Donald Rod: Urgent Debates — Education—School Review Programme 
Donald Rod: Urgent Debates — Education—School Review Programme 
[Volume:615;Page:11231] 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I would actually like to congratulate Trevor Mallard on his decision to introduce a 5-year moratorium on school reviews. It is hard to admit to having made a mistake and it is especially hard to admit to having made one as big as those reviews. It is big of the Minister to admit yesterday that he was making a major mistake with the school reviews process and that he was facing an enormous credibility problem: the problem of trying to convince communities that he was taking the right steps. The Minister has acknowledged that his network reviews were detracting from the good work that schools were doing. 
It has taken the Minister an awfully long time to reach that conclusion however. He said that it dawned on him late last year so I have to ask why he then carried on cutting a path of destruction through 11 communities from Northland to Invercargill and including Wairoa Taranaki Upper Hutt the West Coast Timaru and others in between. Why did he cut a path of destruction through those communities in January and February of this year? Why did he announce a further 67 closures—or mergers as he prefers to call them—when he knew what effects his actions would have on those communities? Why is the Minister saving the rest of New Zealand from his brutal divisive and unnecessary network reviews when at the same time he is continuing to inflict pain and suffering on the 11 communities I have just mentioned? I appeal to the Minister to listen to the widespread concerns being expressed about his decision to force through the existing reviews. 
It is pleasing to see that finally organisations like the Principals Federation and the New Zealand Educational Institute as well as local body leaders and most political parties in this House are now calling on the Minister to stop the process. There are very good reasons why we are doing that. It is quite plain from the reviews already completed such as the one in Mosgiel-Taieri that they have been and continue to be a disaster. But most important of all it is great to see the parents of our future leaders the parents of our young people and young children attending those schools asking the Minister to have a heart. So I have no problem—whereas it appears that Brian Donnelly does—with the fact that the Minister has changed his mind on future reviews. My only problem is that he is not making the decision right now to cancel the reviews already under way. 
If Mr Mallard had turned up on the steps of Parliament today and had met parents who had come from as far afield as Ngahere and Kaiata on the West Coast or Kapuni in Taranaki let alone from Pinehaven Fraser Crescent Brentwood and other schools from Upper Hutt he would have seen the anger the hurt and the bewilderment that those parents feel. They believe in their schools. They know that they provide their children with a quality education. They know that their schools are at the heart of their local communities and they want their schools to stay open. I tell the Minister that it is not too late to have the courage to change his mind on the existing reviews in the same way that he has changed his mind on the reviews that he had intended to announce in June. Trevor Mallard admitted today that parents teachers and pupils are hurting in the communities currently facing the chop. He has the power to end that hurt and to begin the healing process. I appeal one last time to him to this Government and to the Prime Minister—who herself attended a small rural school Te Pahu with a current roll of 133 which is below Mr Mallard’s arbitrary cut-off point of 160—to show some compassion and some common sense. 
The Minister says that he will treat each school under review on the basis of its rational merits. I believe that the current reviews have gone past that point. School communities have found the review process to be brutal coercive divisive and destructive. Yesterday I visited six schools in the Invercargill area. Some I had been to before and some were brand new to me. All expressed similar sentiments to the schools that I had visited in Timaru and on the West Coast. All want Mr Mallard to stop the reviews and to stop them now. As Bill English conceded some of those schools will probably close. Some of them recognise that their rolls are too small or that there are other factors that may lead to a closure. But we should let them do that in their own way and in their own time. We should let them close willingly rather than force closure upon them in the way that this network review process has done. Most of the schools that I have visited want to stay open and they deserve to stay open—they have every good reason to stay open. 
There is an extraordinary contradiction in Invercargill for example in the current proposal. An excellent school such as Invercargill Middle School which has a roll of 130-plus has been recommended to stay open when just down the road Waverley Park School with over 240 pupils has been told it has to merge with Ascot Community School. Invercargill South School is being told it has to merge even though its roll is only a little below that of Invercargill Middle School. Salford School with over 270 pupils has been told it has to merge with Invercargill North School which has over 200 students. And so on it goes. The process includes Waikiwi School which is an excellent school with well over 100 pupils. Those are not tiny rural schools. There are some tiny rural schools included but I think many of them have good grounds to stay open—especially when if they close some 5-year-olds will have to travel for more than an hour to school. But to focus back on the schools I was talking about in Invercargill they do not want to go through a forced merger process. Ascot Community School for example has already been through that process only very recently. That school is still trying to heal the wounds from the last merger when Surrey Park School closed. 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: It opened in 2000. 
ROD DONALD 
: In fact Ascot Community School opened on 27 January 1999 but what is extraordinary is that yesterday when I visited that school the staff gave me a photocopy of the school plaque. It states: “Officially dedicated by the Hon Trevor Mallard on 16 March 2001”. That was meant to be a fresh beginning for that school. Now it is going through major upheaval yet again because of this review process. It should not have to face that. 
Children like Michelle Fogarty should not have to write poems stating: “Our school is an endangered species. Like the kiwi and the kakapo our school should be valued and treasured.” Parents such as Andrew Kerr whose children are at Waikiwi School should not have to write: “We have no transport and cannot afford to purchase any or to move house. If Waikiwi School closes our children will have to walk for approximately 40 minutes to and from school each day. This means crossing 17 streets. There are no buses. The proposed changes may save the Government some money but the costs of these savings is the health and safety of our children and our community structure.” 
Those points should be absolutely and completely transparent to the Minister because he has visited more schools than I have. He should know that the population projections he is basing the closures on do not stack up. Business and Economic Research Ltd showed that Invercargill’s school population will grow 20 percent in the next 20 years—not decline by 37 percent as the Minister is claiming. He should know that the empty classrooms that he talks about are actually being used for after-school care for special needs for computer suites and for drama suites. He should know that schools parents teachers and communities are angrier today than they were yesterday because they cannot understand why Mr Mallard is continuing with the current round of reviews while saying that there will be no further reviews. They are telling Mr Mallard to leave their schools alone. 
The Green Party supports that call. We will redouble our efforts to stop Mr Mallard from closing the 67 schools he has already earmarked for closure because those schools are the hearts of their communities and they deliver quality education to their pupils. Those schools have an important part to play in our future. They are the infrastructure that the Government needs for its own regional development policies and it should back off while it still has the chance to do so.