Charter school funding ‘a slap in the face’ for disabled children, mum says

Friday, 17 May 2024

Calls are being made for the more than $153 million that is being earmarked for new charter schools to be used instead to fix the struggling public system.

Associate Education Minister David Seymour announced on Tuesday $153m would be used to establish 15 new charter schools and convert 35 state schools to charter schools in 2025-2026.

Charter schools, which were launched in 2014 under a National government and shut down in 2018 by former Education Minister Chris Hipkins, are publicly funded but privately operated by non-profits or businesses. Schools are able to create their own curriculum, set their own hours and days of operation, and can employ unqualified teachers.

Christchurch mother-of-two Haylee Loader says when she heard about the funding, she felt like she had been “slapped in the face”.

Loader has been fighting to get her children, Jhaius, 10, and Marlee, 8, who both have autism and ADHD, the support they need at school.

Seeing that amount of money not going towards fixing the school system her children struggled with was frustrating, she said.

“I don’t understand it. We’re constantly faced with rejections and are told that we don’t meet the criteria.

“It’s been a constant battle to try and get my children the funding they so desperately need.”

Another mum, whose son has ADHD alongside a genetic disorder, said he was suspended this week due to a lack of support for him at school.

The school had funding for a teacher aide for only 30 minutes a day.

“If you’ve got that much money to do charter schools, why can’t you put that towards all of these children that are currently struggling,” she said.

“The whole thing is a joke.”

Charter schools cost up to $48,421 per student per year, according to information from the NZ Educational Institute (NZEI). According to NZEI, when adjusted for inflation, it would cost $60,000 per student today, compared to the $9000 per student public schools are funded.

Documents showed 30% of the cost (more than $35m) was departmental, back office spending.

Seymour said the charter school funding was largely done on a “per-student basis,” and will be “broadly equivalent to that for state schools”.

Seymour said the funding would cover the establishment of the new charter schools, institutional costs such as the authorisation board, and a “basic level of operational funding”.

But RNZ reported that Cabinet papers suggested charter schools would increase government costs yet may only deliver marginal benefits.

The papers showed the $153m, allocated over four years for reviving the schools, was mostly for the extra cost of opening and administering the schools, RNZ said.

That figure did not include money the schools would get for their students that would otherwise go to the state schools they attended.

RNZ said that, according to the papers, the Ministry of Education estimated that charter schools might deliver a benefit equivalent to up to $1250 per student per year - but only if they were 10% more efficient at delivering education than state schools. Long-term benefits could be greater, however.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins promised his party would “abolish” the charter school model if they returned to power.

“Charter schools are an ideological experiment that isn’t supported by evidence,” he said in a tweet.

NZEI president Mark Potter said the funding for charter schools was a “distraction” from the help needed in the public system.

The $153m could pay for 700 fulltime teaching assistants across the country, he said.

“It's frustrating to see things getting serious investment that the majority were not calling for, when the things that we have been calling for, for some time, still don’t get the investment they need,” he said.

Rachael Kavermann, a special education needs coordinator at a Christchurch primary school, said the funding could better serve children in mainstream schools.

She said charter schools were not the right environment for children with disabilities and was concerned they would be staffed with untrained teachers.

“Children with special needs are the most needy, they need the most highly trained and highly skilled people working with them.”

Trish Grant, from IHC, which advocates for the rights of people with intellectual disabilities, IHC’s said children with disabilities need teachers who understand the science of learning.

“It feels like children for whom the current education system doesn’t work, are being offered this other model that may not work for them either.

“Experimenting with children’s learning outcomes needs to be done on the basis of sound evidence, and it doesn’t appear to be the case here.”

But Alwyn Poole, who ran charter schools South Auckland Middle School and Middle School West Auckland between 2014 and 2018, said the funding would have a positive impact on learners with disabilities.

Models he had drawn up in the past for charter schools worked “extremely well” for children with disabilities, especially with smaller class sizes, Poole said.

He plans to establish a board to oversee several new charter schools.

“We have had a really significant number of children with conditions that made a stock standard state school situation really difficult for them.

“$153m being put into a fund to change things for Māori, Pasifika and neurodiverse children can only be a good thing. We have to do something.”

But Loader, who is unable to work because she has to home-school her children part time due to insufficient funding, said they had fallen behind academically by three to four years.

She felt hopeless and did not believe the Government had her children's best interests at heart.

“There is already a huge crisis with not enough funding and resources.

“Our children are being rejected for the help they need.”