If Wanganui Collegiate closes, then their pupils will all enrol in other schools, which will also cost the taxpayer $3 million. Trying to say that you would save this money if the school closed is absolutely misleading.Farrar's conjoined twin Cameron Slater has used the same narrow defence earlier:
Clearly hoping for a greater tragedy than the school being supported by government Goulter complains about the $3.8 million spent to save the school and the $1200 per student subsidy private schools receive.The defence is so thin, people are blowing holes in it with pea shooters over at Kiwiblog.
Either the maths is beyond Mr Goulter (incompetence) or he is dishonest. Some simple and conservative calculations show that Wanganui Collegiate School existing for even the last twenty years has saved the taxpayer in excess of $65 million. That is based on 450 students multiplied by $7500 (the difference between full funding and paying the private school subsidy) times 20 years minus the $3.8 million. Over the full life of the school it is many times that but the picture is already clear.
There's a lot more fun yet to be had with the newly-nationalised Anglican school. For example, take the school's pig Latin motto, Vestigia nulla Retrorsum. It is a Magic Motto previously used by Moina Bergson Mathers, a mystic of the Golden Dawn (Crowley and his Shit Poets' Society).
