Williamson Maurice: Education (Charter Schools Curriculum) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliamson Maurice: Education (Charter Schools Curriculum) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 14 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7227. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga): I think there can be no area of public policy where the difference between the left and the right is so exacerbated than that of the delivery of education. From the left’s point of view the trade unions the New Zealand Educational Institute and the Post Primary Teachers’ Association should have control of what goes on. There should be one model of delivery and that is how all kids should live.From the right of the political spectrum where I come from we believe there should be quite a variation in the delivery mechanism. We already had a huge variation even within the current system before charter schools came along. If anyone who is in this room believes that some of the expensive private schools deliver anything like the same as some of the poorer decile 10 rural and provincial schools deliver for their kids they are dreaming. Right across the range of the schools even in my electorate—and I am sure other members have got the same thing—there will be various public schools that have a different emphasis on what they deliver and how they deliver it.When it comes to charter schools it is quite clear that there is a very very bottom-of-the-heap cohort who is missing out altogether. These kids were actually never attending any school and if they were they were failing miserably and probably being expelled or excluded from the school and so on. So what I do not understand is why the left does not at least get behind a trial. Let us see whether there can be a mechanism quite different to the current one because the current one has failed these kids badly or they have failed within it—whichever way you look at it. How about we look at a new mechanism and see whether it works?I actually like the idea of saying to a unit of people who want to bring some children into a new environment: “Have a go at this. Let’s see how it works.” But the first thing I want to ask as a question to the other side is: is any child compelled to attend a charter school? No. OK? They are not. Right? They do not have to. It is not compulsory; they choose to. Well that is a phenomenal starting point already because I believe in the inherent goodness of most parents to want to have a better outcome for their kids.The second thing about these partnership schools is to say: “Let us see whether they can deliver some outcomes.” I actually think they will. I think they already have. I think they are performing well. Then we get all of the nonsense metrics about how it is so much more expensive per child. Well actually there is a variation in the cost per child across the current State system anyway. But actually if you are setting up a brand new partnership school there are all the capital costs of new buildings new property and somewhere to house them. And so you are not comparing apples with apples when you only look at an existing school and you look at its per capita for funding just the operation of an already existing property.Then it comes down to Mr Goff’s bill about: “Let’s have some forced rigidity so that they must stick to this New Zealand Curriculum.” I ask why. Why would you not allow a charter school to say: “We actually believe there is an alternative curriculum an alternative way of learning an alternative mechanism for kids at the bottom of the heap to learn and we would like to try that.”? It may work or it may not and you might say “Well you shouldn’t be experimenting with kids.” but actually we have experimented with these kids for too long and they have got nowhere.If you think that all the children who are in partnership schools are going to do the top-of-scholarship passing that everyone in the best schools in the country does you are so wrong. This is a cohort of kids whom we need to put some real energy and effort into. Why would you want to put a restriction of “You must have the same structure as the State schools.” and so on?Why would you want to do that? It may be—it just may be—that a particular partnership school has got a particular view of the world that it wants to deliver and the parents can choose it voluntarily and want to go into it.I understand that the current partnership schools have all pretty much stuck to the New Zealand Curriculum as I guess you would expect as a starting point. But what sort of a Parliament are we what sort of a bill do we think we have to have until we go to the bottom end of the delivery mechanism to the kids who are struggling to even stay within the schooling system and then say to the deliverers of a chance of getting those kids in: “You’re going to stick to the straitjacket of the State school which did not work for these kids at any rate.”? This is why this bill is an absolutely ridiculous attempt to try to put an extra bit of a straitjacket around these schools rather than allow them to have that flexibility rather than allow them to have that freedom. I oppose the bill totally.