Beaumont Carol: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBeaumont Carol: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 29 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10523. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour): Talofa lava i sui mamalu o le maota fono. Greetings to the honourable members. I want to say to the Minister in the chair the Associate Minister of Education the Hon Nikki Kaye before I begin my contribution on the Education Amendment Bill that she may be saddened by what she is hearing from this side of the Chamber. Let me say that on this side of the Chamber we are absolutely outraged at this bill which will undermine our public education system and which has no good purpose but has many dangers to it. During the course of this evening we are going to go through each and every one of those reasons.Part 1 of this bill is where the substantive provisions are that set up charter schools—and that is what they are. You can call them partnership schools if you like but under the National-ACT confidence and supply agreement what they are is charter schools and they are the price of John Banks’ vote. Let us not fool ourselves here people. I think that the Associate Minister may end up being heartbroken perhaps by the end of the evening listening to our arguments against this legislation.This bill aims to radically alter educational policy in New Zealand. There is no mandate for it. It is widely opposed by teachers by academics and by parents and it should be withdrawn. My colleague Chris Hipkins has put up a number of Supplementary Order Papers but to be honest my view is that the whole thing should be withdrawn. This is not fixable actually. This is about a taxpayer-funded private schooling system.The Principals’ Federation—probably not known to be the most radical organisation in the country but what did it say about it? It said: “The model being proposed is not a public school system but a taxpayer funded private schooling system. We believe if such Charter schools were to be established in NZ it would create potential for our high performing public school system to be undermined. There is no call from the education sector or the NZ public to establish Charter schools and the Treasury has advised that they do not see benefits in establishing Charter schools.” Certainly the Ministry of Education the experts have raised their concerns as well. There is an absence of charter schools in those countries that rank highest for student achievement in the OECD.I think it is really important that we look at the arguments here. Why do we care so much? Why am I outraged? Education is one of the most important things that we are tasked with as members of Parliament—providing quality education to all of our children wherever they live so that they can maximise their potential they can contribute to our country and they can live full and rewarding lives. It is transformational. But we have a world-leading education system. That is not to say it is perfect and it is not to say that there are not improvements that can be made but we are already able to have many flexible arrangements—Simon O’Connor: Cross the floor Carol.CAROL BEAUMONT: I would like to mention to the member of Parliament from Tāmaki—my colleague Dr Megan Woods mentioned Tāmaki College where there is a lot of innovation. Well let me tell you about another school that is in the Tāmaki electorate. That is Pt England School which we also visited the other day where they are running the highly transformational highly successful Manaiakalani programme. If you want to see best practice in a low-decile school then I would urge members in this Chamber to go to that school and look at that cluster of schools in Tāmaki.They are doing that under the existing system because there is the flexibility. They have lifted student achievement on every single measure—every single measure. It is a low-decile school in a cluster of schools that are predominantly Māori and Pacific and they have done that under our existing public education system by introducing a way of learning that really caters to those kids’ needs and creativity using all of the innovation around e-learning. Those kids blog and are followed by people all around the world. Those children produce their own school television programmes. Those children are learning at an increasing rate of knots. It is successful.We do not need a charter school. We do not need the “Pt England Charter School” or the “Tāmaki Cluster of Charter Schools” to do innovative things and to lift student performance. What I think we need to really focus on—and I want to acknowledge my colleague the Hon Nanaia Mahuta because she said this very succinctly a few months ago—is that if we are worried about student achievement and of course we are because we want every child to have the best possible start then we need to do things differently. But we can do things differently in the existing system.What we need is indigenous local solutions that actually are relevant to New Zealand children just like the Manaiakalani work in the Tāmaki cluster of schools which was led by Pt England School. That is a local solution. It suits those children.So what I am saying here is that this is a failed model imposed on the New Zealand education system unnecessarily and there is good progress already being made—that is the other thing that I think is being missed in this debate. There is good progress being made in lifting performance. In fact interestingly enough—this is somebody whom I would not normally quote—the Minister of Education in September 2012 acknowledged that progress was being made: “Ms Parata says it’s particularly exciting to see the improvement in the number of Māori and Pasifika students leaving school with either NCEA Level 1 or Level 2 or above. We have seen the proportion of Māori school leavers who have achieved NCEA Level 1 or above go from 61.8% in 2009 to 68.6% last year.”What is going on is that schools and principals and teachers and communities are looking for solutions and what we need to do is identify those things that work—the sorts of things we saw at Tāmaki College; the sorts of things we saw at Pt England School with the Manaiakalani Education Trust—and actually say: “These are successful. The evidence is there.” The evidence is there that they are successful. Let us replicate these things throughout our education system making the necessary adjustments for local communities.That brings me to another really important point here. Who actually wants these charter schools? Well certainly parents do not—82 percent of New Zealanders did not think charter schools should be allowed to employ untrained or unregistered teachers. Who is going to be cut out of having a say under charter schools? Well let me tell you. It is parents and communities who are going to be cut out of having a say under what the Government is proposing here. Again part of our world-leading education system is the fact that schools do have the flexibility to do what works in their community and they do have a requirement to have elected boards of trustees—elected boards of trustees—that reflect the needs and interests and concerns of that community. So if we want to look at what works and if we want to lift achievement surely we should be asking the local community and the local parents not imposing some model and some sponsor and what they think should be done. Well how is that going to create innovative solutions that meet the local community’s needs?Again I want to use the example from the Tāmaki electorate because I know that the local member of Parliament would sing its praises everywhere but he knows honestly that that innovation is possible now and he should admit that. It does not need a charter school. But that school and that cluster of schools have been able to do what they are doing only because they have had parent and community buy-in. They have had the process to get parent and community buy-in and that is what is going to be denied with charter schools where there is no requirement to have elected boards of trustees.During the course of the evening we are going to go through and talk about a number of our concerns but I too want to add my voice to why it is so wrong to allow unregistered unqualified teachers to teach our children. I think that the majority of New Zealand parents actually value and trust the teachers in their primary schools and their secondary schools and they know that we have well-qualified teachers. So what I want to know is how on earth the Government thinks that saying that you do not have to have any qualified teachers or any registered teachers in a charter school—the principal does not even have to be qualified—how on earth that is going to work. I mean the Government itself—you know I feel like I am quoting the Government too much—in the National Party policy in 2011Education in Schools said that its goals were to “strengthen accountability”. Well it is taking the community’s say out—