According to The Tablet, 2015 attendance dues for primary students (year 1 to 8) will be $420 per annum, while for secondary students (years 9 to 13) it is $830 per annum.

Dunedin diocese needs just over $2 million in attendance dues income each year to meet mortgage payments on its 28 schools, insurance costs, administration and urgent minor capital works costs.

The insurance costs for the diocese's school buildings shot up last year from $135,000 to $400,000.

Bishop Colin Campbell expressed his gratefulness for the support and sacrifice shown by parents.

To avoid increasing costs, and subsequent increases in dues, capital works programmes at Dunedin diocese schools have been kept to a bare minimum, despite work that needs to be done to keep schools up to date.

It is Dunedin diocese policy that no child from a Catholic family is to be denied access to Catholic education because of the inability of parents to pay attendance dues.

Source

The Tablet

The 330 schools charge attendance dues to cover the cost of making their properties conform to state-school building codes.

The attendance dues are allowed to cover other charges associated with land and buildings, including insurance, and until 2009 it had been accepted for nearly 30 years that the cost of collecting could also be included as "associated charges".

But in 2009 the Education Ministry said the attendance dues could not include the cost of collecting them.

Source

• Stuff.co.nz
• Image: Prunescoop

Education officials are clamping down on charging practices at taxpayer-funded integrated schools, with at least one school told to return a bond parents have been required to pay.

This coming term $4000-a-year Bethlehem College in Tauranga is refunding a $500 attendance dues bond it has charged all its families for years, after the Ministry of Education ruled it was unlawful.

Education Minister Anne Tolley has also expressed concern that a leasing arrangement between the school and its owner, the Christian Education Trust (CET), enables it to get around the integrated schools legislation.

The Association of Proprietors of Integrated Schools says the Ministry of Education wants its members to stop including collection fees in the attendance dues they charge for the upkeep of school property.

Collection fees range from 2% - 6% of the attendance dues, some of which are more than $2000 per year.

The association says it has legal advice the fees are okay.

It says the two organisations have agreed to seek a High Court judgement on the matter and the case is likely to be heard in three or four months.

Source

• Radio New Zealand
• Stuff.co.nz
• Image: sunlive