Fighting poverty through schools as community hubs

2 October, 2013

Equipping schools to fight poverty by making them the centre of their communities is a very real way of addressing the achievement gap between rich and poor students, says PPTA president Angela Roberts.

Around the world teachers and policy makers are grappling with the problem of raising student achievement when socio-economic status has such a powerful impact on learning.

At PPTA’s annual conference today PPTA members will examine a possible answer when the paper ‘Equipping schools to fight poverty: a community hub approach’ is presented.

Roberts said a community hub school does what many New Zealand schools do already, but more so, and in a sustainable, coordinated and resourced way.

Hub schools offer health and social services to students, from drug counselling to physiotherapy, and host social services and early childhood centres on site so the barriers between schools and families are made porous, Roberts said.

They also partner with business and non-government organisations to offer opportunities for different types of learning and link schools and communities through shared use facilities like swimming pools, technology centres and libraries, she said.

“This is not a new idea, but it’s an idea whose time may well have come. The shocking rate of child poverty in New Zealand, with 270,000 children living in families on less than 60% of the median household income, is leading to loud demands for change.”

While there were many examples of schools doing their best to make this type of initiative work already – from communities being involved in running after-school homework clubs to health centres some schools have built with the cooperation of their local district health boards – unfortunately these were far from the norm, Roberts said.

“We still have schools that can’t provide drug and alcohol counselling because they don’t have the facilities for students and counsellors to talk with adequate privacy. There are regions with dozens of social services aimed at young people and families that have no proper relationships with schools. There are gigabites of data gathered by health providers that never reach educators who could act on it and school facilities sitting empty and unused by communities.”

“All of this could be overcome through a well-resourced and sustained policy of making schools into the community hubs they should be,” she said.

PPTA’s annual conference runs from October 1 to 3. It is being held at the Brentwood Hotel in Kilbirnie, Wellington and media are more than welcome to attend. It will also be webstreamed live at www.ppta.org.nz

The conference programme and papers are available at: http://ppta.org.nz/index.php/events/annual-conference

ENDS

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