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Review of special needs education funding
Article in the Otago Daily Times on special needs education funding:
Minister reassuring on special needs
John Minto's comments:
However, it's important to give credit where it's due.
As Associate Education Minister Roy initiated a review (yet another) of special education with the aim of getting better results from existing funding. No final decisions have been taken but in recent weeks Roy signalled her concern at the poor targeting of Special Education Grant funding. SEG is for children with moderate special needs and is bulk funded to schools based on school size and decile but with no account of how many children with moderate special needs are actually enrolled.
The outcome is a policy with perverse incentives. Schools which turn away children with special needs are rewarded with extra funding they can use for other things, while schools which welcome such children are forced to spread their SEG grant more thinly across a larger number of students. Much of the money doesn't get anywhere near special needs children.
This bizarre policy has been in place for over 12 years and both National and Labour have refused to sort it out. They say it's too hard to identify special needs children at each school but this argument doesn't stack up. Schools are already required to identify these children and the money could be easily targeted to schools actually doing the job we expect them to do.