Fears rise over impact of night-class cuts

Night classes enabled Bernadette Papa to mix with people from all walks of life and led to an honours degree. Photo / Greg Bowker

The wider ramifications of cutting funding to night classes cannot be determined by quick number crunching, top sociologist Joce Jesson says.

And Aucklander Bernadette Papa, whose life was turned around by the classes, is devastated that others will not be able to benefit as she has.

Dr Jesson, a senior lecturer in social policy at the University of Auckland, has written a paper which claims the original goals of adult and community education cannot be met if education becomes corporatised and highly dependent on grant funding.

The real reason for community learning is to build social capital as it forms relationships around communities, she says. "It's about getting people hooked on learning."

Dr Jesson is deeply concerned about the knee-jerk reaction of the National Government that announced cuts of $13 million or 80 per cent of funding for night classes.

She is worried that by turning all its focus to literacy and numeracy, the Government has turned the purpose of education into obtaining a qualification.

"They have forgotten that a really important part of education is citizenship or civic duty. It's what we are lacking already," Dr Jesson said.

Bernadette Papa left school at 16 and laboured in shearing sheds in Wairarapa. There she met her gang-member boyfriend, who built himself a more lucrative career robbing banks and ended up in jail.

While he was inside, Ms Papa had her first child at the age of 20 and went on the benefit. "We were the rejects of society," she said.

But she began to gain a sense of purpose when, at 26, she moved to a state house in Orakei and took up night classes at Selwyn College. It started with fashion design. Ms Papa did not like the clothes she could afford so decided to learn to make the clothes she wanted. She then did drawing, leadlighting and car maintenance.

"It gave me an outlet," she said.

And when she formed a support group for wives of men in prison and became treasurer, she decided to do a small business and GST course at night school. "I was in a class with some people who were quite professional. I mixed with people from all walks of life. It opens new doors - in your mind even."

And it also gave her the confidence to go on to higher study at university.

Ms Papa's younger brother, whom she raised after their parents died, was the first to go to university.

"We grew up in Otara. People don't go to university," she said.

It was his bravery in doing so that prompted her to attend the night classes that eventually led her to follow suit.

In 1998, Ms Papa came off the benefit. And in 2003, at the age of 38, she marched up Queen St with an honours degree in geography.

Ms Papa said it was wrong to take that opportunity away from others.

She would not have been able to leap from the position she was in to that of a university student. "I needed to take baby steps - you need to learn to crawl before you can run."

She is "devastated" the funding that helped her is being cut, because she had been convincing some of her whanau to do community courses.

Ms Papa now works in heritage and resource management for the local iwi, Ngati Whatua.

Maryan Street, the Labour Party's tertiary education spokeswoman, said the economic impact of the cuts had been "seriously underestimated".

On the Auckland isthmus alone, Adult Community Education (ACE) providers contribute a collective $700,000 to 160 community courses offering training for community volunteers, such as budget advisers.

Ms Street said the downstream economic benefits of funding for community education were "almost incalculable".

Night classes were just as important for learners' self-esteem as for getting them to take responsibility for their own upskilling or fitness or mental health, she said. Without them, there would be health costs to the country further down the track.

* ACE providers have organised a march in support of night classes, starting at noon on Saturday at Myers Park, just off Queen St in the CBD.