Some rural schools eligible for grants

Press, 27 July 1989, Page 5

Some rural schools eligible for grants

By

PETER LUKE,

in Wellington

Rural schools in drought-affected areas might be eligible for special-needs grant money, the Opposition’s associate spokeswoman on education, Mrs Jenny Shipley, said. The grant is designed to provide extra assistance to schools that have a high proportion of students with extra learning needs due to socio-economic and other factors.

Among the criteria are schools ■in communities where half the parents are on a benefit, or employed in occupations five and six of the "Elley-Irving Index.” This index provides indicators of so-cio-economic status based on income and education levels. Occupational categories five and six represent the lower income levels of the index.

“Farming families who are receiving ‘adverse events family income support’

fall into the category of dependent on a benefit,” said Mrs Shipley. She repeated her opposition for using such “systems of social engineering” to fund schools, but said she would encourage schools that met the criteria to prove their eligibility. A spokesman for the Minister of Education, Mr Lange, said that the socioeconomic background of an area was part of the criteria on which a school principal could make a case for grant money. Such cases were determined by the Education Department, the spokesman said.

Mrs Shipley also said that the ElleyIrving Index was last reviewed in 1981 and was now unsuitable to establish socio-economic parental background. The index had a heavy weighting towards male dominance in the family, and took no account of changes to different occupational groups.