Anger over linking fees and school-ball tickets

By Theresa Garner

The Ministry of Education is warning colleges not to use school balls as a lever to push parents into paying fees. Glenfield College will not let students buy ball tickets unless their parents have paid their school fees.

Another Shore state school, Long Bay College, asks non-fee-paying parents to contact the school at ball time. Principal Derek Stubbs said the practice often exposed financial hardship of which the school was unaware. Enrolment at state schools is free and fees are voluntary.

The ministry's national operations manager, Ray Webb, said that while it was up to schools to decide who attended balls, the issue was a matter for concern.

"When you start making a link to payment of school fees and using it as a mechanism or a lever to get students to pay fees, I think that schools should be very mindful of the purpose for which they charge a school donation. "I would be disappointed if a school was using it to deny students a right to attend a function when payment of a school donation is voluntary."

The warning follows the ministry's knocking back Ponsonby Intermediate's attempt last year to levy a $700 "student charge," which included $450 labelled compulsory in the school's prospectus. Mr Webb said then that the whole lot had to be voluntary.

A Glenfield College single parent, Kristina Belsham, said last night that her sixth-form daughter was initially not allowed to buy a $60 school ball ticket out of her pay from a part-time job because of the school's policy. The girl's father, however, had since paid the school fees totalling $180 for her and her younger sister.

Kristina Belsham, who struggles to pay the rent, said the policy was mean, and punished her daughter for coming from a financially stretched family. Glenfield principal Warren Seastrand said he knew many parents struggled financially but so did schools. "If we had to depend on the Government operations grant, you would get basic schooling, but you wouldn't get a good education."

The ball was subsidised, he said. Other things sponsored by school fees included the library, computers and sports equipment.

If parents were suffering hardship, the fee would be waived. "I would be happy to talk with her [Kristina Belsham] and find out what sum she could manage. If what she could afford is zero, that's fine." But Kristina Belsham dismissed that as having to grovel. "Education is meant to be free. It's the principle of the thing."

She had tried to talk to Mr Seastrand, but spoke only to his secretary, who told her that her daughter could do work around the school to pay off the fee.