KEY POINTS:
A Government review of schools for teen parents has uncovered problems relating to funding, governance, management and teaching - but more of the specialist schools are on the way.
Education Minister Steve Maharey put the development of any new teen-parent units on hold before the policy review more
than a year ago.
He is expected to lift the hold today in a speech to the Association of Teen Parent Educators.
He will announce that more of the specialist schools will be set up in areas of need and the support for mainstream schools that have teen parents as students will be further developed.
But he will also reveal problems found during the review.
"When a teen parent unit is set up, the review finds it takes a period of time and hard work to get effective governance practice established. Some are kilometres away from the school they're attached to."
Mr Maharey said the review found the units needed to share best practice information in a similar way to mainstream schools. And he said the ministry would look into how mainstream schools can adapt to provide support for teen parents.
Since 1997, 17 of the teen-parent schools, supporting 400 students, opened at an annual cost of about $4.6 million. Three are in Auckland, attached to James Cook High School, Auckland Girls Grammar and Tangaroa College.
An Education Review Office evaluation released this year also found problems with the quality of governance, management and teaching in teen parent units.
Released in February, the ERO report found teachers in 10 of the units provided learning programmes that met their students' needs. The other seven needed to improve the teaching quality.
It found 11 of the units had effective governance and management practices, but four had management structures that were only partially effective and two were not effective.
The ERO found many units had a very high student absenteeism rate and some were not recording student attendance information.
Retention was also an issue. One school had 29 students enrolled in 2005 but only seven by the time of the review last year. Mr Maharey outlined several projects under way to address the problems.
A "school improvement project" for teen parent units was in the early stages to link the units nationally and put the focus on teaching and learning.
"We do care about the educational achievement of young parents, and we are going to focus through the schooling improvement project on raising that achievement," Mr Maharey said.
He said the review found the units were generally positive and got students who would have otherwise dropped out back into class.
They provided social services, links and transport that young parents needed to stay at school.
Educating young Mums and Dads
Problems include
* High absentee and drop-out rates.
* Poor teaching in some cases.
* Distance from local schools.
