Education: Beggars and choosers

Classroom. Tick. School books. Tick. Teach­ers and assist­ing staff. Tick. School trips? Maybe Equal oppor­tun­it­ies? In the pipeline.

Fun­drais­ing ini­ti­at­ives take place in schools and col­leges across New Zea­l­and and are widely accep­ted as a great way of stump­ing up addi­tion­al cash for little extras, like play­ground kit or spe­cial ini­ti­at­ives. How heav­ily do our schools rely on these funds — funds usu­ally donated by par­ents and the com­munity on top of reg­u­lar fees (for inde­pend­ents) or taxes (for state schools)?

Some schools claim that their fun­drais­ing efforts are hugely import­ant and that the school would be a dif­fer­ent place without the addi­tion­al sup­port. With many par­ent teach­er asso­ci­ations (PTAs) and school boards work­ing togeth­er, fun­drais­ing all year round to offer a more inclus­ive exper­i­ence for all chil­dren, no mat­ter their back­ground, how reli­ant are our schools on this extra cash?

School fees and fun­drais­ing have been a big top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion in New Zea­l­and for years, with fun­drais­ing efforts — namely the ‘vol­un­tary dona­tion’ or ‘par­ent­al con­tri­bu­tion’ — being budgeted for along­side reg­u­lar fees. These addi­tion­al charges usu­ally sat­is­fy some addi­tion­al basic needs for the school, along­side fund­ing from the Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion and, typ­ic­ally, annu­al fun­drais­ing from par­ents and the community.

Col­our­ful money-mak­ing efforts include fun runs, fairs, quizzes and oth­er inter­act­ive events that encour­age the com­munity to get stuck in. With sev­er­al dozen schools in the great­er Wel­ling­ton region — and some par­ents hav­ing oblig­a­tions to more than one school — is fun­drais­ing really the way for­ward for cre­at­ing inclus­ive schools or are there altern­at­ive options?
Justine Fletch­er speaks pas­sion­ately about fun­drais­ing for her loc­al school, Ber­ham­pore Primary, and how their efforts reflect and embody the school’s val­ues and philo­sophy. Faced with the pro­spect of rais­ing funds for the school as part of the PTA, Justine took into con­sid­er­a­tion the sum required annu­ally (more than $20,000) and chose to cre­ate an event or oppor­tun­ity that would be a pop­u­lar day for the loc­als and engage the com­munity. “It star­ted out as a way of rais­ing funds, but it became so much more than that,” she says.

Justine’s jour­ney began in 2007 when her son Joseph, now 12, joined the decile 4 school, fol­lowed by Lucia (8), and Ambrose (6). “We dis­covered that rais­ing money was a chal­lenge, and as an inclus­ive school we want to be able to give every­one the same oppor­tun­it­ies. I felt that we needed some­thing dif­fer­ent and some­thing that could grow and devel­op.” With that atti­tude in mind, Justine and the team around her cre­ated a sea­son­al mar­ket based on unique, fresh and sus­tain­able products. Util­ising a sea­son­al approach meant that the mar­ket gathered momentum and gained a repu­ta­tion for offer­ing deli­cious food and a day out for the fam­ily. “We wanted some­thing that was more than just a mar­ket, so we cre­ated a children’s play area, we have live music, and we include both product stalls and deli­cious home-cooked cuisine.”

Stall­hold­ers are encour­aged to fea­ture ori­gin­al, recycled and sus­tain­able products, which remains true to the school’s over­all approach, and the mar­ket has hired musi­cians like Amiria Grenell and Black Spider Stomp to add to the atmosphere.

With a mix­ture of reg­u­lars and new­comers, the mar­ket has grown from an ini­tial 23 stalls to over 40 and offers a diverse mix­ture of eth­nic food. With four mar­kets a year, and Christ­mas always deliv­er­ing more than expec­ted, Justine has excit­ing plans for growth. “Christ­mas is always a really big mar­ket and we have such a great time plan­ning it, it made me real­ise there is an oppor­tun­ity to con­tin­ue with the unique approach and we are cur­rently plan­ning a retro mar­ket for the spring.”

Funds raised help real­ise the ‘teacher’s wish list’ and ensure fam­il­ies with chal­len­ging cir­cum­stances can bene­fit from the school’s inclus­ive policy, ensur­ing no child misses out on a school trip, a lunch or oth­er event. “This is a won­der­ful approach to rais­ing money,” says Justine, “and bring­ing the com­munity togeth­er. It is very reward­ing and satisfying.”

Tak­ing a slightly dif­fer­ent approach to fun­drais­ing is inde­pend­ent — and his­tor­ic —Queen Mar­garet Col­lege, which for the past ten years has been aim­ing to hit $1 mil­lion to sup­port the needs of the school. The Found­a­tion Trust com­prises dif­fer­ent groups with­in the school, includ­ing the Old Girls (alumni) and the Par­ents’ Asso­ci­ation, and was foun­ded to cre­ate a kitty that could ful­fil dif­fer­ent oblig­a­tions. The most recent invest­ment was a $7 mil­lion gym­nas­i­um, the ‘Hob­son Gym’, that also includes a com­mon room, five classrooms and a lan­guage block.

Spokes­per­son Chelsea Devlin com­ments, “The found­a­tion allows us to raise funds from char­it­able dona­tions that are filtered into school pro­jects and we hold a num­ber of events through­out the year. We had a tar­get in mind when the found­a­tion was estab­lished and we try to cre­ate dif­fer­ent events to keep it interesting.”

Some of the events have included a Trade Me auc­tion where the pub­lic could bid on cov­etable good­ies from busi­nesses like Moore Wilson’s, and a celebrity debate fea­tur­ing not­able loc­al personalities.

Chelsea adds that the col­lege doesn’t want to ask too much of a com­munity that already sup­ports it so much: “We want our fun­drais­ing events to be fun and enjoy­able; the girls already take part in so much, we aim to make our efforts as much about bring­ing the com­munity togeth­er, as it is about fundraising.”

One school mak­ing a huge mark is Thorndon. Most people in Wel­ling­ton will have heard of Thorndon Fair — it is now the biggest and most suc­cess­ful school fair in Wel­ling­ton, with more than 25,000 people des­cend­ing upon Tinakori Road on the first Sunday of every Decem­ber. The fair, estab­lished by the Thorndon Soci­ety in 1977 and handed over to Thorndon School in 1983, will cel­eb­rate its 40th birth­day in Decem­ber 2016.

A decile 10 school, Thorndon — formerly St Paul’s when first estab­lished in 1852 — cred­its the fair as the school’s biggest fun­draiser, with not only the pupils and par­ents tak­ing part, but also the wider community.

Car­ol West­on, who has organ­ised the event for more than eight years, says, “Thorndon is a unique school that wel­comes chil­dren from all over Wel­ling­ton and not only with­in a short dis­tance like many oth­er schools. We are not lim­ited to pupils with­in our own sub­urb, so the com­munity spir­it lies with­in our school and not the loc­al area. Luck­ily the growth and pop­ular­ity of the mar­ket allows us to come togeth­er and cre­ate some­thing abso­lutely amazing.”

With more than 250 stalls (and still grow­ing), the suc­cess of the fair allows the school to sup­ple­ment its gov­ern­ment fund­ing and gen­er­ate $50,000 a year towards run­ning costs and upkeep. This hard-earned sum allows Thorndon to employ an addi­tion­al teach­er every year to keep classroom num­bers smal­ler and more dedicated.

The fair takes around six months to plan and a cheer­ful crowd of around 200 par­ents con­trib­ute to the smooth run­ning of the day. “We are in a very for­tu­nate pos­i­tion as we know that the pop­ular­ity of the fair enables us to grow and raise more funds,” says Car­ol. “Road clos­ures for school events are quite rare and we are thank­ful that the com­munity in Thorndon is so incred­ibly supportive.”

Although the fair is the main event, the school has a keen focus on art and has held sev­er­al exhib­i­tions and auc­tions of work cre­ated by staff.

The future of edu­ca­tion in New Zea­l­and is chan­ging and one school in Wel­ling­ton is buck­ing the trend. Kahur­angi School, formed in Septem­ber 2013 from a mer­ger between Miramar South and Strath­more Com­munity schools, offers a com­pletely dif­fer­ent approach. Kahur­angi School is free, i.e. it doesn’t ask for any ‘vol­un­tary dona­tions’. Not a bean. The approach of prin­cip­al Kyran Smith and her board is simple: a truly inclus­ive and equit­able learn­ing exper­i­ence for chil­dren, with a keen focus on par­ents becom­ing part of the school family.

Kyran explains, “I can remem­ber as a child what my fam­ily could and couldn’t afford and so many chil­dren miss out on valu­able exper­i­ences because budgets are tight. We wanted to change the focus from it being about rely­ing on par­ents for funds and instead their par­ti­cip­a­tion and involve­ment with­in the school.”

So, how do they run the school without dona­tions? Kyran explains that they take full advant­age of the oper­a­tion­al grant from the Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion and budget resource­fully. The new prin­cip­al acknow­ledges that, although they have some prop­erty demands, their rel­at­ively new build­ing (cour­tesy of a $3.5 mil­lion makeover) has equipped them with a good found­a­tion on which to build their future. “We deliv­er a sol­id pro­gramme to our chil­dren and we do not assume that all chil­dren who attend the school can’t afford to pay; we have a very diverse intake. We want chil­dren to have equal access to learn­ing and oppor­tun­it­ies, and our par­ents are very proud.”

With pos­it­iv­ity gush­ing from Kahur­angi School, and com­munity fun­drais­ing else­where as act­ive as ever, the future of fund­ing, fees and dona­tions will con­tin­ue to cause debate.

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Do the maths on decile:

The decile sys­tem ranks schools from 1 to 10 based on a socio-eco­nom­ic rat­ing, and based on this sys­tem the gov­ern­ment dis­trib­utes fund­ing. Typ­ic­ally, lower-decile schools will receive increased fund­ing, and school dona­tions from par­ents also reflect this. For example, a decile 1 school may request a dona­tion of $20 per stu­dent and up to $50 per fam­ily. A mid-rank decile school may look for a vol­un­tary dona­tion of between $80 or $150. The top-tier decile schools and col­leges can sug­gest any­thing between $300 to $800. Schools that are lower and mid-rank may con­sider more extern­al fun­drais­ing to ensure every child is treated equally and not excluded based on their family’s income. A school’s decile rank­ing is not indic­at­ive of the over­all socio-eco­nom­ic mix of the school. There are five factors that make up the socio-eco­nom­ic indicator:

• House­hold income
• Occu­pa­tion
• House­hold crowding
• Edu­ca­tion­al qualifications
• Income sup­port

Do the maths on donations:

Whatever you choose to call them — dona­tions, fees, con­tri­bu­tions — the dis­tri­bu­tion of funds and how they are used with­in schools has been a source of con­sid­er­able debate for some time. Media reports indic­ate that some schools are with­hold­ing activ­it­ies and priv­ileges for chil­dren whose par­ents have not paid their ‘vol­un­tary dona­tion’. Many par­ents claim their chil­dren have a right to free school­ing and refuse to pay.

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