Tutors and teachers at last-chance education programmes say allowing them to keep struggling secondary students beyond the age of 16 would have a life-changing impact.
Alternative education programmes enrol about 2000 teenagers a year who are at risk of disengaging from school, or already have disengaged.
At a recent seminar in Wellington, their staff told RNZ they had seen a big increase in enrolments by girls and young teens in recent years.
They also warned warn that intermediate-age school children increasingly needed their services too.
The programmes provided small-group tutoring, but staff said most students were not ready to learn until they had worked through social and mental issues, a process that could take months.
Former alternative education student Hayley-Jane said it had a huge impact on her life and on many of the other students she was with.
But she had to leave when she turned 16.
One of her former teachers Rose McIlhone – now an English teacher at Te Whare Taiohi, the alt ed programme run by the BGI boys and girls institute in Wellington – said the schemes would make an even bigger difference if they could keep students beyond the age of 16.
“I think it would be huge. I think we need a year to build those relationships and then following that a year to do some real learning and help them connect to what comes next,” she said.
She said students arrived with complex needs and they increasingly seemed to have disengaged with learning earlier in their schooling.
“Sometimes they come with mental health concerns, lots of trauma, but perhaps now there’s bigger gaps in their learning and they may be disengaged from school at a younger age, so it starts happening at intermediate,” she said.
‘We are the last stop’
RLC alternative education in Wainuiomata head teacher Jo Maunder said when she started in the field 25 years ago, 90% of the students were boys.
“But now we have almost half-and-half boys and girls, so there’s been a lot more girls coming in to alternative ed in the last, I would say, 10 years. Big change in the mental health needs of our students, huge change in that, and also quite a big change in the amount of letters after their names. We’ve got ADH, ADD, ODD,” she said.
Maunder said she was also seeing more students in the younger age groups.
“The students are getting younger and younger. We’re actually only funded for three years from when the turn 13 to when they turn 16 but obviously when you end up in high school you’re 12 so yeah, we are getting 12-year-olds,” she said.
Maunder said every alternative education provider should be funded to employ a registered teacher.
“We are the last stop for students for formal education in New Zealand and our funding is so low that we can’t even afford to hire teachers,” she said.
Philo Heka – the manager of Koraunui in Stokes Valley, one of just two marae-based alt ed providers in the country – said students should be able to choose to enrol in alternative education instead
“It should be open to all young people who need that time out from school. I think if kids have a bit of time out, re-set, re-focus, things might be a little bit easier for them,” she said.
Lloyd Martin had been involved with alternative education for many years and recently completed doctoral research on it.
He said the biggest change the sector needed was agreement on its purpose.
“To get there, you have to fail in the school system. Perhaps a better pathway would be to recognise who needs to be there,” he said.
“There’s 1800 places funded I think from memory. There’s a lot more than 1800 kids who are missing school and need a better environment and why should you have to fail to get there.”
Martin said alternative education was officially regarded as something that fixed kids so they could return to regular secondary school, but three-quarters of its students did not return to school.
“There is a group of kids often because of adversity and the stuff that’s happened in their lives who just need a different environment to learn in. If they were from wealthy families, their parents would put them in a Steiner school or something like that,” he said.
Martin said schools now recognised the effects of neurodiversity on students, but they had not yet recognised the effects of trauma and adversity.
“If we asked what do these kids need we would end up with a different model of funding,” he said.
Martin said more spending on alternative education would be a good investment for society.
“It’s probably a lot cheaper doing something when they’re 14 than when they’re 21 and in the justice system or stuck in the welfare system,” he said.
“If we could break some of those trajectories, shift some of them, we could save money in the longer term and be more humane in the process.”
rnz.co.nz
