Government scraps student holiday work scheme

Press, 3 June 1982, Page 1

Government scraps student holiday work scheme

Wellington reporter

The Government yesterday announced the scrapping of the S26M student holiday work scheme and an increase of S9M in tertiary bursaries.

The package, • announced by the Minister of Education (Mr Wellington) and the Acting Minister of Labour (Mr Quigley), was immediately attacked by student leaders. Mr Quigley said the Student Community Service Programme, which since 1977 had provided fully tax-payer-subsidised employment for tertiary students and intending tertiary students during the summer .vacation, would be eliminated from the range of public sector job-creation programmes. He said the programme would be discontinued because its cost had grown substantially. Mr Wellington said a new three-tier bursary system effective from the start of next year would add a cost of S9M to financial support for students and was designed to better meet the needs of students aged 20 or over who had to live away from home. Mr Quigley said it was considered that the resources of. the Labour Department should go instead towards meeting the needs of other people with lower qualifications who needed greater help than students in finding and retaining employment. ’

While tertiary and intending tertiary students would no longer be eligible for referral to fully subsidised public sector job-creation programmes, they would now be eligible for referral to partially subsidised employment. This would be under the Farm Employment Scheme and the .wage subsidy option of the Additional Jobs Programme, on the same basis as other registered unemployed people seeking jobs, Mr Quigley said. Many of . the projects previously submitted by employers under the programme could be submitted under the Project Employment Programme, for other than students.

This would be provided that they represented additional work structured in finite, short-term, projects of up to six months or (in the case of local authorities) up to 12 months.

Mr Quigley said he would be willing to initiate discussions between the Labour Department, the University Students’ Association, and the Technical Institute Students’ Association over help which could be provided for , the associations to identify the maximum possible number of unsubsidised vacation employment opportunities.

Mr Wellington said that the following three-tier tertiary assistance grant scheme

would add more than S9M to the total cost of student financial support:

• There would be a basic weekly grant available to al! students on a basis, similar to the present system at a rate of $27 a week. • There would, as well as the basic grant, be an accommodation grant available to students (under 20) who are required to live away from home to attend a tertiary institution, and those students of 20 years or more who choose to. live away from home, at a fate of $23 a week.

• There would also be provision for a payment of up to $lO a week on grounds of hardship. (This would be made only where a student could show exceptional costs over and above what would normally be expected, and applications would be very limited.) Mr Wellington said that in restructuring the bursary the Government had considered representations from university and student interests. It would push the contribution of taxpayers to student bursaries to more than SSOM a year, compared with $18.7M in 1976 and S33M in 1980.

As part of the review of tertiary student support, the Government had also decided that those entering teachers’ colleges at the beginning of ;1983 would no longer have the option of student allowance or tertiary

assistance grant. New teacher trainees would now be eligible only for the three-tier bursary structure, he said. The Government would retain the special rates which enabled the recruitment of mature students, with special needs, to continue. These rates could be up to the equivalent of a teacher’s starting salary. Provision was also being made to meet the additional costs of student teachers with an extra'grant of up to $2OO a year. Mr Wellington said.

From the start of 1983, new teacher trainees would no longer be bonded.’ The leaders of the two main student groups — the University Students’. Association' (N.Z.U.S.A) .and the Technical Institutes Students’ Association (N.Z.T.1.5.A.) —

said the. two .moves represented a loss/ of $l7 million a year to students. The president of the N.Z.T.1.5.A., Mr Paul Gourlie, said his members would be hit “right in the guts,” as most were under 20 —

mainly ineligible for ’ higher allowance's and unable to get holiday work.

“I have spoken to Christchurch students and they said the chances , of their being able to go back next year will be miriimalised. It is quite simply a very, effective way of trimming student numbers,” Mr Gourlie said.

The president of the N.Z.U.S.A., Mr Robin Tobin, said that at least 12,000 students would suffer through the lost work schemes, and most of those would be unable to return without parental support. The bursary increase would not compensate.

. The president of the University of Canterbury Students’ Association, Mr Steven Ferguson, said his members would be. hit hard by the, loss of the work scheme, which employed about 2000 of them last summer. Such an "ill-considered slash” made a mockery of Mr Wellington’s statements about wanting more Maoris, Polynesians, women, and working-class people at university.’

“Those are the very groups who will now find it harder. It is the act of a bankrupt, uncaring, visionless Government that would never dare to put such policies before the electorate,” Mr Ferguson said. The Labour Opposition has criticised the “devastating ' effect” the elimination of the Student Community Service Programme would have. . Ms Eran Wilde (Lab., Wellington Central), whose electorate .includes,.a university, teachers’ college, and a polytechnic, described, the decision as the ultimate in false economy. ’ : “ .

It would mean that hundreds .of students would be unable to find employment during, the summer holidays, with the , possible consequence of having to give up their studies. .. . .. The palliative of giving

students’the right to compete with the huge number of > unemployed people for par- ■ tially subsidised jobs was • 'farcical, she said. i. “Perhaps, the - Minister , should contemplate his, own - living expenses and then tell ) the. students how they should pay their rent and food » bills,” Ms. Wilde said.