Salesa JennyJENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you for the call on the Education Legislation Bill. I would like to talk about two things that this bill is going to do. First it will enable principals to manage more than one school. It will bring in what I would call a chief executive officer (CEO) type of person to manage a group of schools. Second it would allow tertiary education institutions to sponsor charter schools or as this Government calls them partnership schools. I would like to start with the charter schools. We strongly oppose the expansion of charter schools. This is an initiative that is still not based on evidence that it actually works for our most vulnerable Māori and Pacific students in particular. The charter schools model was introduced here into Aotearoa New Zealand because we were promised they would deliver better educational outcomes for our Māori and Pasifika students. To date we have not seen evidence that this actually has happened. In fact when we look at the results there is not very much difference between the results of charter school students versus those who attend State schools. So why is it that we are going to expand this model and put even more millions of dollars into a model that is not yet evidence-based when on the other hand we are freezing the operational budget for our actual State schools? We are freezing that. We are going to go and ask the parents to put even more money from their own pockets to assist with funding schools so that they can run and we are going to invest millions and millions of dollars more to this untested unproven charter school model. We already know from our own experience in Aotearoa New Zealand that charter schools have not worked—at least one. This Government has closed a failed school Te Pūmanawa o te Wairua and $5.5 million of our taxpayers' money has gone down the drain. So is it very wise that in addition to knowing there is already one school that has failed we are going to allow tertiary education institutions to open up and become funders of partnership schools or charter schools? Our polytechnics already have issues of their own that they are dealing with. For instance tertiary providers as we all know have been caught enrolling staff members to make up the numbers—to boost the numbers. They themselves have their own fiscal issues that they are going through right now. Instead of having them focus on what they deal with which is tertiary education—just look at the name tertiary education institution providers"—we are going to allow them to open up their doors and to serve our compulsory sector children as well as some of our primary school children probably if this Government would have its way. But it is an unproven model. Millions and millions of our own dollars is going on an unproven and untested model that has not actually shown the results. Also when we were sold this model—this wonderful market-driven model—one of the things that we were told was that it would bring in private funding. It would bring in corporations with their own funds with their own capital to assist in delivering educational outcomes for our students. It has not. So this bill allowing tertiary providers to become charter school providers is really an admission from this Government that it has failed. It has failed to attract the capital and funds from private providers that it said it would actually do. But I turn now to my colleague Chris Hipkins' Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 219. It will remove the ability of tertiary institutions to sponsor a charter school. It is a very good SOP and I am hopeful that members of the opposite side will join us on this side and make sure that this SOP is actually approved. The other issue that I would like to turn to now is principals running multiple schools—as I said earlier a CEO-type person running a group of schools. The idea that one principal can run two three or four schools very well is not one that I think has come from principals themselves. In fact if I quote the President of the New Zealand Educational Institute Louise Green she said: "Principals work hard to lead the school they are the principal of and it's not a part time job." She is absolutely right. It is not a part-time job so why do we think that actually having a principal run two schools—or three or four—is something that would work when a principal running one school is a huge job on its own?I would now like to talk about one of the schools that is in my electorate which the Prime Minister has awarded for currently being the best the most outstanding school of this year: McAuley High School. You would think that when you look a principal who would be capable and competent of becoming a CEO-type principal of a group of schools it would be this principal Anne Miles. But she will not have a part of becoming a principal of more than just one school. She is focused on ensuring that the results that she delivers for her current students—about 800 students—is something that she actually continues to do. She says that she is so focused on making sure that her students are served well—do you know one of the things that she does? Because it is a decile 1b school and because she sees so many student come through who do not have funding to buy school uniforms or to buy stationery or even to eat this principal actually goes out fund-raising. She goes out fund-raising to assist her students. She cannot see how combining the role of running a school very well as well as ensuring that she serves very well the current students whom she already has about 800 of them—she does not see that dividing her time and dividing her expertise amongst many schools is something that she would like to do. She is exactly the kind of principal whom we should be looking at whom the Government should be looking at as someone who knows what she is doing. She is someone who within the last 10 to 20 years has improved the academic standing of the school that she is currently in charge of. If a principal like her will not have anything to do with this kind of school a school that is actually allowed to be run by one "super-principal" what kind of other principal are we actually going to allow to run such a school? Thank you very much."