Mahuta Nanaia: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMahuta Nanaia: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 29 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10528. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Labour—Hauraki-Waikato): People following this debate on the Education Amendment Bill tonight could be forgiven for thinking that charter schools were a result of “cup of tea” politics. But we know the truth. The Opposition knows the truth: in fact National had been planning well before the 2011 election to implement charter schools. So I want to ask members on the other side of the Chamber why they did not campaign on it. Why did they not tell the public of New Zealand that they intended to implement a policy that would have fundamental implications for their communities and for the public education system? They did not. Instead they hid behind the cup of tea that they had with John Banks to push this particular policy through.Let us take a step back and go to the rhetoric of why charter schools were being promoted throughout New Zealand. The policy was there to address the long tail of underachievement and the challenging issues in Christchurch. South Auckland and Christchurch were going to be the two areas of focus to have charter schools. We hear from members on the other side of the Chamber that we should not worry because charter schools can co-exist within the current system. But there is a fundamental difference between the two systems. Every dollar that is put into the public education system is publicly accountable—that is every dollar must go towards the educational benefit of children attending their local schools. But that is not so for charter schools where people can make a profit. The mates of the Government can make a profit and they do not have to be publicly accountable for the dollar they are spending within the charter schools. That is a problem.There are two fundamentally different ways of looking at education provision. On the one hand our public education system is investing in our children and their future wherever they may be so that throughout New Zealand every child can go to a good-quality local school in their community. On the other hand there is a pepper-potting of charter schools and there is cherry-picking of students to attend these charter schools and they may or may not survive. If we look at the research and the evidence on charter schools as has been said by many speakers before me there is very shallow evidence to substantially prove that charter schools will make a huge difference to the learning needs of those most vulnerable in the education system.The challenge to the Government is that if it truly did believe that charter schools would improve educational achievement for those most vulnerable for Māori and Pasifika students why did it not write that into the legislation? Why did the Government not make it an obligation on sponsors to write into their contracts that they will demonstrate that their charter school will lift educational achievement for Māori and Pasifika students? It did not bother. It did not bother because it knows that its rhetoric does not match up to the evidence. This is a problem because again we hear that charter schools will be a solution for those most vulnerable in our education system but they will not.Right now communities are looking to nominate their boards of trustees. One of the fundamental things we have within the public education system is parent voice within their local school to be able to help form the local charters for their local school. That will not be the case in charter schools. You can have a board that is appointed that is not from the community and that has very little direct accountability to the parent community about how it operates and runs a charter school. How can that be good when in New Zealand we have local models that show that parents do want to participate inthe learning and educational targets of their children? That is a fundamental difference between charter and public schools.We have also heard from the Minister in the chair the Associate Minister of Education Nikki Kaye that we need more diversity in the system. Well how diverse do you need to be? I think New Zealand probably has one of the greatest levels of flexibility in its system. We have got integrated schools public schools single-sex schools coed schools kura kaupapa wharekura and private schools. We are spoilt for choice. The implementation of charter schools within that context serves only one purpose: to suck money out of the public education system and give it to National Party mates so they can make a profit on the back of the most vulnerable learners in our society. Shame on them!