Salisbury School welcomes chance to engage with Nikki Kaye

28 April, 2017

Salisbury School welcomes opportunity to engage with Hon Nikki Kaye

Hon Hekia Parata not to make final decision on Salisbury’s future

Salisbury School welcomes the opportunity to engage with new Education Minister Hon Nikki Kaye after being notified this month by the outgoing Minister that she would not be making the interim decision on the school’s future herself. The school has also been informed that it would now remain open until at least the end of this year.

In a letter to the school’s Board Parata said that given she was leaving parliament at the beginning of May she was referring the decision - on whether the country’s only single-sex residential school for girls with intellectual disabilities will be closed - to the new Minister.

Salisbury School currently has 10 students and has been awaiting Parata’s interim decision since consultation started in June 2016. Since then a decision had been promised a number of times but had not been forthcoming. Parata first attempted to close the school in 2012 but the decision was overturned by the High Court.

The reasons Parata gave for deferring the decision is the short timeframe before she was due to step down, which she says did not allow time to give the proposed closure “thorough consideration”. She also noted the Board’s recent complaint to the Human Rights Commission.

The Board lodged the complaint to the Commission in early April following advice that the Ministry of Education’s Intensive Wraparound Service (IWS) policies and enrolment process into Salisbury are discriminatory against a group of high needs students under the terms of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the Human Rights Act.

Salisbury School Board Chair John Kane says the Board regrets Parata’s further deferment of the decision but welcomes the opportunity to engage with a new Minister.

“We look forward to having a fact-based conversation with Minister Kaye about the real demand around New Zealand for enrolment at Salisbury compared with the current low enrolment figures, which are a result of the Ministry winding the roll down by making it very difficult for students to gain entry,” he says. “We will renew our request that a different enrolment process be introduced as soon as possible to allow entry to those who need it most and who are unable to be supported appropriately in their local school. It should be a good discussion.

“As always, the Salisbury School Board is determined to focus on constructive ways forward and we’re keen to present to Minister Kaye the Salisbury Solution. It had been presented to Parata but in our view was discounted without the proper consideration it deserved. It provides for a specialist residential school for the growing number of young people with severe autistic conditions along with the school’s traditional role in the area of intellectual disabilities. We have developed the Salisbury Solution to meet a well-established need in New Zealand and is ready to go, is affordable, and the school has proven it has the ability to deliver on it,” John Kane says.

Meanwhile, Mr Kane says despite the immediate reprieve, the school needs to be supported properly to survive.

“This latest time extension of the consultation process does mean our current students will benefit from Salisbury’s expertise and facilities for longer and does give our parents some level of confidence in planning their daughters’ months ahead,” he says. “It also means that families whose daughters may have high and complex intellectual disabilities can continue their quest to be placed at Salisbury via the IWS process. The IWS is difficult to navigate but it is currently the only way to enrol at Salisbury, so we recommend they keep trying.

“However, the knowledge that the school will be open until at least the end of this year is a mixed blessing given insufficient operational funding, a function of the current low roll. It is also a fact that the Ministry has not released property funding allocated to Salisbury since 2005,” John Kane says. “If the school is to stay open it needs to be resourced on a sustainable footing. Most of all its needs to be opened up to the students who need it. Running it into the ground over the next eight months and then say it has no future beyond 2017 because it has no money and no students would be disingenuous.”

About the Salisbury School proposal

With the introduction of the Ministry of Education’s IWS in 2012, young people with autism and complex intellectual disabilities have fallen through the special education gap. To meet the challenge of this policy change, Salisbury School developed a proposal in 2015 for the school to become a specialist facility for young people at the severe end of the autistic spectrum and with intellectual disabilities. The proposal entails an adjusted enrolment pathway as many of these high needs New Zealanders are not getting into the IWS.

The Salisbury proposal offers a solution based on current international literature and best practice, utilising Salisbury’s current facilities and expertise. It requires no more funding than was granted in the 2015 school year for Salisbury’s notional roll of 30 students.

The proposal also allows for Salisbury’s excess land to be freed up for other educational purposes.

The school encourages parents and educationalists from across New Zealand to contact the school to find out how to gain a placement. Please email principal@salisbury.school.nz.

ENDS

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