Turei Metiria: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: Education Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee[Sitting date: 29 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:10517. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): I just want to thank my colleague Tracey Martin for her very detailed analysis of the impacts of this bill the Education Amendment Bill. Her experience in having worked on a school board and being a member of a school board for many years now really does add weight to the concerns about this charter schools legislation. It really is up to us to seriously consider the expertise of those who are involved with schools every day—teachers principals boards of trustees and indeed the parents of children at schools—when we are making decisions about their children’s education. That is clearly not the case here. Charter schools are not the result of evidence-based information from the experts in education.Andrew Williams: It’s John Banks.METIRIA TUREI: That is right. It is John Banks a man who is currently I understand still in court.Let us go back to basics. The Government is saying that there is a tail of underachievement—it is a terrible phrase—and that there are kids who are not doing as well in the State school system as they ought to and that it is looking for options to fix that. OK that is a fair enough intention. But the fact is that instead of looking at the evidence including the evidence not only of experts in education but also of the Ministry of Education itself as to what will work for these kids it has gone to John Banks to look for evidence and information as to what he thinks. This one-man band from a dying party is now setting the education agenda for hundreds and hundreds of children with the potential actually to impact on thousands and thousands of childrenbecause as we know John Banks was very explicit when he said that he wants to privatise the public education system. His intention is not just to create a few charter schools over the next few years or so but to turn every State school into a private school as a means of funnelling cash out of the public coffers and into the hands of a very wealthy few. Well we know that National is very keen on that idea. We have seen it do that over and over again particularly in this Budget. That is where the evidence and the information are coming from. It is a tragedy for schools and a tragedy for the children who will be subjected to this terrible experiment.If we actually look at the evidence—firstly the evidence of failure—the best evidence from the US about charter schools the most independent evidence shows that only 17 percent of the charter schools in the US do better than those in the public system. That is less than one in five—less than one in five. So for every five charter schools that will be set up under this ridiculous proposal from John Banks we can expect that four will fail to meet the standard of public schools. And only one if we are lucky—because it is not quite one in five—will do better than any State school. So why would you waste money and give away money cash to somebody who has not been tested and who does not have any educational experience but who can make a profit? Why would we experiment with the desperately needed cash that we have in education on four failed schools out of five at best?Not only is there such a high failure rate of charter schools internationally but also we have to consider the children who are being considered for these schools. Tracey Martin is right. The schools are being funded at decile 3 but actually there is no restriction to make sure that the school is set in a decile 3 area and that it takes children who are particularly vulnerable because the schools have to have an open roll. So what happens of course is that there will be kids who will go to the school and instead of having an enrolment process to lock out kids what those schools have done overseas is to have a push-out process. So the schools do not stop kids coming in but they have very very clever measures to kick kids out—kids who are likely to fail kids who are too expensive and kids whose families are demanding higher standards from that charter school. Those kids get kicked out of charter schools everywhere else in the world where charter schools are set up.It is done through all sorts of ridiculous rules—through funding rules through behaviour rules through process rules and through enrolment rules. These rules all impact on the child once the child is part of that school. So we will certainly see charter schools cherry-picking students by a push-out process even though this Government is saying that the schools have to take any student who comes to them. They do not have to keep them. They might have to take them but they do not have to keep them. And we will see more and more of our kids—those at whom this programme is supposed to be targeted—being abandoned yet again.The concern that I have is that we do of course have successful indigenous models of schooling for those very kids about whom the Government says that it is so concerned. Those models are the kura kaupapa Māori. They are the bilingual units like Kia Aroha College in South Auckland. I do not know whether anyone has been there? I have been there a few times now. It is a fantastic innovative and clever State school which provides the best and highest-quality education for Māori and Pacific kids in that area.Tracey Martin: Mahurangi College the highest achieving.METIRIA TUREI: What college was that?Tracey Martin: Mahurangi College the highest achieving for Māori and Pacific kids.METIRIA TUREI: Mahurangi College the highest achieving for Māori and Pacific kids. We know that when State schools are given the opportunity to be innovative and to reflect the needs of their community and they are given the resources and the support that they need they will do good for our kids. So why would we then impose a new model that is experimental? Well we know why. Because actually this Government wants to funnel public money into the private sector. It is quite happy to keep funnelling public money into the private sector as fast as it can and charter schools are one way of doing that.The other things that work are Te Kotahitanga and Ka Hikitia—Managing for Success and in the briefing to the Minister of Education when she first took her role the Ministry of Education said that if the Government wants to deal with the tail of underachievement and particularly focus on Māori children then it should properly resource fund support and promote Ka Hikitia and Te Kotahitanga. And what has it done? It has cut it. It just chopped it—chopped it right off. The Government is now saying that it is going to do something else. Who knows what that is? Again it is another experiment on the kids who need us the most. So instead of doing exactly what it knows works what is proven to work what the experts say is working and what the ministry itself is saying is working no the Government is going to do what John Banks thinks—what John Banks thinks. And what John Banks wants is the full-scale privatisation of the education system.I would like to hear from the Minister in the chair the Associate Minister of Education Nikki Kaye a guarantee that no school that has been closed will be given or provided to a charter school for its use. I would like some guarantee that of the school closures that we are seeing—not just in Christchurch but we will continue to see them around the country over the next 18 months—not a single one of those closed schools will be used for a charter school.Hon Trevor Mallard: That’s what Nicky Wagner wants.METIRIA TUREI: Sorry?Hon Trevor Mallard: Nicky Wagner—she wants her schools turned over to charter schools.METIRIA TUREI: That is right. There is no requirement the Minister has no requirement to consider the whole network of schools when the Government is looking at setting up a charter school so it is quite possible—and I think quite likely—that this Government will go around closing State schools like we see it doing and then providing those school resources for the establishment of charter schools. Nothing in the bill stops it.The one protection that is taking a network approach to the establishment of new schools is gone under this bill. The Minister does not have to consider the network. I have a Supplementary Order Paper Supplementary Order Paper 236 to restore that requirement in this legislation so that the Minister has to consider the existing network of schools before the Government establishes a charter school. It is a small step a small protection but it will mean that the Minister cannot simply close a State school and then hand over its entire resource to some cowboy from who knows where who wants to set up a school because he knows there is profit in it—some cowboy who will bring in some crazy curriculum from who knows where imported from some mad place around the world who knows where from to deliver to our kids who do not need this experiment. But that is what the Government is going to do. That is what is going to happen. It will close existing State schools it will hand over that property and some cowboy is going to come in and be able to experiment on our kids.I think Tracey Martin was right also to raise another serious concern that if a teacher or a so-called teacher in one of these schools who is not registered commits some kindof crime or other abuse against a student there is no protection for that child and there is no protection for any other child in any other charter school. The Government is deliberately putting children at risk. It is deliberately putting children at risk because it will not provide for registered teachers in charter schools.Andrew Williams: Shame.METIRIA TUREI: How shameful is it that this Government would deliberately put the most vulnerable children at risk—because that is whom it says these schools will apply to—of any predator and have no process at all for managing that person?