Waipareira forced out of alternative education

After more than a quarter century providing alternative education to rangatahi pushed out of west Auckland secondary schools, Waipareira has ripped up its contract with the Education Ministry.

Youth services practice leader Donovan Busby says the Amokura programme worked well when there were two or three high risk individuals mixed in with a dozen other rangatahi, but over the past few years the proportion of high offending risk youth increased dramatically.

That created a risk for others on the programme and for the organisation, which had to take social workers off other tasks to help the teachers.

Waipareira also felt it was letting other organisations evade their responsibilities.

"The mainstream schools are using alternative education as a backstop so they are not putting the hard work into these rangatahi.; It may stem right back to primary so they shift them on to the next school until we get them when they are about 13 or 54 and it is really hard to break the cycle of behaviour that they have," Mr Busby says.

Waipareira will move the Amokura students to other alternative education providers, but its social services will continue to support the rangatahi and their families.

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