Education Minister Erica Stanford has instructed the Education Review Office to review the country’s three specialist residential schools every year, with wider work underway to increase oversight and strengthen systems.

The increased scrutiny comes in the wake of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care which includes case studies and comments relating to abuse suffered by people at specialist residential schools.

An entire volume is dedicated to the experiences of survivors who suffered abuse at residential schools for deaf people, while others with intellectual and physical disabilities recount the horror of their time spent at the ＆psychopaedic’ Kimberley Centre in Levin.

The watershed report comments on the impacts of segregation on people with disabilities, and how these ＆out of sight, out of mind’ institutional environments increase the risk of harm being done to vulnerable children.

The report has also seen advocates, including a specialist residential school survivor, renew calls for shutting such schools and working harder to equip the mainstream system in favour of sending kids to specialist day schools.

Currently, New Zealand has three specialist residential schools, where 50 students with disabilities or very high needs live and learn for up to two years, away from their family and separate from the mainstream system.

In 2022, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recommended the Government shut the schools and direct funding to community-based support.

In 2018, the Ministry of Education created a new direct-access pathway to make it easier to access the schools. In 2021, Labour’s associate education minister Jan Tinetti kicked off a process to further widen access to residential specialist schools following years of low student numbers.

She hit pause after the UN delivered its report, throwing those schools, staff and students into limbo.

In 2021, reporting by Newsroom found two of the country’s three specialist residential schools had been under-reporting their use of physical restraint. A ＆misunderstanding’ between the Ministry of Education and two specialist schools led to a breach of legal requirements for reporting the use of physical restraint on students. They were only reporting the use of restraint while students were ＆in school’.

In 2018, Westbridge Residential School in Auckland and Halswell Residential College in Christchurch alone were responsible for almost one in every five cases of physical restraint across the entire New Zealand education system.

Meanwhile, there are 27 specialist day schools across the country, catering to almost 4000 students with diverse, complex, and fragile needs.

Over a third (36 percent) of students in these schools have very high needs. This represents 53 percent of all verified very high needs students. The remaining two-thirds (64 percent) of students in specialist day schools have high needs.

Since 2013, school rolls have grown by 62 percent. However, no new specialist day schools have been established in more than 50 years.

In June, ERO released the report Built in, not bolted on, which found specialist schools played a critical role as experts in supporting non-specialist schools and providing quality education for children with the highest needs.?

It also laid out the unacceptable state of specialist school property and highlighted long wait lists of more than 650 children, along with decades of underinvestment in maintenance and growth.

Panmure’s Sommerville School - the country’s largest specialist day school - has become known as the school with fungi growing up the walls.

※The rebuild has been promised for around 20 years,§ school principal Belinda Johnston told Newsroom in February. ※In the meantime we’re in buildings that are crumbling, with falling ceiling tiles and black mould.§

In response to the under-funding, and specialist schools’ detachment from broader school network planning, Education Minister Erica Stanford announced $89 million for specialist day schools in this year’s Budget.

A closer look at the system

Stanford - who is also the minister in charge of the Government’s response to the Royal Commission - said after reading the report she sought assurances the current environments and standards of the residential schools were safe and appropriate.?

※I was advised the two residential behaviour schools were last reviewed in June which identified they are operating well,§ she said in a statement to Newsroom.

※I’ve instructed ERO to now review the schools every year, to assess both the teaching and learning, as well as the residential accommodation.?

※I’m now working with the Ministry of Education on how we can increase oversight and further strengthen systems and processes.§

Stanford said she had been advised there was more oversight from the ministry and ERO, compared to residential schools of the past.?

As reported by Newsroom in June, the minister was currently looking at the future of the entire learning support system, of which residential specialist schools are a part.

Stanford said this was in an effort to ensure the education system met the needs of all learners and their families.

On specialist day schools, the minister referred to the ERO report from June in her reasoning for the almost $90m of ring-fenced funding in Budget 2024, saying these schools provided certainty and choice to parents.

※[The funding] will redevelop specialist facilities and increase satellite classrooms for students with high needs.§

It included $63m in depreciation funding to upgrade specialist schools in poor condition, and $26m in capital funding to deliver additional capacity through 17 satellite classrooms for specialist schools, relieving pressure on the network.

As part of this investment, specialist schools and satellite classrooms were being included in network planning for the first time. The minister said she hoped this would ensure students could have the learning environments they needed to succeed, and parents had choice with their child’s education.

Stanford said beyond these oversight checks and additional funding, a broader specialist schools work programme was currently underway.?

This should help identify the need for future investment and what should be prioritised, in order to allow the growing needs of students to be met, whether through mainstream or specialist schools.?

Segregated systems - past and present

The minister’s decision to increase the oversight of specialist residential schools, and review the specialist education system more broadly, is pertinent with the delivery of the Royal Commission’s report.

Alongside detailing the specific abuse faced by those with disabilities or neurodiversities while in state and faith-based care, the commission made general comments about this type of segregation.

It said there was an over坼use of institutional care for Deaf, disabled and mentally distressed children, young people, and adults, while these people were often denied or restricted from involvement in decisions about their own lives.

※Instead of addressing the social and cultural needs of whanau by resourcing and empowering families to care for their own, the state placed children, young people and adults in punitive, institutional settings that segregated and isolated them from their whanau and communities where they were of sight and out of mind,§ the report said of state care in the period from 1950 to 1999.

※Society’s discriminatory attitudes towards difference, including racism, ableism, disablism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, punitive attitudes towards whanau and individuals who need support, all had one thing in common: they devalued and dehumanised children, young people and adults in care.§

Being segregated and experiencing restricted contact and separation from whanau and community caused acute pain and had lifelong negative impacts, the commission said.

※Many were institutionalised to the extent they struggled to live independently. They were denied personhood and their culture, as well as the opportunity to practise life and community skills. Disability communities lost generations of future leaders.§

Paul Brown, a survivor of a specialist residential school for blind children in Scotland and a spokesperson for the Inclusive Education Action Group, said funding should be directed towards making local schools more accessible, rather than increasing the specialist school network.

※Often [specialist schools] are a last resort when the mainstream hasn’t worked. And the mainstream hasn’t worked usually for lack of funding and/or lack of support.§

Brown was referring to support for kids and young people directly, but also for the schools and their teachers.

While the Government spoke about giving parents a choice, Brown believed there was currently no genuine choice while the mainstream or local school system was unable to cater to the needs of these students.

No child should be taught in a mouldy classroom, and there was a need for investment because the schools couldn’t (and shouldn’t) be shut overnight, but he would like to see the Government come up with a plan to phase out specialist schools.

※Nobody’s pretending that local schools are all great and that disabled kids are welcomed. They’re very variable, and the experience of disabled children and young people in mainstream settings is bloody patchy, to say the least,§ he said.

※But that is always going to be the case if there’s an alternative to take kids out and put them in a specialist area.§

While the oversight of specialist schools - particularly specialist residential schools that featured in the Royal Commission report - had improved, segregating someone from their family and society increased the risk of abuse and deprived them of the opportunity to be fully a part of society.

If New Zealand carried on down this path, Brown said he expected another royal commission in a couple of decades.

※We’re perpetuating the issue that somehow disabled children don’t have the right, are not worth enough to be educated in the local school.

※How many generations of disabled people are we prepared to write off? At? what point are we going to call a halt to this?§

People with disabilities disproportionately experience poverty, unemployment and discrimination. Education was a big part of turning that around, he said.

※People always say disabled kids have the right to be educated in their mainstream schools. I also say that non-disabled kids have the right to know about the diversity of society. It’s not a one-way street. Society is made up of all sorts of people.§

Labour Party education spokeswoman Jan Tinetti said she had plans to phase out specialist residential schools during her time as education minister.

The highest needs review recommended a 10-year timeframe to shut the schools, in which time the mainstream system would be bolstered in order to be able to properly cater to all students’ needs. Her plan included a two-year and a five-year check-in.

But while some parents she met with wanted increased access to specialist schools, others believed children with high needs should be taught at their local schools.

During her time as minister - and following the UN recommendation to close specialist residential schools - Tinetti commissioned a literature review from the University of Auckland.

The review found the evidence for residential schools was ※thin§. While some people experienced positive behavioural and educational outcomes, there was often inconsistency between the parent, staff and student experience.

Meanwhile, studies generally found any positive impacts were outweighed by the potential risks or harm that came with residential placements.

Tinetti said the specialist schools were doing ※a magnificent job§.

※But there is inherently something wrong in a system that we’re segregating kids that are pretty high functioning out from the rest of society.§

Tinetti said the mainstream wasn’t catering to a growing number of high needs learners, while there had been questions about restraint use in the residential schools and the horrible conditions of classrooms at specialist schools.

Reflecting on the Royal Commission report - as someone who grew up on the grounds of Templeton ＆psychopaedic’ institution - Tinetti said New Zealand needed to do better.

※There’s a really strong message that’s been sent with this report, and if we don’t listen to that message, we’ve lost a real opportunity to grow our society for the better,§ she said.

※We’ve got to start growing up as a society and listening to the fact that our disabled people that live within our society are us.

※It’s so important that we take the lessons from this. They’ve given us a treasure; given us a taonga, the commissioners, and we have to use it.§