Wednesday, January 20, 2016

$1b is a big number

The Dompost has the biggest, boldest $1b on their front page I have ever seen. You couldn't cover it with a mobile phone. Not mine anyway.

The price of a free school education will soar to record heights this year.
Official figures show "voluntary donations" from parents and others will this year have collectively provided more than $1 billion to bankroll schools since 2000.
Commentators have described that as a watershed figure with some arguing New Zealand's "free education" system is broken. 
I just did some back-of-a-matchbox calculations.

Would it be reasonable to ask parents to pay say $96 a year towards their child's schooling? That's on average so obviously some would pay a lot less, possibly even nothing because the fee is voluntary.

There are 13 years across a child's education.(Year one to Year Thirteen).

So there are roughly 780,000 children in the school system (13 years x 60,000 in each age-band). Let's drop of the 4% that attend private schools which leaves 748,800.

That would amount to $72 million annually.
Over 14 years that would be just over $1b

Shock, horror.

$96 is $24 a term or $2.40 a school week.  It's just downright outrageous.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is downright outrageous! We burn something like $11bn on education. So that would only be a donation of $24 per week.

Again: I can't believe that there is no party in NZ - not even ACT - campaigning on simply ending all this mess once and for all.

Kiwiwit said...

Gosh, you mean to tell me that the DomPost charges more for the Saturday edition of their crappy rag than the average parent contributes to their children's education for an entire week? That's outrageous!

Anonymous said...

What do you expect?

They are after all - the least trusted profession.

(http://www.researchnz.com/pdf/Media%20Releases/Research%20New%20Zealand%20Media%20Release%20-%2004-06-15%20-%20Trust%20and%20Confidence.pdf)

The only thing that is surprising is that the print journos are so bewildered and deeply hurt about why the public think they're the least trusted profession - they're delusional, all of them.