Andrew King: Rural Schools Leadership Association President on the Government fuel relief package for rural schools

Rural schools are welcoming extra support from the Government to deal with rising fuel costs. 

Small schools will receive one-off additional funding, and 70 schools will receive a one-off grant to speed up the replacement of diesel boilers.  

Mileage support for rural relief teachers is also being doubled. 

Rural Schools Leadership Association president Andrew King told Mike Hosking it's been hard for country schools to soak up these extra costs.  

He says having that extra money means they won't have to think about where to pool money from. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Some more governments bought because of the petrol drama. Mileage
rates for relief teachers are going to go from thirty
seven to eighty three cents. That's okay. Rural schools with
under one hundred students will get a two and a
half thousand dollars top up. Thirty seven million going into
replacing diesel boilers. Andrew King, he's the president of the
New Zealand Rural Schools Leadership Association and he's what there's
Andrew morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Good morning, Mike, How are you very well?

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Thank you you like the look of all others?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Yes, really positive news targeted our most isolated in smallest
and rural schools here, which is great. Love.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Would you defend it in the sense these relief teachers,
which I know there are a tremendous number because teachers
are away all the time. See, I have to still
pay to come to work, as does everybody else. Why
is a relief teacher special.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Well, it's because a relief teacher can teach any school
that they choose during the week, and so it's really
important that we've got something in the system that supports
them to commute as far out. You know, some some
schools could be one hundred up to one hundred kilometers
away that they might need to drive to in our
most isolated communities.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
And was nick Erica right yesterday when she was explaining
the small schools, the really small schools just have no budget.
They're tight as and you can't soak it up where
some of the biggest schools might be able to soak
it up. Is that fair?

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Well, yes, I think we've got a system that's based
on numbers of students in terms of funding. In the
smaller you are, the less of an operations grant you have,
and the more maneuvering, the trickier the maneuvering of budget
lines that you've got to do. So having that two
and a half thousand dollars means they don't need to
think about where they need to take money from elsewhere,

(01:37):
and they can focus that two and a half thousand
dollars on fuel shotage related costs or fuel increased costs.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Good. I don't know if it applies to you or
many of you in the rural part of the sector,
but this boiler thing, why why are schools running on
boilers for goodness sake?

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Well, that's a really good question. So it's good to
see something really proactive and basically disestablishing the reliance on
diesel boilers.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
That's something that needed to be done years ago, though,
wasn't it.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Surely yes, it would have been great if it happened sooner,
But that it's happening now.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Are you handling the school bus issue okay? In terms
of petrol and distance and all that sort of stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Yeah, so we've got ministry run routes, plus we've got
direct resourcing routes and the increased costs the ministry deals
with that was our direct resourcing bus routes. So that
doesn't get reviewed. That gets reviewed six monthsly in terms
of the operational cost that we're working with the ministry

(02:35):
on that.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Nice. All right, Andrew, appreciate your time very much. Andrew King,
who is what bent? Was he from? He's the president
of the New Zealand Rural School Leaders Association. I don't
know when he's calling for the first cash rate rise.
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