The origins of targeted funding for disadvantage.
January 19, 2018.
A separate and new funding stream for ECE services called “Targeted Funding for Disadvantage’ (aka funding for children of beneficiaries) is to be provided from taxpayer money by the Ministry of Education.
Without the knowledge of most people affected that this was how their information was going to be used, Ministry of Education staff accessed and cross checked Ministry of Social Development data on parents/caregivers and children with the data it stores on its computer system about ECE services and children.
Then it created new information on children firstly in deciding which children to classify as being at risk of underachievement due to “disadvantaged background”, and secondly by developing and recording a risk score for each child identified.
The Ministry of Education will use information on the time a child has been the dependent of a beneficiary to determine which children are most at risk of underachievement. Our research shows that this is highly predictive of educational underachievement across ECE and schooling (quoted from Ministry of Education Fact Sheet)
Only one factor has been used by the Ministry to determine whether a child is at risk of underachievement – if a child has a parent/ caregiver who receives a benefit.
An estimated 33,000 children have been identified as being at educational risk and will generate extra revenue for the service they attend.
The Ministry says that it will refuse requests for information by a parent/ caregiver on a child’s risk score and classification. Risk scores and classification will not be able to be corrected. It’s reason for declining is that it would disclosure the benefit status of any other parent or caregiver. However, in many cases there is no other parent/caregiver or in the case of couple this is known information and both parents parents/ caregivers could jointly apply for the personal information that the Ministry has created to be given to them. Parents/ caregivers could argue that they have a right to know and ask for their child’s risk score and classification to be corrected if necessary.
How Targeted Funding for Disadvantage works and winners and losers under this funding stream
The Ministry of Education’s statisticians have identified the 20% of children attending ECE who have spent the largest portion of their life as the dependent of a beneficiary.
Targeted Funding is based on an estimate of the number of Funded Child Hours the 20% will generate in each ECE service in the coming year – these are referred to as Targeted Hours. The funding is not “an entitlement generated from past attendance”.
Some services could miss out while other services could get extra funding for children they supposedly have for x number of hours during the 2018 year but don’t.
Services with a high percentage of Targeted Hours may have their funding rounded up or down e.g. 90% Targeted Hours may be rounded to 95%, while services with a small number of children may be excluded altogether.
Should the Ministry get it wrong it will be unable to claw back any portion of the funding from any service since it has promised that “funding will not be recalculated or altered during the year based on actual attendance.”
Privacy, prejudice and stigmatisation issues
While any new funding will be welcomed within the sector, moral and pedagogical issues for teachers and service operators are attached to Targeted Funding.
To protect privacy the Ministry says that it will not tell services the names of children that the Targeted Funding is meant for.
Nevertheless, it expects services to use their own methods and judgement to identify these children and to show/ report on how the Targeted funding has been directly used to support the children’s learning.
A Guinea Pig for testing one part of a proposed new funding system
In July last year the government announced that a new funding system based on a Risk of Not Achieving Index would replace the schools decile system and the equity funding index for early childhood services. The Education Minister said that she did not know if it would be possible to implement in the new funding arrangement in time for the 2019 school year.
Work was still being done on the factors that would make up the new risk index but the Education Minister indicated it would most likely comprise of the following factors:
- Proportion of time the child has been supported by benefits since birth
- Child has a Child, Youth and Family notification
- Mother’s age at child’s birth
- Father’s offending and sentence history
- Ethnicity
- Youth Justice referral
- Mother’s and father’s average earned income over previous 5 years
- School transience.
The Ministry of Education is using the early childhood education sector to trail the introduction of Targeted Funding and to test for privacy breaches and issues.
Targeted funding to be paid in addition to and not as a replacement to equity (decile based) funding
The Ministry of Education would like to see Targeted Funding spent on the service it is given to and specifies its use must be reported by service licence number.
There is no indication that the Ministry will get tougher in ensuring that services spend equity funding on the purposes intended. Targeted funding will be paid in addition to the equity funding services already get.
