Jane Rogers: Auditor-General's Sector Manager for Schools on the audit of school board spending

Auditors are calling out schools for questionable spending on overseas trips and travel. 

The Auditor-General’s latest report flagged concerns with more than 170 school boards last year, many involving how principals used coaching and wellbeing funds. 

Around a third were tied to travel. 

Sector Manager for Schools, Jane Rogers told Heather du Plessis-Allan some boards allowed personal travel to be added onto work trips. 

She says spending public money has to have a justifiable purpose, so they wouldn't expect it to be spent on personal travel. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now do you remember the wellbeing fund that the Ardu
and Hipkins government gave Principles where they have six thousand
dollars to spend on sometimes I don't know, training courses
at the Hilton and Fiji. Turns out that's still causing
some trouble. According to the Auditor General's Office, Jane Rogers
is the secretor manager for schools at the office. Hi Jane, Hi,
So what's going on with the spending?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
We just this year our auditors did identify more concerns
about sensitive expenditure than in the normal years, and most
of those concerns did relate to how schools spent the
funding for the professional coaching and well being provided to Principles.
In twenty twenty three and twenty four. About third of
those concerns related to travel, including schools paying for personal

(00:43):
travel for staff and sometimes companions. Some of that was
travel that was actually incorporated into a business trip. And
one of the expectations for spending public money is that
it has a just a viable business purpose. So we
wouldn't normally expect a school or any public organization to
pay for personal travel of their staff.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
So is this Jane, is this person is the school
spending that is on top of that six thousand dollar
fund or is it within the six thousand dollar fund?

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Mainly it's it is the six thousand dollars, but Principles
were allowed to use additional funding for professional development, so
it didn't they didn't have to just spend the six
thousand dollars, right, So are.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
You telling me that the six thousand dollars that was
sold to us as being for development was actually being
spent on personal.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Stuff in some cases? Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Are we talking about well?

Speaker 2 (01:37):
We well, we we identified I think, which is in
our report one hundred and seventy eight where we actually
drew attention to it in the in the management letter
or the audit report of the school. So that's where
we had some concern over the spending. Obviously, some of
that was relatively small amounts, so it could be GIN memberships,

(01:58):
that sort of thing, quite small.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Am.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Are the ones that we actually referred to, not audit
reports were those which were more significant, and a lot
of those were around overseas travels draw.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Attention to it. Jane, do you think this is going
to get tidied up or is this just going to
be an ongoing problem?

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Well, the funding was only provided for twenty twenty three
and twenty twenty four. Obviously they've just redone the collective agreements,
and I don't know whether obviously that spending is being
being you know, really I can't think of the word
rolled over say yeah, so, so, I mean we would
expect that that there would be I guess maybe better guidance.

(02:39):
The Ministry did provide guidance for this last lot of funding,
but if they were to do it again, I think
we would maybe expect sort of better guidance and more
rules around what the schools can actually spend it on
fair point.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
Listen, Jane, thanks very much appreciated. That's Jane Rodgers, Seeker
Manager for Schools at the Office of the Order to General.
It is actually a very good question to ask because
that thing just got signed last week or those the
principles don't know. Actually, it's a good question to ask
what the dealers with the principles, whether they got the
six thousand dollars again and one hundred there's two thy
four hundred schools right, so one hundred and seventy eight
of them is what that's like seven eight percent or

(03:16):
something like that. Where this I mean, it's not earth shattering,
but it's probably big enough to explain why we all
knew that this fund was being gamed by some principles.
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