Children at Glenfield Primary School can be forgiven if they don't know their alphabet.
Vandalism at the school has got so bad that the $1500 silver letters which spelled out the school's name have been stolen.
Broken windows, graffiti and other damage costs Glenfield Primary thousands of dollars
each year. It is in New Zealand's worst area for the cost of vandalism per student - a problem which the latest Ministry of Education figures show cost more than $8 million in the last financial year.
Yesterday, students and teachers arrived to find black skid marks all over a netball court and charred concrete where a car had been set on fire. The concrete will have to be resealed.
Teacher Louise Kaka said vandalism last year cost the school $5468, but had already cost $3136 this year - not counting $1500 for the silver letters and the as yet unknown costs for the damaged concrete.
She believed the school was a target because it was also a thoroughfare to a shopping centre. Students were upset about the damage and the school was deciding what it could do to prevent future incidents.
Ministry of Education figures reveal that more than $8.5 million was spent on grants and top-ups for dealing with vandalism in the 2005-06 financial year.
But the ministry's property manager Brian Mitchell said most of that money was not actually spent on vandalism repair.
Schools could spend their "vandalism grants" on other school property if they pleased, which about 90 per cent of them chose to do.
Each school's grant is determined by its roll and the history of vandalism.
North Island schools are allocated much more funding, with the North Auckland region, which includes Waitakere and North Shore schools, accounting for the country's highest ratio of vandalism-to-students, and receiving $16.58 a pupil.
The lowest North Island ratio was in Hawkes Bay, with a cost of $6.42 per pupil. South Island school grants ranged from the country's lowest at $4.87 per pupil in Dunedin to $6.65 in Nelson.
