal

8 September 2016

NZEI Te Riu Roa is calling on the Minister of Education to formally and immediately ditch bulk funding proposals for education, following the minister’s release today of a report showing education sector leaders categorically oppose the plan.

The Advisory Group*, including NZEI President Louise Green, called for the bulk funding "global funding" mechanism to be scrapped.

“We saw no benefits for children in this policy, only the potential for school budgets to be squeezed and forced trade-offs between costs of teaching staff and school running costs,” said Ms Green.

“The Minister has asked the education sector for feedback and the response is clear. Now we ask that this proposal not be forced on a sector that has emphatically rejected it.”

“We can’t support any funding system that leads to trading off teachers for other running costs, or increasing competition for enrolment. We are hugely sceptical of the so-called “per child” funding proposal and have placed strong caveats on this going forward for further development.

“Ultimately, to improve outcomes for our children, there needs to be better funding for schools and early education, not robbing Peter to pay Paul by just moving funding around.”

Ms Green said the response from grassroots educators at the combined PPTA and NZEI union meetings this week showed that the sector had no desire for a policy that held so many pitfalls for the quality of children’s education.

*"The schooling sector representatives do not support the introduction of a global budget...If the global budget concept had been supported by the wider Advisory Group, representatives from Ngā Kura-ā-Iwi and early childhood education and ngā kohanga reo could see potential benefits for their sector." (See p13 of the report.)

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