Voucher plan for schooling attacked

Press, 8 May 1985, Page 2

Voucher plan for schooling attacked

State schools could be turned into “waste baskets” for the poor under a school voucher system, says the secretary of the Society for the Protection of Public Education, Mr Jack Mulheron. While the scheme was superficially attractive, it was really a way of extending public funding to private schools, he said in Wellington yesterday.

The voucher idea was suggested by the National Party’s spokesman on education, Miss Ruth Richardson, at the party’s Canter-bury-Westland divisional conference last week-end. Under the system, a family would be given a voucher to the value of tax money alloted to the education of its children, which could be redeemed at a school of the family’s choice — State or private. “The voucher plan could virtually destroy New Zealand’s public education system,” said Mr Mulheron.

“This extreme form of privatisation could turn our public schools into waste baskets for the poor, the disadvantaged, minority, and other children not wanted or accepted by nonpublic schools.” Most private schools

would remain exclusive by charging fees above the voucher’s value. Others would remain exclusive by virtue of being sectarian. The plan flew in the face of New Zealand’s State school tradition, which was a co-operative undertaking with the community and aimed to offer equal opportunity for all, said Mr Mulheron.

“The public school system is already seriously disadvantaged by the operation of the integration act,” he said.

“This proposal would be another great step backwards, establishing more privilege for a minority at public expense.” When Miss Richardson put the idea to the conference, she said that the education “consumer” would be put in a clear bargaining position with the “producer.”

“A school that was inferior in the eyes of the parents would lose custom and finance, since the voucher funds would be transferred elsewhere.

“Similarly, schools that were efficiently providing what the parents were demanding would attract custom and voucher finance,” she said.