Breakaway school groups concern

Press, 9 May 1979, Page 14

Breakaway school groups concern

PA Wellington The Minister of Education (Mr Wellington! has said that he is worried by reports that some groups in New Zealand wanted to establish their own schools. About a dozen requests for the establishment of schools had been received by the Education Department, he told the annual conference of the Educational Institute in Wellington. Any group had the right to establish a school as long as certain standards of accommodation, teaching and curriculum content were met, and he would not remove that right, Mr Wellington said. “The question, however, that I have asked myself, and you must ask yourselves too, is why these groups in good faith feel necessary to undertake the considerable financial burden of se'ting up their own school',” he said. “My impression is, and

I have spoken informally to some of these people, is that the groups represent an occupational cross-sec-tion of New Zealanders, with aspirations perhaps similar to your own, who feel that the eduction provided in our schools is less than adequate.” Mr Wellington told delegates: “I hope that you and your colleagues will ensure that local communities are properly informed of the work of the schools so that whatever the reason for the concerns these parents have, there will at least be no misunderstanding.” Referring to the present integration of independent schools into the State system, Mr Wellington said that he was concerned about the apparent misunderstanding of the nature of the integration process. “I am concerned that such misunderstanding is reviving some old tensions and animosities. Under the Conditional Integration

Act, any independent school can enter into an integration agreement.” he said. Each school would have to negotiate and sign its own separate agreement, with the Minister of Education acting on behalf of the Government, and the wider community. Mr Wellington said that it was not Government policy to allow integrated schools to grow at the expense of established State schools. At the same time, the Government was determined to maintain schools with a special distinction or particular character in the mainstream of education. “Just as New Zealand was well served by two separate but complementary streams of education for the first 100 years, the Government believes that New Zealand will be well served in the second 100 years by a merging of the two,” Mr Wellington said.