Struggling schools cost taxpayer close to $1m in assistance

12:20 pm on 12 August 2024

Natalie Akoorie, Waikato senior reporter

Photo: RNZ / Richard Tindiller

The Ministry of Education has paid almost $1 million to provide help for struggling schools.
Commissioners and limited statutory managers are in place at 63 schools across Aotearoa.
The government-appointed interventions are to fix financial, operational, and educational performance issues.

Commissioners and limited statutory managers appointed by the government to support struggling schools are costing taxpayers almost $1 million.

The figures, released to RNZ under the Official Information Act, show the statutory interventions at 63 schools during the past year have cost the Ministry of Education $994,973.

The costs are made up of hourly wages and expenses including mileage, travel time and accommodation for 45 limited statutory managers (LSMs) and 18 commissioners.

Statutory interventions put in place at a state or state-integrated school are used to fix operational risks, or risk to the welfare or educational performance of students. That included persistently high truancy rates, high suspension, exclusion and expulsion rates, issues of financial, personnel or asset management, and not complying with legislation.

Other problems requiring intervention included inadequate curriculum management, staffing issues that may influence student performance, persistently low student achievement and low achievement of particular groups.

The region with the most LSMs was Bay of Plenty/Waiariki, which had 11, and one commissioner.

Wellington had the next highest with seven LSMs and four commissioners, followed by Otago/Southland with five LSMs and four commissioners.

Waikato had six LSMs and Auckland two, along with four commissioners.

Of the total amount forked out by the ministry, $746,746 was income for commissioners and LSMs, who rather than receive a salary were paid for hours worked. The other $248,227 was for their expenses.

The ministry paid the highest amount for hours worked to Hawke's Bay/Tai Rāwhiti at $126,967 for the year. Its five LSMs and one commissioner were also paid $19,510 in expenses.

The highest amount of expenses paid to one region went to Bay of Plenty/Waiariki, with $66,956 claimed over the year.

The most paid in wages in one month was $37,080 in Otago/Southland.

There was no way to know exactly how much an individual statutory manager was paid because the remuneration was confidential. But the amounts paid by the ministry more than likely did not cover all money paid for statutory intervention - the rest of which was made up by school boards.

Ministry network and regulatory general manager Ray McMillan said under the Education and Training Act 2020, a school board was required to meet the costs of a statutory intervention unless deemed otherwise by the secretary for education.

He said the costs provided to RNZ, covering from July 2023 to June 2024, only showed the financial support paid by the ministry for LSMs and commissioners.

"The ministry does not provide financial support for every statutory intervention. Where financial support is provided, it can be for the full cost relating to the intervention or a proportion of costs, shared with the board."

There were nine different types of intervention, and they remained in place until the secretary or minister of education considered they were either no longer required, or there was a change in risk level and another type of intervention was required.

The longest standing LSM had been in place for 1202 days - three years and three months - at Te Kura Māori-ā-Rohe o Waiohau between Whakatāne and Galatea in the Eastern Bay of Plenty.

The commissioner in place the longest was at Ngataki School in the Far North, where he replaced the board of the new entrant to Year 10 school in September 2013. But Harry Burkhardt had never drawn an income nor claimed expenses for his role, the ministry said.

"The intervention has been recently reviewed with the Ministry of Education acknowledging that whilst progress has been made towards achieving the expected intervention outcomes, there is still work to do," a spokesperson said. "The commissioner's appointment has been continued for a further 12-months, to allow time to develop a transition strategy for the governance of the school."

They said of the 2500 schools and kura across the country, only 1.8 percent were under statutory management.

Of the 280 schools and kura in the Waikato the six with statutory manager support included: