An MP yesterday presented a petition to Parliament asking for a change to the rules around sport competitions for homeschooled students and says the Government is “doing a lot of hard work” to fix the issue.
Watch the full story from Re: News on TVNZ+
Bay of Plenty MP Tom Rutherford received the petition from two homeschooled students after they cycled 760km over 10 days to the Beehive.
George Fisher, 12, and Amelia Twiss, 13, carried the petition from Cambridge to Wellington on their bikes to raise awareness for how homeschool students are treated differently in high school sport.
The Tauranga duo recently made headlines for being denied sports medals in secondary school-level tournaments because they are homeschooled.
They presented the petition to Rutherford this month, on the first day of the Youth Parliament, and he has now tabled it in Parliament.
Rutherford, who was a Youth MP himself in 2013, told Re: News he wrote to Minister of Sport and Recreation Mark Mitchell to say he “thought there was an issue here”.
“I’ve had really good working conversations with the minister and his office about this, and I know that they’re doing a lot of hard work behind the scenes at the moment,” he added.
Rutherford says having representatives from National, Labour and Greens present for the delivery of the petition is “a really good thing for New Zealand”.
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‘Not in any way equal’
Seventeen-year-old Iris Ewart was also there to receive the petition earlier in the month, as the Youth MP for Celia Wade-Brown and a homeschooled student herself.
Ewart said: “It’s not so much about just having the medals. It shows you that you’re not in any way equal to them.”
She said she is tired of the “unfair” way homeschool kids aren’t able to be recognised for their sporting achievement because of how they are educated.
Speaking as a Youth MP, Ewart said: “The key issue I’d like to bring to Parliament is the fact that almost 4000 homeschool students around, New Zealand are excluded from, sports at a college level with. And I think that’s really unfair.”
She used to sail on the Marlborough Girls College team, who were happy to have her, but there were conditions attached, she says. “If another student from Marlborough girls came along, then I would have to leave so that student could have the place.
“The second one was that because I joined the team, we were then deemed a composite team. And that meant we couldn’t go above Silver fleet and we couldn’t podium or anything.”
Her mum, Mel Ewart, is chair of the Home Educators School Sports Association and started the petition, which is asking Sport New Zealand to make funding for School Sports New Zealand conditional on allowing home-schooled domestic students to compete in student sports events.
Reviewing criteria
School Sport New Zealand is reviewing its eligibility criteria
School Sport New Zealand is the governing body for high school sport and it’s currently reviewing its eligibility criteria for national school sport events, including policies relating to home-schooled students.
That includes potentially allowing the Home Educators School Sports Association to become a member of the sporting body, the same way that mainstream schools are members
School Sport New Zealand says it “continues to extend participation opportunities to home-schooled students and work in good faith to support inclusive sport where possible”.
The organisation’s CEO Mike Summerell told Re: News in a statement it has “faced increasing demands from the Home-Schooled Organisations” and the public conversations on this topic have been “disappointing” and “unjustified”.
“We understand this situation is frustrating, and we acknowledge the concerns of the small number of students affected.”
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