Delahunty Catherine: Financial Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Financial Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 04 March 2014. Volume:696;Page:16281. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green):Tēnā koutou e te Whare nui o te WharePāremata.Tēnā koutou katoa. I am pleased to take a call on Vote Education although it saddens me because the education space should be a manifestation of harmony for thebenefit of all our children’s learning instead of which it is now a highly contested space between those who seek to privatise and those who want quality local public education which includes innovation to be the priority. That is what we have been struggling with I guess under Vote Education for the last couple of years.We need foreign charter schools like a fish needs a bicycle. We need privatisation in the same way that we need the aforementioned bicycle. We actually need to think about what the public-private partnerships that have just been announced by the Minister of Education today will do to the quality public education system which we are trying to strengthen. It is very interesting to see the cost-cutting and the property speak in the Cabinet paper that I have just been trying to read which shows that schools are going to be “bundled together”—I love the rhetoric here—to see whether there is money to be made out of them under the name of relieving teachers and principles from managing school property.Well if one has read any of the international literature on public-private partnerships the contract still has to be managed by the school. Schools have to deal with the private company that is making the money—or not—out of the school and many of them have been left holding the baby. That is very very worrying when we see the master plan for privatisation that has been rolled out this afternoon in this country.Christchurch of course is the Trojan Horse for all of this. I was there last week and one of the principals said to me that it takes him far more time to manage his school cleaning contractor than it does to have people work for him directly. He said that managing contracts is actually far more time-consuming and difficult than just dealing with the people whom he knows who used to come in and clean his school. That was a minor example of his concerns about public-private partnerships about which he knew nothing. He is from east Christchurch and is very intimately involved—supposedly involved—in the brave new world that is being created in the modern learning environments.The other thing that was interesting that was said to me was that a modern learning environment might be some colourful beanbags and some new classrooms but in reality the community remains the community with a lack of the resources that they need. He said: “We as schools are still going to struggle with dealing with what is really going on with homelessness with enormous stress with poverty with low wages and with families that are under stress.”So at the heart of the debate although the Government will continue to deny this under Vote Education is the reality of the child poverty statistics which the Crown has admitted have been underestimated by up to more than 20000 children. That is why we need to encourage our best people into teaching and like others we watch this space to see how things play out in terms of the $350 million that has been allocated to give more money to executive principals and others.But we also need to acknowledge that we have to address the fundamental issues of inequality and the Green Party has done so. The Green Party has developed a package on the hearts and hubs of communities how schools can be better at meeting those needs open our doors and be dedicated communities. There is a huge and ironic difference between the idea of a public-private partnership with services managed by a manager to make sure they are efficient and the idea in the Greens package of dedicated school coordinators to organise programmes with communities.That could be Te ReoMāori it could be adult and community education it could be language classes it could be social workers it could be dental health it could be parenting programmes it could be whatever the community wants not to see whether it is more efficient whether more money can be made and whether the Government can cut its spending on property but to build communities. Free after-school and holidayprogrammes for children in decile 1 to 4 schools a school nurse in those schools and lunch for those decile 1 to 4 schools if they want it based on how they want to deliver it—all of these can be done and we have costed them for under $88 million per annum. And we have received very positive feedback from educators and communities about this package. We think it is a far better investment than investigating privatisation of school property or paying executive principals who have got to look after 10 other schools and mentor them 2 days a week while running their own schools.We think ours is a better investment. It is the difference between shallow and deep support for schools and communities in the reality that we face. Principals of low-decile schools tell me that low-decile environments require a different skill set and a lot more resources. One example they gave me was school support staff. This principal had taught in both decile 10 and decile 1 schools and said that much more needs to be spent on school support staff in low-decile schools.