Salesa JennyJENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): I rise to take a call on the Education Legislation Bill. The purpose and principles of this bill as proposed by the National Government are to look at improving the administrative and governance arrangements for educational entities and funding organisations." The changes proposed are going to run across the entire education system. The bill will allow tertiary institutions to sponsor charter schools which this Government calls partnership schools. It will look at allowing the creation of "super-principals" adjusting the opening hours of schools and so forth. These are wide-ranging changes to our education system and dragging in their wake will be a range of issues that we in the Labour Party believe will be detrimental to the futures of our young people. New trainee teachers for instance which the honourable Minister of Education spoke about—when this was presented to the Education and Science Committee most of those who came to give us their submissions were actually against having trainee teachers. It is one thing to allow trainee teachers at the high school level but what this bill actually proposes is to allow trainee teachers at all levels of the education system—one of the things that are being proposed under this that we think are just cost-saving measures. Instead of allowing trainee teachers across all of the levels of education we should have 100 percent qualified registered teachers. It is clear as noted in the minority view from Labour New Zealand First and the Greens that there is not really a strong case for allowing a "super-principal" to manage more than one school; nor do we actually have the details as my colleague Chris Hipkins spoke about. At the select committee we asked our ministerial folks to explain to us why it is that we are having this proposal in front of us to allow a "super-principal"—to allow having a principal of not just one school but potentially two schools and in some cases possibly even three schools; to actually have one principal overlooking a lot of schools. When we asked some of our principals—I actually went out and asked several of the principals in my area. One of the schools that we have in our area in Ōtāhuhu is actually a really successful school—McAuley High School. In fact it actually won the Prime Minister's Supreme Award for education and it also won the Excellence in Engaging - Atahāpara Award this year. I asked Anne Miles the principal over at McAuley High School what her thoughts were on becoming one of these "super-principals". Her answer to me was that she is dedicated to her students at McAuley High School. She looks after around about 800 students she has put together teachers and a school board and support staff and she works well with the parents. She said to me that it would be putting the success that she has actually got for her school at risk if she were to then divide her time between her school and other schools—possibly not even two schools but up to three schools. It would be in her words diluting the success that she already has—stretching it across many schools. In her words as a principal she found it hard to know how she would take it if another principal was a "super-principal" who would come into her school and tell her what she should be doing and tell her from experience what might possibly work based on theories from another school. In her words she would prefer not to actually do that to another school. McAuley High School outperforms many schools across the country. It produces marvellous educational achievements but it actually did not get to this place overnight. In fact it has taken 10 to 20 years or so for McAuley High School to get to the really good academic results that it has right now. For instance last year the university entrance results from McAuley High School were 74 percent compared with the national average rate of 69 percent. National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) level 1 was 95 percent at McAuley High School compared with the national average of 81 percent. Level 2 NCEA was 91 percent and for level 3 for McAuley High School it was 91 percent compared with the national average of 78 percent. However McAuley High School is a decile 1b school. In terms of the socio-economics of the kinds of students who attend McAuley High School and of the surrounding area there is a high unemployment rate. The average median funding that is coming into these families is between $19000 and $21000 per family in these places but they have turned their school around. I now want to talk about charter schools because one of the things that this current bill would allow is the expansion of the charter school model. After actually covering the academic results of an outstanding school in one of my areas given the socio-economic area that we have in Ōtāhuhu what this current Government has done is two streets away—only two streets away—it has actually opened up a charter school to be in direct competition with McAuley High School a school that has outstanding results and a school that has excellent results according to this Government which has given it the Prime Minister's Education Excellence Award this year. You would think that a principal like Anne Miles of McAuley High School would be just the kind of principal who we would look at to be a "super-principal"—you know to actually spread her expertise around to lead other schools—but she does not want a bar of this kind of initiative or to be a "super-principal". Looking at this pragmatically a "super-principal"—and Chris Hipkins already discussed this earlier on—would also have other issues that they would contend with. They would be accountable not just to one school board. They would potentially be accountable to two or possibly three school boards and at the same time given that they are already a principal of one school they would also be accountable to that particular school and to that community. So there would be quite a few things that this "super-principal" is supposed to be trapezing just to make sure that it actually works. But back to the charter school model. When the charter school model was first proposed we were told that this was a model that would be one that would turn around the educational achievements of Māori and Pacific children. But here in Aotearoa New Zealand the charter school model has already failed. Whangaruru charter school is a model that has failed. It has been closed down. This Government has invested $5.5 million in that charter school and we as taxpayers do not know whether we will get even one dollar back from that $5.5 million investment yet what does this Government do? It is expanding the charter school model investing even more millions and millions of dollars into even more charter schools across New Zealand. Most Māori and Pacific students do not attend charter schools. There are only a few hundred who actually attend charter schools. Most of our Māori and Pacific students attend State schools right now—thousands and thousands. Our State schools are the ones that are serving Māori and Pacific students. We contend that instead of investing—wasting—millions and millions of dollars more in charter schools we should be looking at what we are doing in the State schools that we have right now. Already this Government is freezing the operational budget of the current State schools and instead spending millions on charter schools. It is not even investing in special schools like Salisbury School over in Nelson. Instead it is wasting millions and millions of dollars on charter schools. It is to me really just ridiculous that here we have a chance to turn around educational achievement where the majority of Māori and Pacific students go to school right now which is State schools. But no we are trifling experimenting and wasting millions and millions of dollars on charter schools instead. This bill also allows for the charter school model to be funded by vesting it in polytechnics—yet another sign that this Government is not actually that successful in attracting other people who are out there to come through and actually establish charter schools. It actually has to now reach out to the current public system to polytechnics to open up their doors because it has failed at actually expanding the charter schools in any other way. Thank you."