Tolley’s talk not matched by actions
new-zealand-labour-party
Thu Oct 01 2009 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)
Tolley’s talk not matched by actions
Thursday, 1 October 2009, 10:03 am
Press Release: New Zealand Labour Party
Hon Maryan Street
Tertiary Education Spokesperson
1 October 2009 Media Statement
Tolley’s talk not matched by actions
Anne Tolley’s talk about lifting educational achievement for vulnerable groups flies in the face of her ACE decision, which is likely to see lower income communities suffer the most from the funding cuts, says Labour’s Tertiary Education spokesperson Maryan Street.
“The Education Minister has spent two days lecturing the teachers’ unions about the Government’s desire to improve the education system’s responsiveness to vulnerable groups including the young and Maori and Pasifika communities.
“Yet many of the students she is talking about come from lower income communities which are currently attempting to improve their education through adult and community education night classes,” Maryan Street says.
“And it is those communities, as teachers pointed out to the Minister yesterday, which appear most likely to lose their night classes. This is because they won’t be able to afford the new user-payers system – which is the only way most schools will be able to keep running most courses.
“This is the feedback I’m getting from schools and ACE co-ordinators around the country.
“The Minister says the Tertiary Education Commission is due to release the details of which schools have been selected to provide funding for ACE courses next year so the final picture will soon become clearer.
“But we have already been told that there will be no ACE classes on the West Coast or in the whole of the Hutt Valley next year and the sense of despair this has created in those communities is set to be replicated in others.
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“Young people attend these night classes, but so do their parents. When a parent improves his or her education, they improve the educational prospects of their children at the same time.
“This is why the funding cuts are so short-sighted. They will erode attempts by lower income communities in particular to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and improve the education of their families,” Maryan Street says.
ENDS
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