Schools to vie for parents in Government plan

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Schools and teachers will be pitted against each other to try to win over parents under a scheme suggested by a government working group.

Yesterday Associate Education Minister Heather Roy unveiled the scheme, which has support from National, Maori and ACT.

She said the top, gifted children and the bottom, worst-performing children would be able to switch between schools during the school day for different subjects.

Parents would also find it easier to choose from a wider range of schools.

"At the moment, a certain amount of money is allocated for each child ... but parents very often have little choice as to where they can go to access that because the money is given to the school," Mrs Roy said.

"If the money was given to the parents, or if the ability to spend that Government allocation was given to the parent to decide, I think you would find that very quickly, parents would be seeking out the opportunities that they wanted."

Mrs Roy denied it was a proposal for vouchers.

The working party report says there should be an eight-step initiative where the top 5 per cent of pupils and the bottom 20 per cent are identified and put on to a personal learning plan at an approved "provider". The provider would only be funded two-thirds of the cost of the child's course, with the final third paid as a performance bonus when the child succeeded.

Mrs Roy said that "in all likelihood" struggling schools would lose support from parents and lose funding. "Should we be supporting schools that are not educating our children well?"

Abolishing zoning rules was not a recommendation "at the moment".

The working party was set up as a condition of the confidence and supply agreement between the ACT and National parties.

Education Minister Anne Tolley said she would consider the report and had asked the Education Ministry to provide advice on it.

Frances Nelson, president of the primary teachers' union, the New Zealand Educational Institute, said the report was "a convoluted mish-mash of ideas" from the past and "a voucher system in disguise".

- © Fairfax NZ News