Autumn issue

The latest issue of EA goes to the printer today. The cover story is "Reading, writing, eating"  - it looks at the remarkable extent to which schools are being supported by charities.

In the last year Kidscan has given 1.5m items of food to schools. And that's just the beginning. Schools are getting sound systems, AV gear, sports gear, transport, raincoats and shoes, and more - all from charities. Students can't begin to learn when they're hungry, and charities have become essential as a stepping stone to cross the cavernous divide that now separates what's on offer to students at high decile schools and how low decile schools must manage.

The story is a window onto larger changes that have occured in society. Politicians of the right tend to bemoan the fact that education spending has increased steeply over the last couple of decades, but that achievement levels haven't risen as much.

Their answer: cut spending on education (or in New Zealand's case, cut spending on teaching and learning programmes and boost spending on school property.)

It's a narrow view that overlooks other huge changes over the last two decades: the huge shift in wealth from lower and middle income earners to the rich; the huge increase in the number of working mothers.

Schools have become home for a lot of kids. They've taken over the role of churches as the centres of local communities. Governments over the years have recognised this by shoe-horninig all kinds of new learning into school curriculums - healthy lifestyle programmes, arts, music, sport, self- management, and so and so on.

People complain that kids can't spell these days, but the fact is the 3Rs have to make way for all the other programmes that schools must deliver. And for many schools that means ensuring children are fed and clothed appropriately. It should also be said that Kiwi students, while their spelling might be a bit shaky, have a tremendously richer education these days, and their processing and critical skills are some of the best in the world.

But charity? Did we go through all the upheavals of the 20th century, to simply arrive back at an era Victorian-style charity? No, of course not. Contemporary charities are far more likely to be pragmatic, non-judgemental, and to wonder why an earth our communities still have these kinds of needs when New Zealand has never been richer.

There's no neat resolution to the story. How can there be, when the questions it asks are so big? But these are questions of the day, and it's time to be talking about them.