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Salient. Official Newspaper of Victoria University of Wellington Students Association. Vol 40 No. 14. June 13 1977

Bursaries — a history of broken promises

page 8

Bursaries — a [unclear: history] of broken promises

Drawing of people sitting around a table in 1975

Drawing of a National election

Drawing of people sitting around a table in 1977

Drawing of people organising a Bursary meeting

On 15 June NZUSA and local students' associations are organising a 'National Day of Action' on student bursaries. On most campuses this will involve holding a big meeting where your representatives will report on recent developments and where you can plan further action.

The basic reason why we are holding these meetings to plan action on bursaries is because the Government has simply failed to carry out the election promises it made to students in 1975. The Budget, which will be announced sometime in July, will be the last opportunity the Government will have in its first three years office to carry these promises out.

My purpose in writing this article is to report to students on what has happened to their bursaries over the last few years because I believe that the things that have happened show quite clearly that students gave not received a fair deal from either the Labour or National governments.

When the Labour Government was elected in 1972, it had been ten years since there had been any radical changes in the system of bursary support for University students. Fees and allowance bursaries were paid to students with Higher School Certificate and similar qualifications, boarding allowances were paid to those who had to live away from home to go to University and "A" and "B" supplementary allowances were paid to those with a certain grade in the University bursaries examination. These bursaries were seen by the Government as a "grant-in-aid" to supplement students' holiday earnings and other forms of income.

The New Bursary

Labour promised us it would change that. It promised to introduce a "standard tertiary bursary" for all tertiary students which meant the technical institute students who'd received much less than the very modest allowances paid to University students.

In its first year in office Labour did nothing to start carrying out this election pledge. In 1974 the Education Department held a number of meetings with student representatives to discuss ideas on the new bursary system. In August that year the Department produced a paper which suggested that the bursary should be equivalent to the amount of the unemployment benefit (which was then just over $26 a week) and that there should be no boarding allowance. Those ideas meant that students would be granted enough money for them to be able to live on during the University year, supplemented by their holiday earnings.

Then the crunch came for students. First we were told that the promised "standard tertiary bursary" wouln't be introduced in 1975 because of the economic situation. But because the country's worsening economic circumstances were making it really hard for students to live on their bursaries and holiday earnings it had become essential for the standard tertiary bursary to be introduced.

So the NZUSA National Executive went to see Labour's Education Minister Mr P. A. Amos to explain the students' case. Mr Amos said he was sympathetic to us but refused to do anything other than introduce a limited and means-tested $150 hardship allowance that satisfied nobody.

Students take to the Streets

In fact students became so dissatisfied with the lack of progress progress on the Government's bursary promises that they took to the streets to demonstrate their concern. Over 10,000 students demonstrated around the country in March 1975, and as several commentators said later, made it clear to the politicians that they could afford to ignore students no longer.

At the end of May 1975 the "new" bursary system was announced in the Budget. It meant that, from the start of 1976, students would get a $24 a week bursary in their first three years of study and $27 a week from their fourth year on. But these improved bursary rates were to be "abated" by $11 a week in the case of students who didn't have to live away from home to attend university or a technical institute on exactly the same inequitable principles as the former boarding allowance.

Capitalising on the widespread feeling among students that they had been betrayed by Labour, the National Party started working to turn the standard tertiary bursary into an election issue. First they decided to scrap the new bursary system outright. But once it had been made clear to them that students did not want to see that happen, they promosed to "reform" the Lavour plan and get rid of the "anomalies"in it.

Specifically, National's 1975 election policy promised students that it would:
(a)Retain the present level of allowances paid to student teachers;
(b)Reinstate the 'A' and 'B' bursaries at the same value and on the same conditions as applied in 1975;
(c)Place technical institute students on the same relative basis as University students;
(d)Replace the standard tertiary bursary as soon as negotiations would permit with a new reformed bursary increased to take into account costs and thereafter to adjust it annually;
(e)Consult with student bodies, professional organisations and affected institutions on all aspects needed to reform the bursary system;
(f)Increase the value of bursaries to take into account increased costs since the last adjustment and thereafter increase them annually.

Image of protesters with signs

Despite the deliberate vagueness of these policy planks, it was obvious that they meant a commitment to making changes and increasing the value of bursaries. And the National Party went out of its way to hammer these promises home to students page 9 — in an advertisement in major daily papers a few days before the General Election it said that under National every student would get the standard tertiary bursary!

After the election NZUSA went to see the new Education Minister Mr L.W. Gandar to find out how this policy would be carried out.

National Reluctant To Act

Once again we discovered the reluctance of politicians to take decisive action. It took the National Government nearly eleven months to produce a set of regulations governing the new standard tertiary bursary and that delay meant great confusion for students and administrators in working out the rules on which the bursary system operated

Throughout 1976 Mr Gandar was quite unresponsive to any suggestions for immediate action on bursaries, apart from the reinstatement of the 'A' and 'B' supplements which was carried out immediately. Every time he met NZUSA officers he told us that he wanted time to consult all interested parties so that a thorough review of bursaries could be carried out prior to the introduction of National's "new reformed bursary" in 1978.

In December last year the Education Department convened a conference of all the interested parties to discuss the changes that needed to be made to the bursaries' system. As the conference chairman, Mr P. Boag, Assistant Director-General of Education, said when he opened the meeting it was the biggest conference of educationalists since the large-scale Education Development Conference of 1974. All three national student bodies were represented, as were the six teachers' organisations. The universities and technical institutes were there and other groups included the education boards, State Services Commission, University Grants Committee, vocational Training Council and the Catholoc Education Commission.

The conference worked on the basis of consensus and agreed that a number of changes needed to be made. The major changes recommended were that the bursary should be a fully supportive allowance for students during the academic year, that it should be regularly increased for cost increases (as measured by a reliable indicator such as the consumer price index) and that the abatement should be abolished.

The conference recognised that all the desirable changes could not be introduced overnight. So it drew up a list of recommendations which, it said needed to be introduced immediately.

At the top of this list was a recommendation that bursaries should be increased for 1977 to take account of inflation during 1976.

The graph on p. 1 shows the reasons why that recommendation was made.

Other recommendations were:
(a)that students should be able to get a bursary if they were transferring to any second course at a technical institute.
(b)that technical students should be entitled to get bursary assistance for a second course at an institute.
(c)that existing restrictions on the number of hours a student can work each week should be removed.
(d)that there should be no time limit on bursary assistance between the time a student finishes one course and starts another.
(e)that the student doing research work overseas and on exchange programmes with overseas universities should get bursaries.
(f)that the abatement should be abolished.
(g)that students without bursaries who are successful in passing enough subjects in the first semester of the year should be able to get a bursary in the second semester.
(h)that students on short courses and block courses at universities and technical institutes should get bursary assistance.
(i)that proper appeals procedures should be introduced for students who have problems with their bursary entitlements.
(j)that students doing tertiary study at secondary schools should receive bursaries.

I must emphasise that all these proposals were agreed on by the conference as a whole and, as one of the NZUSA representatives, I was very impressed by the sense of unity with which all the groups represented stressed that these changes needed to be implemented quickly. Many of these proposed changes for 1977 would not cost the Government very much money, the proposed cost of living increase being the most expensive item.

Since that conference NZUSA has been back to see the Minister of Education for immediate action - the abolition of the employment restriction. Welcome though this reform is for students, it is simply not enough.

It is now clear that there will be no cost of living increase in students' bursaries this year. It is also clear that the promised "new reformed bursary" is unlikely to be introduced in full for 1978 because the Minister has also failed to take any action whatsoever on another conference recommendation that a working party be established to consider in detail a number of complex changes that had been proposed.

Students have been waiting patiently since November 1975 for the National Government to carry out all the promises that a lot of them voted for at the election. But our experience of the National Government, like our experience of the Labour Government, is that the politicians are quite unwilling to carry out their promises. Even the carefully thought out recommendations of all the groups most involved in tertiary education in New Zealand have been insufficient in getting the Government to introduce the necessary reforms.

Once again it is time for students to take action themselves to show the Government that they are concerned and upset by its lack of action. The meetings planned for 15 June are the first step in what is going to be a long campaign to show the politicians that they can't ignore us any longer. Come along to these meetings, say what you think, help plan united student action - don't forget that it's your future education that is now on the line.

— Lisa Sacksen NZUSA President

page 10