Turei Metiria: Education Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: Education Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 14 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:9863. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green):Thank you Mr Speaker—Hon John Banks: Oh no not this one!METIRIA TUREI: Oh John Banks is frightened—he is frightened. I do not know whether the people out there heard that. “Oh no!” he says. The Green Party knows that education can transform societies transform communities and transform lives. Education was a route out of poverty for me and it certainly can be for others. But for that to happen New Zealand must have a strong free inclusive and quality public education system whose quality does not depend on the size of your wallet where every New Zealand child is entitled to the highest-quality public education. That is where equity rests. That is where we get the best advantage from an education system to deal with the terrible issues of poverty that afflict 270000 New Zealand children. Despite what Bill English said this morning about poverty not really existing in this country there is a solution to poverty and it is education.The ACT-National Government is fond of promoting charter schools as a choice for Māori children for Pacific children and for vulnerable children one that is comparable to the choice wealthy parents apparently get when they choose to send their kids to private schools. That is part of the spin. But it is absolute and utter rubbish—it is absolute and utter rubbish. The reality could not be further from the truth. Charter schools offer to poor children to Māori and Pacific children a choice that wealthy families would not touch with a barge pole. They would not touch it with a barge pole. I challenge any National Party member here who sends their child to a private school to stand up and say that they would move their child from a private school to a charter school where there are untrained teachers where there is reduced funding where there is no oversight and where there is no parent representation. I challenge them to shift one of their kids into one of these schools.In fact it is such a problem that the association representing private schools submitted against this Education Amendment Bill along with 2100 other submitters. Only 93 submitters were in favour of it. Along with 2100 others the private schools association submitted against the bill because it knows that charter schools threaten the very reputation of the New Zealand education system which is one of the best in the world actually. For all the spin from the other side it is one of the best in the world. What is being done here is incorporating importing a system that has failed elsewhere.The truth is that this Government wants charter schools because they are cheaper—they are cheaper and they funnel money into the private profits of people whom it knows. These schools do not employ trained teachers they can make up their own curriculum and decide whatever they like to teach these kids they do not need to bother with parents on school boards they can determine the length of their own school day they are free from much of the oversight they are cheap and they are nasty. What is worse is that this Government knows that it is easier to try out this experiment on the children of families who have the least power are the least likely to complain and have the least resources to say whether something is going wrong with their kids—the most vulnerable families. Rather than giving Māori Pacific and less well-off Kiwi kids the best education that the Government can utilising decades of evidence built up by some of New Zealand’s best educationalists the National-ACT Government is inflicting this imported charter schools experiment on the children who most need to be protected from it.Catherine Delahunty: Quite right Metiria.METIRIA TUREI: Thank you. And why? It is because of this one sole MP from a little teeny-weeny dying party which sneaked into Government at the last election which Judith Collins is trying to protect for next time and which this Government is dependent on to get its scarce few pieces of legislation over the line. It is very much about the tail wagging the dog in this case. That MP from that failing party has made no secret that he wants the entire public education sector privatised. That is what he said in the weekend: that ACT would demand from a future Government its commitment to “private provision of education”. That is an unqualified declaration to privatise New Zealand’s education system.Privatising the education system is what this bill is all about actually. Charter schools are at the top of the waterfall triggering a cascade of changes in the public education system that will lead to an elitist education system in New Zealand where the primary school education that you get comes with a hefty price tag if it is going to be decent. What this means for kids and for parents is that the kind of school that you get to go to will entirely depend on the size of your wallet.Let us have a quick look at some of the changes in the bill. These charter schools can be established by overseas owners as long as they have a shell company in New Zealand and they can make a profit—as much profit as they like—from taxpayer education funds. We do not believe that this is at all right. In fact public education money should go towards public education not private profit. So we have introduced Supplementary Order Paper 236 to this bill to ensure that no profit-making entity can establish a charter school. There must be some protections for the public purse. This is public money after all.These schools can also be established anywhere the sponsor wants to set one up with no consideration of the impact on local schools. At the moment the Minister is legally obliged to consider the impact a new school will have on any nearby school before she lets a private school be established or integrated into the State system. This helps to protect public schools State schools from roll decline and it helps to manage the system overall. But National is pretty poor at sticking to the rules when those rules interfere with its mates and potential profit as we saw with the decision to integrate Wanganui Collegiate School where officials told Cabinet it would damage the local school rolls if it did that. It did it anyway because of its mates.Nevertheless the rule is there but it does not apply to charter schools which have the freedom to erode the rolls of other local State schools and continue to undermine the public education system as overseas evidence has shown that they will. We have a Supplementary Order Paper which also will protect local schools from the corrosive effects of charter schools obliging the Minister to consider the local school network before agreeing that a charter school can be established.Children need to learn from adults who know how to teach. Teaching is a skill. It is a highly professional skill. It is a profession. Children need to be taught by people who understand how children learn. That is why private schools are full of really well-trained teachers actually because those schools can afford to pay for the best. That is why we need to have the best possible teachers in our State schools as well particularly in front of our most vulnerable learners because all of the evidence shows that the most vulnerable learners need the best possible teachers in front of them in order to be able to do well.Yet teaching is more than just subject expertise. It is about pedagogy; it is about the science of learning. It is about a compassionate and caring profession where people dedicate their lives to the well-being of children in order to make sure they can live good lives and have good futures. The New Zealand Post Primary Teachers Association today produced a survey that showed that 86 percent of New Zealanders do not want untrained teachers in schools; that 86 percent of New Zealanders actually believe that teaching is a profession for which there should be good remuneration for which there should be some professional acknowledgment of their skill; and that they want their kids taught by professionals. Seventy-one percent thought that it was wrong for private business to make a profit from public education. The Government has completely ignored this feedback because of course this deal was the result of a cup of tea a quiet little cup of tea and a conversation the content of which it tried to keep secret if you remember. As a result the most vulnerable learners in this country are now going to have foisted on them an experiment that is proven to fail.We have already said that we will require any charter school if we are in a position to do so after the next election to subject itself to the integration process. If they fail that process they will have to close and if they pass that process they are in a better position to continue. We do not believe that these charter schools can continue to be made available to our kids when we know that even in the best-case scenario only one in five of those schools will do well. We are opposed to this legislation and look forward to the changes that can be made at the Committee stage.