Nick Smith National Education Spokesperson
23 May 2002
Real school budgets go backwards
Education Minister, Trevor Mallard, has again diddled schools of funding by not properly compensating their operations
grants for inflation, for the third year running, says National's Education spokesperson, Nick Smith.
"Labour promised to inflation-proof the operations grants for schools, but has shortchanged them of $21 million in
funding. This year's increase of 2.2% is again less than the official inflation rate of 2.6%.
"This follows last year's increase of 1.6% when the official inflation rate was 3.1%.
"The average school is receiving $8000 less in real terms in operations funding than three years ago. This means schools
are having to cut real programmes for children from their schools.
"Shortchanging schools at a time of record budget surpluses is false economy. There will be no knowledge economy when
schools are facing real cuts in funding," says Dr Smith.
Ends