Secondary schools battling the bulge

The "baby-blip" generation has reached high school, creating headaches for planners. ALAN PERROTT looks at the blippers' past, present and future.

They flooded into our primary schools during the mid-90s, and now they are ready to go to high school.

The baby-blippers are a legacy of the baby-boomers, the glut of New Zealanders born during this country's boomtime years of full employment and enviable living standards.

And they have been causing problems as primary and intermediate schools struggle to cope with their numbers and find enough teachers to instruct them.

Experts warn that without sufficient planning, the future could be even worse.

Who are the baby-blippers?

The phrase was coined by Professor Ian Pool from Waikato University for the offspring of the tail-end baby-boomers, the last of the huge numbers born during the postwar era from 1945 to 1973.

These "second wave" baby-boomers grew up during the emergence of women's rights and the contraceptive pill. As a result, more women moved away from the lifestyle of their mothers' generation, began careers and put off raising a family until they were in their 30s.

This generational change helped cause a drop in births during the '70s and a surge when they finally began reproducing in the late '80s. Blip births peaked in 1990.

Baby-blippers are also known as the echo of the baby boom and are now beginning to enter high school.

Was the blip a surprise?

Professor Pool says there should have been plenty of warning of the blips' arrival at primary school, but Governments in the early 80s failed to prepare adequately because of faulty advice.

He said the predictions given then caused the Government to close teacher training colleges such as Ardmore and North Shore and cut the intake of trainee teachers by 50 per cent.

The advisers based their calculations on birth rates during the 1970s. Rate fell dramatically in this period as Pakeha women began delaying pregnancy and Maori underwent the fastest decline in birth rates anywhere in the world.

Between 1971 and 1978, the average birth rate for Maori dropped from five to 2.8 a woman.

Based on this decline, the Government was told to expect 14,000 live births in New Zealand in 1990.

In fact, there were 60,000 births in 1990.

How has this affected schools?

The baby-blippers gained national attention within a few years as preschool centres and primary schools in some Auckland suburbs found their rolls were overflowing in the early 1990s.

As overcrowded primary schools in affluent areas such as Epsom and the eastern suburbs were forced to turn away children living nearby, angry parents wanted to know why officials had not seen this coming.

The National MP for Eden, Christine Fletcher, harassed the Ministry of Education and her own party's minister, Lockwood Smith, for years on their behalf, demanding new schools for the area.

But the Government and the ministry were reluctant to build them because they believed it was a waste of money.

They thought Auckland would end up with empty classrooms and under-used schools once the baby- blippers had moved on.

Were large numbers of extra schools built?

No, but the Labour-led Government said just over a year ago that they soon would be.

Education Minister Trevor Mallard promised to build 14 new schools over five years.

They would include primary schools in Howick, Manurewa East, Henderson and Albany by this year, two secondary schools in Manurewa East and Howick South in 2004 and probably a third secondary school in Albany the following year.

The Government said student numbers in Auckland city alone were expected to grow by almost a third - from 78,000 in 2000 to 103,000 in 2011.

In rapidly growing areas such as Albany and Howick-Pakuranga, rolls were forecast to rise by more than 2000 in the next 20 years.

This week some of the city's most popular schools - Auckland Grammar, Rangitoto College, Macleans College and Avondale College - said they were taking in about 500 extra third-formers this year.

The increase is partly caused by the population bulge but also by stricter zoning laws which have prompted parents to move into the school zone to guarantee places for their children.

As the baby-blippers move into secondary school, the Post Primary Teachers Association - the teachers' union - is warning of a shortage of teachers to educate them.

The ministry says about 300 vacancies are expected when the school year begins at the end of this month but schools will be able to cope.

Why are baby-blippers important?

Waikato demographer Dr Janet Sceats says the baby-blip children should be considered a blessing.

"We have the young work force coming through that a lot of European countries don't have but wished they did.

"We have a real opportunity as long as we make the right investments and ensure we have an educated work force coming through."

But New Zealand does not have a good track record of encouraging such population blips. The last blip left school around 1988, but this coincided with the country's huge economic restructuring.

Professor Pool is scathing about the manner in which these changes were introduced.

He says the job cuts came just when more jobs were needed.

He warns that if similar circumstances occur when the baby-blippers enter the work force they may be draining the economy by collecting the dole rather than boosting it with their taxes.

Can future blips be avoided?

Birth rates are dropping below the replacement rate of 2.1 in most developed countries. This means most couples are averaging more than two children, which will maintain the population level, disregarding immigration.

The birth rate in central Auckland has already dropped to 1.5, meaning the population is slowly declining.

Dr Sceats says this will change and the birth rate even out to a sustainable level only if the Government introduces more family-friendly policies such as paid parental leave, flexible working hours, subsidised childcare and tax breaks for parents.

She says many middle-income couples believe raising a family is too expensive, while women who have made a major investment in their education and careers do not want to sacrifice what they have achieved to have children.

The difficulty for New Zealand is that our birth rate fluctuations have been more extreme than in any other Western industrialised country.

The big birth peaks were in 1960, 1970 and 1990.

These peaks will continue to echo as each generation following the baby-boomers begins reproducing.

What are the implications of the baby blip?

The baby-blip children will eventually have to pay for the retirement of the baby-boomers. The question may be how generous they will feel towards the generation that introduced such changes as student loans.

There are also implications over how prepared the education system is to cater for the blippers. If they do not emerge from tertiary institutions and training schemes in sufficient numbers, they will not provide the tax base that will pay for retirement pensions, health and education.

Professor Pool says it is up to us to make our country attractive to our own people, so they will gain useful skills and then stay to raise families.