User-pay night classes will spell end for many courses

Have you ever done a night- school class at a secondary school? If the answer is yes then you're in good company. Hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders have expanded their interests, tried new things or built up skills for a new job via night classes at their local high school.

The classes, called Adult and Community Education (Ace) by the Government, include such things as car maintenance, healthy cooking, quilting, budgeting, ballroom dancing, computing skills, yoga and a hundred and one other subjects.

What makes these courses so popular and accessible are government subsidies that keep the costs low.

But night school is under a death sentence from an 80 per cent cut in government funding in the Budget. In a slash-and-burn move the Government has ended its commitment to lifelong learning and shown its contempt for what the minister derides as just hobby classes.

It was a neat coverup on Budget night. The Government painted education as a winner because overall education funding increased by 2.9 per cent from $10.5 billion to $10.8b.

Not bad in the teeth of a developing recession. However, most of the extra spending was for capital development for new schools and what was hidden from view was a wide range of savage cuts in all areas of public education.

The funding cuts for Ace are particularly harsh and it is here that the greatest community impact will be felt. Funding for these programmes in the tertiary sector has been almost halved while subsidies for high-school night classes have been slashed by four-fifths.

The sector is rightly angry and determined to fight the cuts. Community Learning Association in Schools (Class) President Maryke Fordyce says over 200,000 adults enrol in Ace courses every year and these funding cuts will change the landscape of community learning as we know it.

She says the association is devastated by the likely impact of the cuts on communities.

The 212 high schools involved each employ a part-time co-ordinator and between them the schools employ some 15,000 tutors. All this is now under threat and it's not just hobby courses that will be affected.

For example, Fordyce points out that schools are required to use at least 9.5 per cent of their Ace funding to fund programmes provided by community groups and this includes assistance for refugees and migrants, preparing healthy food, anti-violence courses and courses for Maori and Pacific Island communities.

"We are devastated as National want to go to a user-pays system," says Moana Papa, the Ace co- ordinator at Tangaroa College in the Auckland suburb of Otara.

Any hobby courses will no longer be subsidised by the Government. For instance, a $45 sewing course will cost $135 in 2010. Communities like Otara will suffer - no-one will be able to afford to come to Ace courses.

Maxine Boag, the Ace co-ordinator at Napier's Colenso High School, says that in Hawke's Bay this year about $50,000 is being spent on classes run by Women's Refuge, the Napier Family Centre, Napier Parents' Centre, Pukemokimoki Marae and a driver's licence course in Samoan.

When he was in opposition National's Finance Minister Bill English was strongly supportive of night school saying: "For more than 50 years, night classes have provided a leg-up for people wanting to return to the education system. National supports these low-cost courses. The current system of night classes through schools works well and should not be tampered with." This political cant comes from the man who is now cutting the $16 million government subsidy to just $3m.

The value for money of these courses isn't in question. A report prepared in 2007 by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the Adult Community Education organisation in New Zealand concluded the estimated national economic gain of this type of adult education is $4.8b to $6.3b. Not bad for a government investment of just $16m per year.

Remember this is a government which found $35m extra to increase the subsidy for the privileged who attend private schools but can't maintain just half that amount for night schools to benefit the entire community.

Budget documents spell out bluntly the effects of the cuts: It is likely that there will be only a small number of schools receiving Ace funding for 2010 and beyond.

If enough people are angry and let their local MPs know then the Government will reinstate this funding. If you don't do it for yourself, make a call to your MP or send a letter on behalf of your friends, family and neighbours who may be learning Moroccan cooking or how to manage the family budget in a recession.

Do your bit to stop English's irresponsible act of community vandalism.

- © Fairfax NZ News