Disabled child loses teacher to funding axe

ANDREW GORRIE/The Dominion Post

UNSURE FUTURE: Wiki Tamihana, 10, with teacher aide Ali Rankin, left, mother Sharlene Morunga and brother Piripi Tamihana, 2.

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A disabled girl has lost her government funding, meaning her one-on-one teacher aide is out of a job and her school must find community funding to keep her in mainstream education.

The Education Ministry says about 70 children have lost funding this year, at a time when the Government has pledged more money for special education.

For the past five years, Wiki Tamihana, 10 who has a tendency to wander and suffers severe epileptic seizures because of a brain injury from meningitis has been able to mix with her peers at Dalefield School in rural Carterton through High Health Needs funding.

The funding is for school-age children who need constant care and supervision, and who would be excluded from mainstream schools without a teacher aide.

The fund of $6.1 million a year provides teacher aide support for up to 550 pupils. The Government recently announced an extra $51m over three years for special education.

But within weeks of that pledge, the ministry has ruled that Wiki is ineligible for funding because younger children with higher health needs have been identified.

The $13,368 a year for 20 hours a week in school support she received has gone, and teacher aide Ali Rankin, who has supported Wiki throughout, will lose her job today.

"It is not about me being axed but about this little girl's right to an education," Ms Rankin said.

"She has grown at this school and is accepted and loved. Cages need to be rattled because access to education is a right of all."

Wiki's family does not want to burden the school, but fear her "exclusion" could jeopardise the inroads she has made to learning and socialising.

"One option was to home-school her but ... she would lose the social interaction," Wiki's mother, Sharlene Morunga, said.

"Our belief ... is that education is everybody's right, whether you have special needs or not, and Wiki should have all the support and the same rights as normal children."

Principal Kevin Jephson said the only choice left was for Dalefield to rally its community and budget to keep Wiki there.

"For us this has been soul-destroying," he said. "There are just 60 pupils and 10 staff and we are one big family. As we have invested so much time and energy and emotion into Wiki, we are keeping her here but it is going to be tough."

An intensive programme to safeguard Wiki will involve four teachers and a buddy system with pupils.

Education Ministry special education deputy secretary Nicholas Pope said the High Health Needs fund provided teacher aide support for 550 pupils.

About 70 children had had funding cut this year and the fund was full.

- © Fairfax NZ News