Ogilvy Bernie: General Debates 
Ogilvy Bernie: General Debates 
[Volume:614;Page:10379] 
BERNIE OGILVY (United Future) 
: 
 Today around New Zealand many dark clouds are gathering over our education horizon. I wish to describe three particular clouds today in the hope of sounding some level of warning. The first is the school network reviews or area reviews that have been going on throughout this year and I am told will go into next year as well. These have stunned whole communities—rural as well as small town communities. Middle Earth New Zealand in some sense is under siege. The talk of school closures and amalgamations has rightly jolted people into calling public meetings as their only and last response. The promised consultations have been compromised in some people’s minds by independent consultants who are being bankrolled by the Ministry of Education. A fait accompli attitude has descended upon a lot of communities around New Zealand. That has caused mistrust in many communities amongst parents and teachers. The Ministry of Education processes for managing change have in its own words been abysmal. The huge volume of emails letters and phone calls I have been getting shout out one message which is: “Leave us alone if we are producing good educational outcomes.” 
Second to that and accompanying it is the school housing reviews. These reviews added to the school network reviews are a further complication to what is happening. Heated conversations are being held around kitchen tables in school staffrooms in cowsheds and in shearing sheds. Those conversations are about when non-core school housing will be sold or when their rents will be raised to full market values thereby impacting on rural regions in a very big way. The recruiting of new teachers will be more difficult than it already is in rural areas I think particularly for secondary schools that are looking for specialist teachers. Existing rural teachers also are facing the prospect of less or even more expensive housing and therefore will consider either leaving or stopping teaching in which case even more schools will close as classrooms have no teachers. 
On top of that another cloud is the review of the Private Schools Conditional Integration Act. This in my mind is none other than a plan by the ministry to access 324 special character schools to see whether it can close or amalgamate any of them. The Private Schools Conditional Integration Act was as it states a guarantee into perpetuity—a treaty nonetheless. Does this Government want to unilaterally break or demolish this treaty? Would it do that for the Treaty of Waitangi? The Private Schools Conditional Integration Act is considered just as sacred. Certainly United Future believes that some schools may need to close but only if they are failing educationally or the numbers of pupils are so small that it is impossible to achieve good educational outcomes. 
United Future is sounding a warning that our children mums and dads families and communities are hurting and disturbed by the culmination of all these reviews on their horizons. This Christmas and New Year will be a very gloomy time for some communities. Does this Government want to have more educational egg on its face as a result? United Future calls upon Parliament to build an educational Middle Earth that too will capture the imagination of this world.