|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
- By Riley Cobham, Franklin Junior Journalist
I am a home-schooled athlete who feels excluded by the new School Sport New Zealand (SSNZ) policies.
I ran in the national road race for my year in December but, to the best of my understanding, I will be excluded from competition under SSNZ’s policy change regarding homeschooled students.
SSNZ has voted to exclude homeschooled students from participating in its sanctioned events, stating that:
‘The change to the SSNZ Constitution means that any student taking part in an SSNZ sanctioned event must be enrolled in a Ministry of Education recognised school.’
To me, this means that discrimination is in, homeschoolers are out.
In contrast to SSNZ’s discriminatory policy change, and its questionable claims that only 26 homeschoolers are affected, every single student should count.
They also claimed member principals had made a ‘democratic decision.’ However, democracy by definition is ‘rule by the people.’
Interestingly, a recent poll found that 83 per cent think homeschoolers should be able to win medals at inter-school championships. This highlights public attitudes towards SSNZ’s decision, on the basis of which a final, democratic call should be made. If we can win, we must be allowed to compete.
If protecting home-schooled students is not SSNZ’s responsibility, neither is excluding them. Students should be treated equally.
In its press release, SSNZ also stated that:
‘Students must be regularly attending [school] and actively engaged in a full curriculum workload to represent their school in school sport. These requirements cannot be met outside of Ministry of Education recognised schooling.’
However, this ignores the fact that the Ministry of Education does recognise homeschooled students, as demonstrated by granting them exemptions, making their home their school. So, we deserve the opportunity to represent our ‘schools’.
Furthermore, home-educated students must be academically educated to at least an equally high standard as those being educated in schools, a condition of their exemption being granted.
This is in contrast to SSNZ’s arguments, which state that, because homeschoolers can apparently train more, they have an unfair advantage.
However, any advantage homeschoolers may have is also to be had by pupils of the New Zealand Performance Academy Aotearoa, a school purpose-made for excellence in sporting and academics.
Surely homeschoolers can strive for that same excellence and still enjoy the right to participate in school sport. If it’s fair to exclude homeschoolers because of ‘unfair advantages,’ why can schools that also provide these be considered fair?
Additionally, students participating in a school curriculum that’s more difficult than NZQA cannot train as often as they devote more time to academics in order to obtain a pass on their exams. Why then is no attention being drawn to this inequality?
Homeschoolers don’t have an unfair advantage in their training compared to in-school students and even if they did, I believe there’s is no reason to exclude them. SSNZ’s definition of sporting equality is clearly a little off!
Sport isn’t always equal, in that everyone’s circumstances are different. If homeschoolers are to be excluded on the grounds of unfairness, then how many other groups should be excluded also?
Homeschoolers deserve to compete. Failure to allow us to do so is unjust and undemocratic. We deserve equal rights, we have long been campaigning to obtain them, so it’s high time that we did.
