President Judith Nowotarski said the law was clear that absolutely no school payments were compulsory, apart from attendance dues at state integrated schools and voluntary purchases of goods and services such as stationery or canteen items.
“Primary and secondary public education in this country is free. Schools can ask for donations but they must be absolutely clear that there is no compulsion to pay, and students may not be excluded from any activity because of non-payment,” she said.
“Schools are under massive budgetary pressure to deliver a 21st century education on inadequate government funding. The government must ensure proper funding so that schools aren’t forced to try to shift any of the cost of tuition or materials onto families.”
“It’s an extremely difficult position for schools to be in – we expect things like class trips and modern ICT, but schools simply can’t do it without putting their hand out to parents.
“The decile funding system is not the problem – whether they are decile 1 or decile 10, all schools struggle to make ends meet. The issue is that government funding is inadequate across the board. We don’t need to wait for a long, drawn-out review of the funding system to tell us the obvious. Schools need more money right now and we call on the government to significantly increase school funding.”
The latest available figures show that in 2010 New Zealand’s per student expenditure in primary and secondary schools was below the OECD mean across 31 countries.
Source: http://www.nzei.org.nz/NZEI/Media/Releases/2014/5/School_donation_ruling_exposes_the_need_for_greater_funding.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NzeiMediaReleases+%28NZEI+Media+Releases%29#.U9mHOPmSwcE
By this ruling, who is meant to supply stationary that the school requests a student get?
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Stationery is mentioned as something parents are reasonably expected to pay for.
“President Judith Nowotarski said the law was clear that absolutely no school payments were compulsory, apart from … voluntary purchases of goods and services such as stationery or canteen items.”
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I took that to mean that any extra stationary didn’t count but non voluntary purchases of stationary i.e. the stuff requested by schools, was counted e.g. a 1B4 that the school requested but the 101 pack of felts the child wanted didn’t.
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