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Policy changes allow undocumented children to go to school
In 2010 the Government set aside funding in the Budget to allow schools to cover the cost of enrolling students who were unlawfully in New Zealand. This followed advice from the Human Rights Commission that for New Zealand to meet its international obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, all children, whatever their legal status as residents, should be able to attend school.
However, significant policy related hurdles meant it remained difficult for these children to attend school despite the funding. The former criteria said a child had to be unlawful for six months, before they could enrol. In any child’s life this is a long period to be denied education.
Depending on where the family was in the appeal process, a child’s immigration status could change. This could mean a child, who was attending school, could suddenly be unable to do so because under the previous policy the child would need to be “unlawful” for six months.
Here is the link to the notice published in the New Zealand Gazette on 12 January 2012.
And here’s what the changes do:
The first change is that the definition of long stay is no longer based on the period of time that the child has been living unlawfully in New Zealand. The period of time that the child has to have been in New Zealand to qualify for domestic student status will still be six months, but it will not matter whether they were in New Zealand lawfully or unlawfully during that six-month period. The child will have to be unlawfully in New Zealand at the time of the application.
The second change that has been approved is that it will no longer be a requirement for the parents to be unlawfully in NZ at the time of application. If the child is unlawfully in NZ at the time of the application (and living with a parent), it will no longer be relevant whether the parent is here lawfully or unlawfully.
This is the background, in terms of the international human rights issue:
These changes implement the very clear policy intent, conveyed to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child in January 2011, that the Government was enabling undocumented children to access state-funded compulsory education services (paragraph 27 NZ’s third and fourth UNCROC periodic report, page 13 written Government response (December 2010) to issues raised by the Committee). In its 19 January 2011 Concluding Observations the Committee stated that it “welcomes the legal guarantee of access to free education accorded to undocumented children” (paragraph 44).