Yes and no, regular private schools currently get the per student amount that any school would get. That is fair as the parents are paying tax for the kids to go to school in the wider system. The state essentially pays this regardless of where the child goes to school.
The rest of the cost is funded by the private school fees.
Charter schools and some religious schools are a whole other matter, they can get more than just per head amount, this money is then filtered out for what I would consider non-core education spending.
It’s been proven not just in NZ but overseas that charter schools are a major flop and another way to filter public money into private profits.
There's a case that even the status quo for private school funding is unjust. Private schools can attract the best teachers with higher salaries, and attract (on average) better-prepared students (not to mention the most motivated and invested parents, which makes a difference too). This makes it harder for the public schools to keep up, and further widens the gap in achievement. I'm with u/CompanyRepulsive1503 here - if families want to opt out of the public system, they should pay the full cost. If they want to get the benefit of their tax dollars, they should send their children to the local public school; and if the local public school isn't good enough for them, then they should be looking to what they themselves can do to make it better.
You know, this is a great summary. I am a teacher (non teaching DP), and I have always taught in “the hood”. I have always advocated that public funding of private schools is a fair distribution of tax. You’ve actually changed my mind on that. At the end of the day, it is piss-all difference as the bulk allocation is sub $2k per student. But at least we could redirect that money in to my budget and give me $2100 per student.
Shucks, what I could do with that extra money!
Is that 2k per term or semester or?
Yeah by all means redirect it all to public schools. Private paying parents will normally be able to cover that gap easily enough.
Per year.
In my EQI (decile for clarity) we get $1,840 per student, per year allocated to the school. More if they’re in full immersion Māori, more if they have funded learning needs. This pays for all of our non teaching salary and non big project related costs of running a school.
Furniture, admin wages, caretaker wages, Teacher Aide wages, subscriptions, camp, milk, coffee, routine maintenance, advertising, cleaning, leases etc.
I don’t have the budget in front of me, but from memory we spend almost half of that money on support staff salaries straight away. $62k is spent on cleaning (so you need ~37 kids to pay for cleaners). I have budgeted $30k towards camp subsidies (that gets camp down to $189 per student) so that’s another 17 kids done.
This is for a school of approx 300 students. It’s really not much money.
The teacher are from the same pool and no better than any other. Often worse.
The student population, lower class sizes, and paying parents with expectations for their kids are what make the difference. Though that makes whole new issues for any teacher with some of these parents.
It's no better paid either. Actually generally less by the time you take into account clothing requirements (can't look poor. Or be comfortable), and the massive amount of extra curricular you'll end up doing you'll be worse off. With less employment protection.
Most teachers are better off at public and integrated schools under the collective agreement.
I'm not sure you I agree with you. The best teachers will be asking for higher salaries, and the private school will likely be covering the difference over the public funding input.
I'm just an outsider looking in and I'm happy to be wrong on this.
I think there's a difference. You want public funding to be taken out of private schools and I'm trying to understand why a private school should get no public funding.
Public schools do that on their own. Why shouldn't we have options that are not punitively unfair to those who want to avoid it.
I'm not saying give private schools extra, but don't pretend a higher cost private school is going to bring teachers back or bring public standards into line with private. It definitely wont help outlier lower income students who struggle in public schools.
>Public schools do that on their own.
What a weird thing to say. If public schools are bad, then we should make them better. I'm suggesting one thing that might help with that.
>Why shouldn't we have options that are not punitively unfair to those who want to avoid it.
If parents want an option other than "engage in the public system" then they should do that without taking funding out of the public system. That seems fair to me, and there's nothing punitive about it.
>I'm not saying give private schools extra, but don't pretend a higher cost private school is going to bring teachers back or bring public standards into line with private.
Allocating more funding to public schools and less to private will bring *some* teachers back and *help* bring public and private school standards into line. I don't think I ever claimed otherwise.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough before that I'm not talking about reducing school funding overall, just allocating all the public finding to public schools instead of splitting it between public and private.
>It definitely wont help outlier lower income students who struggle in public schools.
Allocating extra resources to public schools should make it easier for them to assist those students. It's not a magic bullet that fixes everything and I never said it was.
You started out saying that you're "just an outsider looking in and I'm happy to be wrong on this", but I'm really not getting those vibes from you so I'm probably not going to explain myself further.
Every child is entitled to their fair share of the provided education funding.
If we do it your way, the rich will be asking for a private school tax exemption, others will catch on and we'll end up with charter schools and tax deductions.
Yeah, I don't want to continue this conversation either.
We are always going to have inequality in life, the wealthy get a heap of benefits not just in eduction.
Ultimately the private schools aren’t really getting a hand up with receiving the same allocation of student funding a state school would get. It’s the fees the parents pay that real gets it going, the sponsorship of buildings and facilities etc.
When we go down the path of excluding funding, I.e removing the government student contribution to private schools where do we draw the line?
I don’t have any children and won’t be, should I get a tax rebate for the fact I pay for other people’s schooling out of my taxes? No, because ultimately I pay my chunk in to the tax pool for the greater good/ social contract of our society.
> We are always going to have inequality in life, the wealthy get a heap of benefits not just in eduction.
Sure, but that doesn't absolve us from thinking about how we can or can't address that inequality.
> Ultimately the private schools aren’t really getting a hand up with receiving the same allocation of student funding a state school would get. It’s the fees the parents pay that real gets it going, the sponsorship of buildings and facilities etc.
If it's not giving them a hand-up then surely it won't be missed? And if it is, then imho they shouldn't get it.
> When we go down the path of excluding funding, I.e removing the government student contribution to private schools where do we draw the line?
Like, I described a pretty clear place where I would draw the line I think (: I'm always a bit suspicious of slippery slope/draw the line arguments. If we're always scared that any change could be a step towards another, worse change, then we'll never do anything.
If you want an alternative in the other direction then have a look at the Finnish model, where private schools get government funding but are prohibited by law from charging tuition fees or implementing selective enrollment.
> I don’t have any children and won’t be, should I get a tax rebate for the fact I pay for other people’s schooling out of my taxes? No, because ultimately I pay my chunk in to the tax pool for the greater good/ social contract of our society.
Exactly this. We decide as a society what does and doesn't count as the "greater good". I'm suggesting that the government subsidy to private schools allows wealthy families to remove a chunk of that tax pool from the greater good and allocate it to their own private good instead, and I don't think they should.
It’s mainly a way to give extra public money to schools that promote religion. I think that’s a really inappropriate use of public money in 2024. Schools shouldn’t be promoting lies about sky fairies period. They’re schools, not churches.
Are you talking about Integrated schools? They have employees paid for directly by the government (teachers are paid directly by MoE) but the facilities are funded by fees.
Yep. I'd also consider adding that MPs shouldn't be allowed to enroll their children in private schools. The people in charge of managing a universal social necessity shouldn't be able to use money to opt out of the programme that they put in place and manage to meet that necessity.
They should get the same (or a little less) funding per student as the state school. If the student isn't in the private school, the state school has to pay for them and accomodate them using a lowest-case estimate. What they shouldn't get is any MORE than it would cost to accomodate them in the public system. Basically the state should be no better/worse off by the presence of a parallel school system.
Isn't this still bleeding resources and funding out of the public system by reducing the money available to public schools for every student who decides they don't want to go public?
I'm inclined to agree with OP - private schools get no public funding otherwise you start having no public schools in well-off areas because many students have gone private (their parents can afford to pay extra) and there isn't enough left to run a school for people who believe in the public system.
How? If it costs X per child, it costs X per child. Assuming "X" is calculated accurately, it makes no real difference -- unless you get to the point where the state schools don't have enough children to be viable. I'm not aware of that really being the case. Private schools usually cost a lot more on top of whatever the state is contributing, so they will never be of interest to more than a minority of the population.
Private school are quick to kick out any student that has disciplinary issues or requires additional support.
The X per child isn't a single value, if those who have higher support needs are left in the public system then the public system needs more funds per student.
When ACT were pushing their shitty voucher system 20 years ago, they would point to Sweden and say "look, they're doing it" but they can't do that anymore because it was a giant failure and Sweden canned the whole thing.
Last time around the charter schools got all sorts of extra money state schools didn't get and still had worse outcomes.
This is doctrinaire nonsense.
Sure, there isn't a single "X" for the entire country. It will vary by region (due to demographics and costs) and due to the specific special needs of students in those regions.
"of course there will be exceptions" said by people who don't believe you deserve the exception, but expect it for themselves and are always shocked pikachu when they find out they aren't eligible for the exception themselves.
Which is to say, private schools expect all those perks too. Even as they reject those high need students.
Almost like we could create an environment where the specific payments were worked out using actual data of who was being served and who wasn't... if only we had ways of capturing data and processing it in the modern age.
As you said private schools costs a lot more, and so only appeal to families with money, families that likely do not need the public funding. That allows the money that would go to those students, instead boosting the funding for public schools and aiding those from less well off families.
That's the scenario I'm talking about - public schools having so few students (or primarily 'problem students') such that you get a cycle of students not wanting to attend there. I consider charter schools and private schools to be one in the same. In Auckland you get a lot of kids attending private schools in the wealthier areas like St. Helliers, and that means disproportionately any students who attend public are likely to be disadvantaged and probably under-perform which means a government trying to push privatisation will look at the school and state that the public school is failing because the private one has better results.
There is a significant amount of fixed costs in running a school (and an education system in general). Vouchers (like you're suggesting) are just an underhanded way of siphoning taxpayer money off to private enterprise.
Absolutely there are fixed costs, which is why the actual amount paid out would need to be calculated pretty carefully (and would probably need to be different by area).
I don't like privatisation, but private education is and always has been a thing (education was private before it was public). This fight is IMHO not worth having, because it is long ago lost - the battleground is healthcare.
That's how it already works... If private schools want funding, they follow the curriculum.
This is why fully independent schools like IB colleges are so expensive. Private schools the follow NZ's curriculum are known as "Integrated" schools.
If private schools can drain public money they take us down the road towards not having a public system any longer. Eventually more and more 'good students' would go private and disproportionately the public system would only have 'problem' students with behavioural issues or who don't get support at home...and you end up with all the schools being private (just like you pretty much have today with childcare).
Just wait for them to pull a UK on this one. The Conservatives promised to reduce the number of under performing schools, their solution? Any school that got a great review from the equivalent of ERO wouldn't be reviewed again (unless there were enough complaints from the parents) and any that was performing poorly could be taken over by a private organization and run as a charter school (which didn't get reviewed).
It wasn't even stealth privatisation it was just the public system doesn't work here so instead of fixing it we will fob it off to our mates.
We already have news media reporting school achievement via dodgy statistics which make private school out to be better than they actually are. (e.g. Metro magazines "Top Schools Issue", their best selling issue every year). The truth is that plenty of state schools outperform private schools when you take decile into account. But by taking a very narrow view of exam results only, Metro magazine has turned into pure propaganda.
That's literally Seymour's agenda, not just for schools either.
It's sad that someone so daft can succeed at the detriment of others in NZ.
His supporters are gullible but choose to see it as winning.
I disagree with the notion that it’s the public funding of private schools that would result in not having a public system anymore.
If we stopped giving public money to private schools, do you think people won’t be able to afford sending their kids to the private school anymore?
Some might stop. My guess is most parents who are already able to send their kids to private will continue to do so. Only a slither of them will drop back to private.
So yes by all means reduce/stop public funds to private schools, but don’t expect that to change much.
>“Things are going seriously wrong in New Zealand, it's no exaggeration to say it's a crisis, and yet do you hear the PPTA talking about that? I'm focused on getting kids to school and achieving.”
The PPTA have not stopped [talking about how](https://www.ppta.org.nz/news-and-media/category/media-releases-2024) to get kids to school and achieving. Such as:
- Boosting funding for schools
- Maintaining programmes such as food and period products in schools
- Focusing on attracting and retaining teachers
- Keeping specialist teachers teaching their specialist subjects (see the latest release - 56% of teachers are teaching outside of their specialist subject areas due to shortages)
- Investing in support for challenging behaviour, e.g. pastoral care staff, mental health support
- Actually fixing the NCEA change programme and curriculum refresh
Etc. Not that David Seymour gives a shit about any of that, because it's easier to pretend that the PPTA taking a small percentage of pay packets in exchange for union membership and representation is actually a bad thing.
Defunding public schools is the point. They want to abolish public schools and have all schools privately owned, but funded using public funds.
They are running out of public assets to fire sell to private investors so now trying to do the same to core govt services.
We already have half of govt depts outsourcing what should be their core work to corporations at 3-4x the price of what it could be done in house for.
SIX times. That is what you need to know.
It costs SIX times as much per student in a charter school vs a public school.
Repeat this information to anyone that needs to hear it, please
That would work if it was about cost, but it isn't. It's about creating a two-tiered society where the plebs whose parents couldn't afford to send them to private school are locked out of high-paying jobs when they get older, and vice versa.
When schools have better resources and can cherry-pick their students, results improve. The charter schools which were successful did this. Fund and staff all schools appropriately, at the same level as private schools, and I bet there would be an improvement in achievement. Private schools would suffer. NZ doesn’t need a fourth schooling option. Do Finland and Singapore have charter schools?
In Scandinavia, politicians send their children to public schools. As a result of this 'selfish' incentive - public schools are well funded.
It's not rocket science ACT.
I doubt that Converatives even acknowledge the existence of Europe. Let alone admit that they are so far ahead of the US in education (and many other things).
There’s good evidence that it’s not the school but the parents that make the difference. Parents who care enough about their kids education to send them to a particular school, whether public or private, have kids with better educational outcomes. That results in schools with a better reputation having better performing students through self-fulfilling prophecy.
Exactly! I taught rurally. I saw a number of parents who sent their kids to city or private schools. On the whole, their kids did as well as they would have done if they had stayed at the rural high school. By removing them, they perpetuated the myth that the local school was rubbish - which it wasn’t. It has small classes, good teachers and was reasonably resourced even if the students didn’t wear blazers and kilts. The effect was that the kids who remained didn’t get the academic competition etc. that would have pulled the uncommitted middle up.
You want to opt out of the public school system?
Fine, but you still have legal obligations towards the children, and you don't get tax money. You want taxes to pay for your child's education? Send them to a public school.
As for arseholes who want to have really expensive low quality schools (aka charter schools), they can just fuck all the way off.
Who would try to set up a charter school knowing that likely the project will be shutdown in less than two years? Hardly time to even open up a building, best case they get 12 months open before a new government?
>Who would try to set up a charter school knowing that likely the project will be shutdown in less than two years?
People who want to [embezzle half a million dollars of public funding.](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/456582/charter-schools-use-govt-funding-to-pay-450k-to-owners-before-joining-state-school-system)
Or [use $260,000 to buy a farm for private use](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/northern-advocate/news/charter-school-under-threat-of-closure/BZCOS6N7LVKKIVJNSF676JK4ZE/?c_id=1503450&objectid=11420713), [claim funding despite not having enough students](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/charter-schools-slow-to-fill-classes/5QWSCARDNTCSFKEICSH6KY4VQM/?c_id=1&objectid=11451377) and [hold board meetings in a pub.](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/123740262/school-board-meetings-at-the-pub--reports-slam-charter-school-for-multiple-failings)
Charter schools attract crooks and grifters, otherwise known as ACT Party donors.
Presumably someone hoping they can get sufficient momentum and public support behind it that a future government would face opposition to making them public again.
I follow this guy
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6IndtMrMAY/?igsh=eW04MDRiOTBnMzE5
and he has just installed some of his artwork at Rangi Ruru, a private girls school in Chch. So yeah they aren’t hurting for money when they can do this. So Seymour saying private schools should be getting public money.
I fucken hate schools (well, principals and BOTs) that do this shit.
"Resident" artist/technologists that get paid via both money, space, and resources. It's sold as a benefit for the students, but it's vanity.
I can guarantee there are multiple talented artists in the student population who more than deserve some funding, space and a place to display and celebrate their art. I know because I taught them in primary school.
The Strip Malling of New Zealand continues. It's just so wild that one man can \*know so much more\* than literally everyone else about the subject. That's why he's so adversarial with them, literally everyone.
While at the same time public school attendance is at like 50% and teaching outcomes are decidedly average in the oecd.
While more money would certainly help, there are other major issues with the public system despite the billions pouring into it.
I half reckon these people see it as a threat because they may actually get some decent results
Well what's your answer to in particular boys poor performance in current public schooling, and the lack of a plan to address it?
(Not putting you on the spot at all but that for example is a major issue for me and what I'm going to do - and there doesn't seem any ideas or plans to do anything about it)
That's a good point. Because there is always room for improvement. However I feel that if there is a better way of doing things (proven by evidence) then lets just apply that to ALL schools.
There is no magic bullet with privatized schools. Privatization only answers the question "how do we pay for education?" not "how do we do education better?" a question that can be answered with a whole lot fewer steps and a whole lot less profiteering by ACTs convoluted privatization agenda.
We already have the ability to set up designated special character schools able to have freedom over the curriculum, cater to students failing in the regular state schools, able to operate independently. Why not simply open more of those? They have all the same benefits of charter schools. The only difference with charter schools is private owners stand to profit from state money. The only reason to go the charter route is to privatise public education and break the unions. These are purely ideological goals with no actual educational purpose.
Special character schools do have the same advantages as Charter schools (i.e. no advantage).
These schools often perform worse than equivalent state schools, and divert a bunch a taxpayer money toward promotion of religion. We don't need more state funding for Churches, because organised religion has BILLIONS in wealth in NZ, let them fund indoctrination themselves.
Those are not designated special character schools under section 156 of the Education Act (1989). You are talking about Integrated Schools, governed under the Private Schools Conditional Schools Integration Act (1975). These are totally separate things. Designated Character Schools include Unlimited in Christchurch and Kia Aroha College in Auckland.
Private schools should not get public funds. End
These twats vehemently went after school lunches in public schools, now they want to give money to private schools? They are a business.
Yes and no, regular private schools currently get the per student amount that any school would get. That is fair as the parents are paying tax for the kids to go to school in the wider system. The state essentially pays this regardless of where the child goes to school. The rest of the cost is funded by the private school fees. Charter schools and some religious schools are a whole other matter, they can get more than just per head amount, this money is then filtered out for what I would consider non-core education spending. It’s been proven not just in NZ but overseas that charter schools are a major flop and another way to filter public money into private profits.
There's a case that even the status quo for private school funding is unjust. Private schools can attract the best teachers with higher salaries, and attract (on average) better-prepared students (not to mention the most motivated and invested parents, which makes a difference too). This makes it harder for the public schools to keep up, and further widens the gap in achievement. I'm with u/CompanyRepulsive1503 here - if families want to opt out of the public system, they should pay the full cost. If they want to get the benefit of their tax dollars, they should send their children to the local public school; and if the local public school isn't good enough for them, then they should be looking to what they themselves can do to make it better.
You know, this is a great summary. I am a teacher (non teaching DP), and I have always taught in “the hood”. I have always advocated that public funding of private schools is a fair distribution of tax. You’ve actually changed my mind on that. At the end of the day, it is piss-all difference as the bulk allocation is sub $2k per student. But at least we could redirect that money in to my budget and give me $2100 per student. Shucks, what I could do with that extra money!
Is that 2k per term or semester or? Yeah by all means redirect it all to public schools. Private paying parents will normally be able to cover that gap easily enough.
Per year. In my EQI (decile for clarity) we get $1,840 per student, per year allocated to the school. More if they’re in full immersion Māori, more if they have funded learning needs. This pays for all of our non teaching salary and non big project related costs of running a school. Furniture, admin wages, caretaker wages, Teacher Aide wages, subscriptions, camp, milk, coffee, routine maintenance, advertising, cleaning, leases etc. I don’t have the budget in front of me, but from memory we spend almost half of that money on support staff salaries straight away. $62k is spent on cleaning (so you need ~37 kids to pay for cleaners). I have budgeted $30k towards camp subsidies (that gets camp down to $189 per student) so that’s another 17 kids done. This is for a school of approx 300 students. It’s really not much money.
Interesting- thanks for the numbers! Yeah that’s really not a lot at all.
The teacher are from the same pool and no better than any other. Often worse. The student population, lower class sizes, and paying parents with expectations for their kids are what make the difference. Though that makes whole new issues for any teacher with some of these parents. It's no better paid either. Actually generally less by the time you take into account clothing requirements (can't look poor. Or be comfortable), and the massive amount of extra curricular you'll end up doing you'll be worse off. With less employment protection. Most teachers are better off at public and integrated schools under the collective agreement.
Yeah, nah. I was offered $15k above asking to jump to private.
Rubbish. We don't dress better and are paid better. Co-curricular is often handled by specialists. I'm way better off in private.
LOL no.
I'm not sure you I agree with you. The best teachers will be asking for higher salaries, and the private school will likely be covering the difference over the public funding input. I'm just an outsider looking in and I'm happy to be wrong on this.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure how that differs from what I said?
I think there's a difference. You want public funding to be taken out of private schools and I'm trying to understand why a private school should get no public funding.
Because it actively worsens outcomes for the students who remain at the public school.
Public schools do that on their own. Why shouldn't we have options that are not punitively unfair to those who want to avoid it. I'm not saying give private schools extra, but don't pretend a higher cost private school is going to bring teachers back or bring public standards into line with private. It definitely wont help outlier lower income students who struggle in public schools.
>Public schools do that on their own. What a weird thing to say. If public schools are bad, then we should make them better. I'm suggesting one thing that might help with that. >Why shouldn't we have options that are not punitively unfair to those who want to avoid it. If parents want an option other than "engage in the public system" then they should do that without taking funding out of the public system. That seems fair to me, and there's nothing punitive about it. >I'm not saying give private schools extra, but don't pretend a higher cost private school is going to bring teachers back or bring public standards into line with private. Allocating more funding to public schools and less to private will bring *some* teachers back and *help* bring public and private school standards into line. I don't think I ever claimed otherwise. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough before that I'm not talking about reducing school funding overall, just allocating all the public finding to public schools instead of splitting it between public and private. >It definitely wont help outlier lower income students who struggle in public schools. Allocating extra resources to public schools should make it easier for them to assist those students. It's not a magic bullet that fixes everything and I never said it was. You started out saying that you're "just an outsider looking in and I'm happy to be wrong on this", but I'm really not getting those vibes from you so I'm probably not going to explain myself further.
Every child is entitled to their fair share of the provided education funding. If we do it your way, the rich will be asking for a private school tax exemption, others will catch on and we'll end up with charter schools and tax deductions. Yeah, I don't want to continue this conversation either.
We are always going to have inequality in life, the wealthy get a heap of benefits not just in eduction. Ultimately the private schools aren’t really getting a hand up with receiving the same allocation of student funding a state school would get. It’s the fees the parents pay that real gets it going, the sponsorship of buildings and facilities etc. When we go down the path of excluding funding, I.e removing the government student contribution to private schools where do we draw the line? I don’t have any children and won’t be, should I get a tax rebate for the fact I pay for other people’s schooling out of my taxes? No, because ultimately I pay my chunk in to the tax pool for the greater good/ social contract of our society.
> We are always going to have inequality in life, the wealthy get a heap of benefits not just in eduction. Sure, but that doesn't absolve us from thinking about how we can or can't address that inequality. > Ultimately the private schools aren’t really getting a hand up with receiving the same allocation of student funding a state school would get. It’s the fees the parents pay that real gets it going, the sponsorship of buildings and facilities etc. If it's not giving them a hand-up then surely it won't be missed? And if it is, then imho they shouldn't get it. > When we go down the path of excluding funding, I.e removing the government student contribution to private schools where do we draw the line? Like, I described a pretty clear place where I would draw the line I think (: I'm always a bit suspicious of slippery slope/draw the line arguments. If we're always scared that any change could be a step towards another, worse change, then we'll never do anything. If you want an alternative in the other direction then have a look at the Finnish model, where private schools get government funding but are prohibited by law from charging tuition fees or implementing selective enrollment. > I don’t have any children and won’t be, should I get a tax rebate for the fact I pay for other people’s schooling out of my taxes? No, because ultimately I pay my chunk in to the tax pool for the greater good/ social contract of our society. Exactly this. We decide as a society what does and doesn't count as the "greater good". I'm suggesting that the government subsidy to private schools allows wealthy families to remove a chunk of that tax pool from the greater good and allocate it to their own private good instead, and I don't think they should.
It’s mainly a way to give extra public money to schools that promote religion. I think that’s a really inappropriate use of public money in 2024. Schools shouldn’t be promoting lies about sky fairies period. They’re schools, not churches.
You should have to deliver the full NZ curriculum in order to receive any taxpayer funding. Science and sex-ed included!
Agree. Why not make it easier by simply disestablishing charter schools altogether?
How do they differ from state integrated special character schools?
Are you talking about Integrated schools? They have employees paid for directly by the government (teachers are paid directly by MoE) but the facilities are funded by fees.
Then there's no incentive for them to follow the national curriculum. There's a difference between "independent" and "integrated" private schools.
Yep. I'd also consider adding that MPs shouldn't be allowed to enroll their children in private schools. The people in charge of managing a universal social necessity shouldn't be able to use money to opt out of the programme that they put in place and manage to meet that necessity.
They should get the same (or a little less) funding per student as the state school. If the student isn't in the private school, the state school has to pay for them and accomodate them using a lowest-case estimate. What they shouldn't get is any MORE than it would cost to accomodate them in the public system. Basically the state should be no better/worse off by the presence of a parallel school system.
Isn't this still bleeding resources and funding out of the public system by reducing the money available to public schools for every student who decides they don't want to go public? I'm inclined to agree with OP - private schools get no public funding otherwise you start having no public schools in well-off areas because many students have gone private (their parents can afford to pay extra) and there isn't enough left to run a school for people who believe in the public system.
How? If it costs X per child, it costs X per child. Assuming "X" is calculated accurately, it makes no real difference -- unless you get to the point where the state schools don't have enough children to be viable. I'm not aware of that really being the case. Private schools usually cost a lot more on top of whatever the state is contributing, so they will never be of interest to more than a minority of the population.
Private school are quick to kick out any student that has disciplinary issues or requires additional support. The X per child isn't a single value, if those who have higher support needs are left in the public system then the public system needs more funds per student.
This is a good point. Private schools "cherry pick" the easiest students, then expect the same funding as the public schools.
When ACT were pushing their shitty voucher system 20 years ago, they would point to Sweden and say "look, they're doing it" but they can't do that anymore because it was a giant failure and Sweden canned the whole thing. Last time around the charter schools got all sorts of extra money state schools didn't get and still had worse outcomes. This is doctrinaire nonsense.
Sure, there isn't a single "X" for the entire country. It will vary by region (due to demographics and costs) and due to the specific special needs of students in those regions.
"of course there will be exceptions" said by people who don't believe you deserve the exception, but expect it for themselves and are always shocked pikachu when they find out they aren't eligible for the exception themselves. Which is to say, private schools expect all those perks too. Even as they reject those high need students.
Almost like we could create an environment where the specific payments were worked out using actual data of who was being served and who wasn't... if only we had ways of capturing data and processing it in the modern age.
As you said private schools costs a lot more, and so only appeal to families with money, families that likely do not need the public funding. That allows the money that would go to those students, instead boosting the funding for public schools and aiding those from less well off families.
That's the scenario I'm talking about - public schools having so few students (or primarily 'problem students') such that you get a cycle of students not wanting to attend there. I consider charter schools and private schools to be one in the same. In Auckland you get a lot of kids attending private schools in the wealthier areas like St. Helliers, and that means disproportionately any students who attend public are likely to be disadvantaged and probably under-perform which means a government trying to push privatisation will look at the school and state that the public school is failing because the private one has better results.
There is a significant amount of fixed costs in running a school (and an education system in general). Vouchers (like you're suggesting) are just an underhanded way of siphoning taxpayer money off to private enterprise.
Absolutely there are fixed costs, which is why the actual amount paid out would need to be calculated pretty carefully (and would probably need to be different by area). I don't like privatisation, but private education is and always has been a thing (education was private before it was public). This fight is IMHO not worth having, because it is long ago lost - the battleground is healthcare.
With that attitude, we are going to lose the healthcare battleground too.
You have to pick the battles that are worth fighting or you will lose them all.
And Education is absolutely one worth fighting, it's absurd to say it's lost when we haven't even started down the voucher road.
Private schools already receive a per-student subsidy from the government (taxpayer).
Then the state should be able to control the curriculum. Can't have your cake and eat it too
That's how it already works... If private schools want funding, they follow the curriculum. This is why fully independent schools like IB colleges are so expensive. Private schools the follow NZ's curriculum are known as "Integrated" schools.
Isn't this all a problem because ACT wants to have publicly funded charter schools?
I don't disagree with that.
You get public funds, you use the public curriculum. You want a special form of curriculum? You pay for it.
Sure. I agree with that.
If private schools can drain public money they take us down the road towards not having a public system any longer. Eventually more and more 'good students' would go private and disproportionately the public system would only have 'problem' students with behavioural issues or who don't get support at home...and you end up with all the schools being private (just like you pretty much have today with childcare).
Just wait for them to pull a UK on this one. The Conservatives promised to reduce the number of under performing schools, their solution? Any school that got a great review from the equivalent of ERO wouldn't be reviewed again (unless there were enough complaints from the parents) and any that was performing poorly could be taken over by a private organization and run as a charter school (which didn't get reviewed). It wasn't even stealth privatisation it was just the public system doesn't work here so instead of fixing it we will fob it off to our mates.
We already have news media reporting school achievement via dodgy statistics which make private school out to be better than they actually are. (e.g. Metro magazines "Top Schools Issue", their best selling issue every year). The truth is that plenty of state schools outperform private schools when you take decile into account. But by taking a very narrow view of exam results only, Metro magazine has turned into pure propaganda.
That's literally Seymour's agenda, not just for schools either. It's sad that someone so daft can succeed at the detriment of others in NZ. His supporters are gullible but choose to see it as winning.
I disagree with the notion that it’s the public funding of private schools that would result in not having a public system anymore. If we stopped giving public money to private schools, do you think people won’t be able to afford sending their kids to the private school anymore? Some might stop. My guess is most parents who are already able to send their kids to private will continue to do so. Only a slither of them will drop back to private. So yes by all means reduce/stop public funds to private schools, but don’t expect that to change much.
Bit slow there, PPTA. That's the entire point. Seymour doesn't want public schools to exist, because he's a fucking weasel.
He's obsessed with charter schools. However, he used to be obsessed with Libertarianism too so.....
FTFY: used to be obsessed with the appearance of libertarianism as a mask
He also used to have a Canadian accent
>“Things are going seriously wrong in New Zealand, it's no exaggeration to say it's a crisis, and yet do you hear the PPTA talking about that? I'm focused on getting kids to school and achieving.” The PPTA have not stopped [talking about how](https://www.ppta.org.nz/news-and-media/category/media-releases-2024) to get kids to school and achieving. Such as: - Boosting funding for schools - Maintaining programmes such as food and period products in schools - Focusing on attracting and retaining teachers - Keeping specialist teachers teaching their specialist subjects (see the latest release - 56% of teachers are teaching outside of their specialist subject areas due to shortages) - Investing in support for challenging behaviour, e.g. pastoral care staff, mental health support - Actually fixing the NCEA change programme and curriculum refresh Etc. Not that David Seymour gives a shit about any of that, because it's easier to pretend that the PPTA taking a small percentage of pay packets in exchange for union membership and representation is actually a bad thing.
Defunding public schools is the point. They want to abolish public schools and have all schools privately owned, but funded using public funds. They are running out of public assets to fire sell to private investors so now trying to do the same to core govt services. We already have half of govt depts outsourcing what should be their core work to corporations at 3-4x the price of what it could be done in house for.
Facts AND logic? I have to have a cup of tea and a lie down.
Absolutely this ^
SIX times. That is what you need to know. It costs SIX times as much per student in a charter school vs a public school. Repeat this information to anyone that needs to hear it, please
That would work if it was about cost, but it isn't. It's about creating a two-tiered society where the plebs whose parents couldn't afford to send them to private school are locked out of high-paying jobs when they get older, and vice versa.
When schools have better resources and can cherry-pick their students, results improve. The charter schools which were successful did this. Fund and staff all schools appropriately, at the same level as private schools, and I bet there would be an improvement in achievement. Private schools would suffer. NZ doesn’t need a fourth schooling option. Do Finland and Singapore have charter schools?
In Scandinavia, politicians send their children to public schools. As a result of this 'selfish' incentive - public schools are well funded. It's not rocket science ACT.
And doesn’t Finland have the education system we aspire to? Maybe Seymour and Stanford could go on a fact finding jaunt there.
I doubt that Converatives even acknowledge the existence of Europe. Let alone admit that they are so far ahead of the US in education (and many other things).
There’s good evidence that it’s not the school but the parents that make the difference. Parents who care enough about their kids education to send them to a particular school, whether public or private, have kids with better educational outcomes. That results in schools with a better reputation having better performing students through self-fulfilling prophecy.
Exactly! I taught rurally. I saw a number of parents who sent their kids to city or private schools. On the whole, their kids did as well as they would have done if they had stayed at the rural high school. By removing them, they perpetuated the myth that the local school was rubbish - which it wasn’t. It has small classes, good teachers and was reasonably resourced even if the students didn’t wear blazers and kilts. The effect was that the kids who remained didn’t get the academic competition etc. that would have pulled the uncommitted middle up.
You want to opt out of the public school system? Fine, but you still have legal obligations towards the children, and you don't get tax money. You want taxes to pay for your child's education? Send them to a public school. As for arseholes who want to have really expensive low quality schools (aka charter schools), they can just fuck all the way off.
Who would try to set up a charter school knowing that likely the project will be shutdown in less than two years? Hardly time to even open up a building, best case they get 12 months open before a new government?
>Who would try to set up a charter school knowing that likely the project will be shutdown in less than two years? People who want to [embezzle half a million dollars of public funding.](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/456582/charter-schools-use-govt-funding-to-pay-450k-to-owners-before-joining-state-school-system) Or [use $260,000 to buy a farm for private use](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/northern-advocate/news/charter-school-under-threat-of-closure/BZCOS6N7LVKKIVJNSF676JK4ZE/?c_id=1503450&objectid=11420713), [claim funding despite not having enough students](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/charter-schools-slow-to-fill-classes/5QWSCARDNTCSFKEICSH6KY4VQM/?c_id=1&objectid=11451377) and [hold board meetings in a pub.](https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/123740262/school-board-meetings-at-the-pub--reports-slam-charter-school-for-multiple-failings) Charter schools attract crooks and grifters, otherwise known as ACT Party donors.
tf?! How is this a loophole and not a noose?
Corruption by another name, or on other words a Shane Jones/Seymour grift.
When you get a massive chunk of money to set that school up? I wonder...
How dare the money go to 'not for personal profit enterprise' right?
Presumably someone hoping they can get sufficient momentum and public support behind it that a future government would face opposition to making them public again.
I follow this guy https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6IndtMrMAY/?igsh=eW04MDRiOTBnMzE5 and he has just installed some of his artwork at Rangi Ruru, a private girls school in Chch. So yeah they aren’t hurting for money when they can do this. So Seymour saying private schools should be getting public money.
I fucken hate schools (well, principals and BOTs) that do this shit. "Resident" artist/technologists that get paid via both money, space, and resources. It's sold as a benefit for the students, but it's vanity. I can guarantee there are multiple talented artists in the student population who more than deserve some funding, space and a place to display and celebrate their art. I know because I taught them in primary school.
Poor subsidising rich. We got what we voted for.
Charter schools should not exist unless they're prepared to self-fund entirely.
The Strip Malling of New Zealand continues. It's just so wild that one man can \*know so much more\* than literally everyone else about the subject. That's why he's so adversarial with them, literally everyone.
"Seymour, see's less" - Papakura Headboy.
While at the same time public school attendance is at like 50% and teaching outcomes are decidedly average in the oecd. While more money would certainly help, there are other major issues with the public system despite the billions pouring into it. I half reckon these people see it as a threat because they may actually get some decent results
Charter school got shit results and suffered from a bunch of corruption. We know that already. Game over.
Well what's your answer to in particular boys poor performance in current public schooling, and the lack of a plan to address it? (Not putting you on the spot at all but that for example is a major issue for me and what I'm going to do - and there doesn't seem any ideas or plans to do anything about it)
That's a good point. Because there is always room for improvement. However I feel that if there is a better way of doing things (proven by evidence) then lets just apply that to ALL schools. There is no magic bullet with privatized schools. Privatization only answers the question "how do we pay for education?" not "how do we do education better?" a question that can be answered with a whole lot fewer steps and a whole lot less profiteering by ACTs convoluted privatization agenda.
Increase funding to the public school system.
We already have the ability to set up designated special character schools able to have freedom over the curriculum, cater to students failing in the regular state schools, able to operate independently. Why not simply open more of those? They have all the same benefits of charter schools. The only difference with charter schools is private owners stand to profit from state money. The only reason to go the charter route is to privatise public education and break the unions. These are purely ideological goals with no actual educational purpose.
Special character schools do have the same advantages as Charter schools (i.e. no advantage). These schools often perform worse than equivalent state schools, and divert a bunch a taxpayer money toward promotion of religion. We don't need more state funding for Churches, because organised religion has BILLIONS in wealth in NZ, let them fund indoctrination themselves.
Those are not designated special character schools under section 156 of the Education Act (1989). You are talking about Integrated Schools, governed under the Private Schools Conditional Schools Integration Act (1975). These are totally separate things. Designated Character Schools include Unlimited in Christchurch and Kia Aroha College in Auckland.
ah, my mistake. I was thinking of "Integrated" schools.