More cash needed for charter school money pit

27 September 2013
Immediate Release

More cash needed for charter school money pit

The bottomless money pit of the charter schools experiment has been exposed, with government documents showing that the initial $19 million to set up five charter schools may not be enough.

Ministry documents released yesterday reported that the funding was enough for four schools and additional cash would be required for a fifth school.

NZEI Te Riu Roa national secretary Paul Goulter said it was a disgrace that even more funding would be coming from taxpayers to fund private individuals and organisations.

“It’s just another demonstration of the totally inadequate process for setting up these charter schools. It’s been a mess from the start, badly thought out, plagued with delays and now it’s clear they can’t get their sums right either,” said Mr Goulter.

Minister Hekia Parata’s office has told The NZ Herald that additional funding was under “active consideration”.

“How come it’s so easy for the government’s ideological experiment with charter schools to get extra cash when needed, but public schools have to scrape and scrabble around to find money to pay teacher aides from one term to the next?” said Mr Goulter.

“I have no doubt they’ll manage to pull an extra $5 million out of the coffers for the fifth charter school, but this government cries poor when it comes to saving Christchurch schools or the world-leading School Journal.”

ENDS

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