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Parata: 'Most' schools to get extra funding
Mon, 30th May 2016
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Education Minister Hekia Parata says is pleased with how the education sector has reacted to the Budget 2016 announcement last week, saying most schools will receive extra funding as an outcome of the target discretionary funding announced.

Parata says most schools will receive funding increases as a result of the decision to target discretionary funding to schools teaching students most at risk of under-achievement.

“The final allocations won't be known until July enrolment data is matched with Ministry of Social Development data, but indicative modelling shows that the overwhelming majority of schools will receive some extra funding,” explains Parata.

“Only a very small number of schools will receive no increase,” she says. “At this stage it looks like that number will be 1 to 2% of total schools.

“Those will be schools with no students who lived either 75% of the first five years of their lives or 75% of the last five years in benefit-dependent households,” says Parata.

“The same modelling suggests that more than two-thirds of schools will receive increases that are greater than the inflation rate and schools with significant numbers of students from disadvantaged backgrounds will receive considerably more,” she explains.

Parata says she is pleased with the maturity of the reaction of the education sector to the Budget announcement.

“Teachers and principals have the best interests of kids at heart and they recognise that some schools need extra resources to meet the educational needs of their students,” she says.

The money being allocated through targeted funding is the equivalent of a 1% universal increase in school operations grants which would have resulted in $16 for every student, but under this targeting will mean $80 for every student from a long-term welfare dependent family.