Guy Gifford: Rise and rise of integrated schools

Aspirational parents will obviously take advantage of a system where they can get private school education at a government-subsidised rate. Photo / 123rf Downloaded for an article on school uniforms.

OPINION

In recent months, the Herald has provided a smorgasbord of “answers to our flagging educational standards”. I just don’t see anything that will make much difference, at least in the short term.

Alwyn Poole emphasised the role of the teacher, and a “back-to-basics” approach. “Get me to the school on time”, neatly dressed and well-fed.

Dr Michael Johnston castigated the Ministry of Education for persisting with failed teaching methods. He may be right that “self-directed learning” means kids progress more slowly than they would if their learning was led by expert teachers.

Kathy Spencer pointed out deciles determine only 3 per cent of funding and asked “why are we spending so much time changing something that will make so little difference?”

But surely a major factor is the rise of integrated schools? In fact, the whole competitive model of “Tomorrow’s Schools”?

According to Max Rashbrook, “we have created the most unequal education system in the world”.

Integration was a rescue mission for Catholic schools. Government funding would bring them up to state standards so no child was left behind.

Safeguards were introduced to ensure the schools would not profit from taxpayer support and go on to eclipse the taxpayers’ own schools. Equality was the aim, not superiority.

Our integration legislation was intended to prevent what happened in Australia. In 1975, our Catholic schools wanted a subsidy they could build on with a fee of their own. Our government (Labour) ruled out a subsidy as schools might add fees and become exclusive.

Instead, it provided full government funding on the condition the schools did not demand fees. They could ask parents for a donation but the schools were expected to operate at the level of our state schools’

Legislation was drawn up on the lines of the Scottish Denominational Schools Act, with two major differences. Scotland (like Ireland) had a long history of religious squabbles and the Catholic religion was seen as an expression of national identity in the face of the hated English. Whereas, New Zealand was apathetic in the field of religion. More importantly, any “donations” in Scotland were administered by a local body, not by the individual schools.

It’s hard to imagine the parents at Waikato Diocesan happily donating $9000 a year when most of the money would be redistributed to parish schools and kura? In New Zealand “Tomorrows Schools” ensures the donations are retained by the school, in reality, fees-in-drag.

In fact, our integrated schools are better off than fully private schools. Parents do not pay GST, and the donation entitles parents to claim a refund of 33 per cent on personal taxation. Whether these donations truly are “charitable gifting” will only be determined when Inland Revenue takes a test case to court, and IRD refuses to do anything so silly.

So full funding hasn’t worked. Even a casual survey of towns with similar school make-up will show the integrated schools have outstripped the state schools on all obvious criteria; buildings, exam results, teacher/student ratio. A comparison of decile levels says it all. In almost every provincial centre, Catholic high schools have a higher decile rating than state schools. An exception is Palmerston North, a university city where the state boys and girls high schools (decile 9) are exceptionally high. But even there, the Catholic school is ranked higher than the three suburban state schools.

Does this mean that the Catholic community is the most affluent in each of these centres? Perhaps religion is more important in the provinces? I don’t believe that.

Guy Gifford is a retired teacher who taught at state and integrated schools. Photo / Supplied

It indicates aspirational parents are taking advantage of a system where they can get private school education at a government-subsidised rate.

Even parents with no interest in the Catholic faith, or any faith for that matter, are enrolling their kids where they get free private education. If they choose to give a donation towards the architecturally-designed buildings, or to a better student/teacher ratio, it doesn’t hurt much because the taxpayer refunds a third as tax rebate, free of GST.

Australian concerns about the widening gulf between rich and poor, and the decline in education standards, led to businessman David Gonski being asked to investigate. The Gonski report, in its simplest form, said that state schools would continue to provide the heavy lifting, and therefore deserved the bulk of the funding. He considered Australia needed to “reduce payments to over-funded schools and re-direct funds on a needs-based model if differences in educational outcomes were not to remain the result of wealth, income, power or possessions”. Gonski’s vision failed because the Australian government could not stand up to the Catholic lobby demands that their schools retain their existing share of education funding.

In 2004, the then New Zealand Minister of Education set out to reform the integration act. He printed a public discussion paper with a summary of the problems and possible solutions. But he realised the fight he was buying and the move was quietly shelved. The gulf has increased steadily in both countries.

How do you achieve some equality in our system if the best students, the most dynamic teachers, and the most supportive parents are all filtered off to the sanitised environment of the integrated schools?

- Guy Gifford is a retired teacher who taught at state and integrated schools.