Friday, October 7, 2016
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THE INDEPENDENT VOICE OF MID CANTERBURY
A splashing good time Elizabeth Hastie sends up a spray of water on a slip n slide set up by the Base Youth Centre yesterday. www.guardianonline.co.nz
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Missing teen has local links
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Schools worse off under new system BY LINDA CLARKE
LINDA.C@THEGUARDIAN.CO.NZ
IN TODAY’S GUARDIAN
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Schools in Mid Canterbury will be worse off as a result of a radical new funding system. Next year schools will get $92 in extra funding from Government for each student from a long-term welfare-dependent background – which one local principal says is not enough. The money was designed to close the gap in achievement between the top and bottom children, and will be a substantial bonus for some schools in other parts of the country – while also underlining the challenges they faced. Hampstead School has about 50 students receiving the targeted funding, so gets a total of $4549 on top of its base operations funding. But it would have
been slightly better off if its base operations funding had been inflation adjusted, as in past years. Most other Mid Canterbury schools are in the same position and collectively they will be $27,000 worse off. The Government says the $12.34 million in extra funding nationally for schools next year equates to roughly the same as a 1 per cent operations increase, the difference is the increase is targeted to schools with students that need extra help the most. Hampstead principal Peter Melrose said it was not a huge amount of money, but the school would identify areas of need and spend it accordingly. Schools can use the targeted funding to help raise achievement for all their students in ways they think best;
not just those from welfare-dependent backgrounds. Like all schools, Hampstead’s operations grant fluctuates, depending on student numbers. Extra money is allocated for things like vandalism, special education and ICT. Ashburton College will receive $16,898 in targeted at-risk funding, Mount Hutt College $2414 and Ashburton Intermediate $5292. All would have been better off with an inflationadjusted increase on their 2016 operations grant.
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