Frustration at Lack of Funding

By HARTEVELT, John

A Rangiora mother is so desperate to get her sons into alternative education she is telling them to “light up in class” to try to get them suspended.

Tracey Tierney, a mother of six, said she had come to the end of her tether trying to get her middle two boys, aged 13 and 14, into a productive school environment.

“They cannot fit into the system because that’s not how they learn,” Tierney said.

“The Government expects these children to follow the curriculum when they mentally can’t.”

She had tried for eight years to get funding for her boys to get special education, but they did not meet criteria set out by the Ministry of Education. “He’s not naughty enough for alternative education – he doesn’t fit the criteria,” she said.

“Do I allow him to be naughty to get resources? I’ve got to the stage that yes, I would.

“What other grounds do I have? I have to break the rules – I am doing that for the best of my boys.”

Troubled North Canterbury students can be referred to the Maungatere Alternative Education Centre in Rangiora for an alternative education programme.

The director of the centre, Simon Walmisley, said the centre was one of dozens around the country that faced going under because of a lack of funding.

Funding for alternative education, and the number of students able to be placed on alternative education programmes has not changed since 2000.

“Services that have made the programme effective in the past are just getting whittled away so we’re just getting less effective as time goes by,” Walmisley said.

“There’s quite a lot of kids waiting to come here but we can’t afford to take any more.”

Walmisley said the situation was made worse by Government measures cutting the number of early leaving exemptions in half, which kept children in school who did not belong there.

Rangiora High School principal Peggy Burrows this week lashed out at the new policy, and Walmisley yesterday echoed her criticism.

“If you cut exemptions in half, then you’ve suddenly got 3000 to 4000 kids in school when they don’t want or need to be,” Walmisley said.

The Ministry of Education has twice delayed a promised review of alternative education.

There are 1820 spots for alternative education in New Zealand – 116 of those spots are allocated to Christchurch.

The education director at the YMCA Christchurch, Roz Service, said the Government was “trading on the passion” of teachers working in the alternative education sector.

Funding for the YMCA alternative education programme had not changed in nine years, despite an estimated increase in costs in that time of about 30 per cent, she said.

“As long as we get paid second-class money, it’s hard to provide a first-class facility,” Service said.

The senior manager of schools and student support at the Ministry of Education, Jim Greening, said that the review of alternative education had been delayed until March 2009 to take into account the Government’s new Schools Plus initiative.

Alternative education was the last resort to make sure all students engaged with education, he said.

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(c) 2008 Press, The; Christchurch, New Zealand. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.