Mahi  Ngātahi  - Collaboration

Naku te rourou nau te rourou ka ora ai te iwi

With your basket and my basket the people will live
 

Talofa lava

Happy Sāmoan Language Week!  I do hope you have all taken the opportunity to appreciate the diversity of cultures in our schools by celebrating Sāmoan culture and language this week. It is through your schools accepting, embracing and celebrating different world views, such as Sāmoan culture, that our Pasifika young people will feel they belong in school and that their culture, identity and language is valued.  If we do that, we provide a platform from which our Pasifika students’ learning will flourish.

I am delighted that yesterday’s Budget acknowledged Pacific languages and has allocated $20million over four years to establish a new Pacific Language Unit.

Budget 2019

Dominating the news this week has been the Government’s first ‘Wellbeing Budget’.  Across many areas of the Budget is the repeated theme of supporting New Zealand families to make life more affordable for all. That includes education, as the Government gets closer to delivering its promise of free education.

We already knew that new funding has been allocated for 600 Learning Support Facilitators, training more teachers, making changes to the NCEA to reduce the frequency of assessments and to allow more in-depth study of a subject area and $1.2billion over four years for the teachers’ pay settlement.

It was not until 2pm Thursday 31 May however that the full Budget details were revealed.  Most of you will by now be familiar with some of the detail so I won’t expand too much here. 

Below are some of the main announcements that affect schools:

1. $150 per student (decile 1 – 7 schools – approximately 63% of all students)

The Government will pay schools (decile 1 – 7) $150 per student in lieu of seeking parent donations, through an investment of $265.6 million. This is a promise made by the Labour party during the election campaign and which schools will be very pleased is now delivered.  Families of nearly half a million children at 1,700 schools stand to benefit from this announcement, which brings the notion of ‘free education’ a step closer.

2. NCEA Fees

Fees are to be removed for NCEA and NZ Scholarship examinations affecting more than 145,000 households for 168,000 secondary school students.

3. School Funding through Operations Grants increase of 1.8%

It is rare to find a school that says they have enough funding to achieve everything they want for their students.  The Budget has increased the operations grant by 1.8% which is modest and .3% ahead of inflation.

4. Learning Support

Already announced is $98 million for learning support including funding for 600 Learning Support Facilitators, additional ORS funding and more spending on alternative education, early intervention and the intensive wrap around service.

5. Support for Māori students

$42 million over three years has been allocated to support Māori students to achieve educational success by addressing inequities and engaging whanau in children’s learning.  There will also be $14million to support teacher training in cultural sustaining ways of teaching Māori students. Next week we expect a further announcement from Minister Kelvin Davis of $45 million for those delivering Kura Kaupapa Māori Level one programmes. We hope this will help increase infrastructure and reduce the barriers such as having to travel to engage in immersion classes.

6. Boost for Pasifika students

Language, culture and identity are at the core of learning success.  The establishment of a new Pacific Language Unit provides a resource that schools will be able to access to support Pasifika students in their schools. There is $27.4 million over four years allocated to give Pasifika students skills, knowledge and equitable opportunities to pursue any education pathway and $7million for training teachers in culturally sustaining ways of teaching Pasifika students.

7. Property Investment Plan

A ten-year school property investment plan costing $1.2 billion has been announced to address the ageing school stock and bring all schools up to standard, plan for growth and plan new school builds.

8. Tackling child obesity

Nutrition and physical activity are two critical factors in academic achievement, physical and mental health. One in eight children aged 2 – 14 are classed as obese.  A $47.6 million programme will be introduced to promote healthy eating and physical activity in schools.  There will be new resources and guidance, health promotion staff and school physical activity advisors.

9. Creatives in Schools

$1million a year for a ‘Creatives in Schools’ programme so schools can bring in professional artists and creative practitioners to share their knowledge and practice with students

I will be back next week with more information.  

Tofa Soifua  

Whetu Cormick
whetu@nzpf.ac.nz