School under ministry watch
| Greymouth Star | Laura Mills
The Ministry of Education says it is meeting regularly with the Gloriavale School staff following a highly critical Education Review Office report threw doubt on its registration as a private school.
Gloriavale Christian School has a roll of 139. However, ERO said almost 20% of the enrolled students did not attend the school premises and school management had limited oversight of provision.
At the time of the review a further 42 Gloriavale students were being homeschooled.
Ministry of Education leader (south) Nancy Bell said following the ERO review, staff had been monitoring the school’s progress in addressing the findings.
“We also provide learning support services to students enrolled at the school.”
ERO found that in order to meet the criteria for registration as a private school, Gloriavale needed to urgently address a number of issues, including ensuring all school managers under current registration were “fit and proper persons”.
A separate report a few years ago commissioned by the ministry looked at schooling, and also children leaving Gloriavale School.
That report said young people leaving the school should be offered extra support, similar to refugees, after some said they felt they had moved to another country or were an alien in another world.