Independent School Funding Row Easily Sorted

Independent School Funding Row Easily Sorted

“The row over funding for Arorangi Private School, which has now enrolled 35 pupils in a distant Murupara kura kaupapa to gain state funding, could easily be settled by introducing child-centred funding for compulsory education” says Joy Quigley, Executive Director of Independent Schools of New Zealand.

“If the funding for compulsory education followed the child, as it does in preschool and tertiary education, then schools like Arorangi wouldn’t have to resort to complicated arrangements.”

“It is quite wrong for the local Tokoroa state schools to be outraged and say it is ‘unfair a private school could receive government money’. What is unfair is that New Zealand children cannot equally access education funding because of the ownership structure of the school their parents choose to send them to.”

Independent schools in New Zealand currently share a capped grant of just over $40 million dollars, which equates to approximately a third of the cost of educating a child in the state and state integrated sectors, depending on the age of the child.

“This cruel funding system adopted by the Government, that forces parents to pay three times for their child’s education through taxes, school fees and GST on those school fees, saves the state well over $100 million per year from the education budget” said Ms Quigley. “It is an indictment on the Government’s funding arrangements that Arorangi had to resort to a bureaucratic and time-wasting process to gain access to the tax-payer funded education that should rightfully be there for their students” said Ms Quigley.

Joy Quigley Executive Director Independent Schools of New Zealand Ph: 04 471 1924 joyq@isnz.org.nz INDEPENDENCE – A MATTER OF CHOICE

ISNZ represents 43 of the 110 independent schools in New Zealand, but not Arorangi Private School.

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