Delahunty Catherine: Education Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Delahunty Catherine: Education Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 18 October 2012. Volume:684;Page:5994. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Speaker. Tena koutou e te Whare. The political parties often say that we all want the same thing for our children in this country: the opportunity to fulfil their potential. I do believe that that is true but unfortunately right here and right now that is where the common ground stops. That great New Zealander the late Bruce Jesson once said “Only their purpose is mad.” and from that mad purpose flows a logical Education Amendment Bill which advances the privatisation agenda of the National-ACT Government. This bill has so many obvious issues of concern for parents teachers and communities that it is going to take some months to decipher but there is also some interesting obscure disingenuous language that is raising concern in the community. 
I am going to devote some time to the core issue which others have touched on eloquently around charter schools and the failed model that the Government is attempting to adopt. There are many other issues in the bill not the least of which are the clauses on merging schools where Christchurch is the front line of an incoherent experiment at the expense of an already destabilised series of local school communities and may well see these things being implemented against the wishes of the schools’ students and parents. That will be paid for I believe at the ballot box—that is when—but it will not help the children who do not need any more destabilisation in their lives. That also goes for vulnerable children who struggle in education because of poverty inequality or the lack of cultural appropriateness in schools. We are not avoiding issues here; we are saying that we need to innovate in the State sector but we do not need to privatise. 
There are clauses in this bill around boards of trustees which the School Trustees Association has already raised issues on and it has raised concerns about what I am calling the “do your best or else” clauses around student achievement. As others have said who goes on a board unless it is for the good of students? All of us who have been on boards or who are on boards are there for the good of student achievement; we are not there to eat our not particularly generous lunch. So are these rhetorical clauses or will there be consequences for so-called failure? I suspect that consequences for failure are implicit in the description of the board’s so-called new role. There are also mysterious alternative constitutions and board models that minimise parental involvement which are going to cause major concerns. 
Some other clauses include those around search and confiscation for students. These clauses may be useful if they clarify and limit some of the current practices but at the same time they may also normalise unnecessary behaviour in schools towards the human rights of students. We are looking more deeply at that one to see whether it is going to be necessary and helpful or whether it is going to normalise a more pathological approach to student and school safety. 
Another fascinating clause in the bill is around early childhood education and the leasing of public land for private development for the profitable side of the early childhood education sector. It is a disturbing development aimed at removing again—there is a theme here people—public assets and allowing the private-profit sector to make money out of that land. 
There is another very disturbing aspect of this called the National Student Number for families where people believe that a child is unlikely to get early childhood education. It sounds like colour-coding to me. Is it a tool for facilitating Work and Income to punish parents who are not enrolling their children in early childhood education or is it just a statistical practical thing they need to do? That is something we will be asking at the Education and Science Committee. 
Then of course there is the beauty the jewel in the crown: the charter schools. I had the privilege of meeting Mike Feinberg from the Knowledge is Power Program who wears that shirt saying “Work hard. Be nice.” But when I asked him about critical thinking—pedagogy that involved questioning why so many people in our country and his experience inequality—he was not interested in that. You do not question the status quo. You go into a no-excuses environment as students and—I am sorry Mr Chair; you do not and I hope no one else does—sign a contract. This is all about the contract. This is like the mafia. You sign a contract and you do the contract or you are in trouble. 
I had the privilege of hanging out with Karen Harper-Royal from New Orleans where they have lost all but six of their state schools because of disaster capitalism and now they are all in charter schools. It is not working for those kids it is supposed to be working for. They end up being counselled out of these charter schools because they cannot meet the contract. And the contract as written in this current bill is exactly the same. It says that they must be in school for the hours in their timetable which could be anything from 7 in the morning on a weekday to a Saturday afternoon. Who knows? The point is that there is no scrutiny there is no public involvement and there is limited parental involvement. That is what I learnt from Karen who runs this group called Parents Across America. Parents Across America is trying to deal with the failure of a model that we are trying to adopt. It is very bizarre that we would do that given that the Finns who are also in New Zealand represented by Dr Pasi Sahlberg focus on equity of achievement and equity of participation and they get the results that we need. When I hosted Pasi Sahlberg here at Parliament with the National Party and we had a conversation it turned out that Finland actually has indigenous people and it has the same issues that we struggle with. It has Sami and Roma people who fall through the cracks unless more resources are put into their indigenous languages in schools which is what Finland is doing and that is how it is improving. But no we are not going to do that. No no we are going to privatise instead. 
This charter school scheme this “Pepsi-Cola High” as Chris Hipkins so rightly said is on its way not to mention the Destiny Church homophobia classes. You know it is all possible. This scheme is going to be more expensive more risky and lower quality. The Government will deny it but we have already seen in this country that every single little religious group particularly some very fundamentalist groups that have strange ideas about what it is to be a human and other groups that feel they need more cultural responsiveness will be flocking to set up their schools. The fragmentation of society will follow. We will be paying a price not only for individual students but for society. We support equity as a goal and the right of communities especially tangata whenua to develop kura based on tikanga and Pasifika but this is not it. This is the contract and when the contract fails all it does is reinforce the vulnerability of people and families who are already vulnerable. 
One of the issues that comes up under the charter schools but which may also be applied across the board—it is unclear—is timetabling. This appears to apply to schools other than charter schools. It raises the question about what is the problem. At the moment we have flexible timetabling at some schools. Schools can set earlier and later start times. Or is this multiple timetabling really a way to double-bunk school facilities? Again is it for charter schools to have the opportunity to force students into longer hours and weekends so they can rote learn and meet the standard so that they can fulfil the contract? That is how it works in the other charter schools. You can rote learn. You have to get students rote learning by keeping them in for more hours and then they will perform in order to meet the technocratic neo-liberal reductionist model of education which has got nothing to do with real learning. Dropout rates from this kind of regime are notoriously high particularly in overseas charter schools because this mechanism forces performance in a way that hinders success and reinforces failure. So we have many issues with this. 
Although the Government is determined to merge schools in Christchurch to save money on the other hand it is setting up charter schools that are going to suck children from the surrounding schools putting pressure on the State schools. It is not only irrational; it is wrong. And the Government can hire whomever it likes to be a teacher. National members appear to think that any person can come into a classroom plan a curriculum engage the students set learning goals and create proper assessment options. You do not need any professional experience to do that! It is just something that you can make up as you go along. That will work for the most vulnerable! The heart of our system which is why we are seventh in the world is that only registered teachers with a practising certificate should be able to teach children on a permanent basis. We are not denying the role of school support staff and volunteers; we are saying that the leadership must be from people who understand pedagogy. I dispute the idea that somebody who happens to be enthusiastic can walk off the street and actually deliver the kind of evaluation and pedagogy required. They can support but they cannot lead and they should not be there as a school leader. And that is why despite the fact that in international terms we are underfunded we do have good schools. They can be better. The new charter schools have been given a blanket waiver for the reason that we have had the success that we have had. That is arguably legislative vandalism. But the worst thing is the secrecy. The worst thing is this secret contract with the sponsor who again does not need any qualifications. There is no accountability for that person. Again it can be anyone. It could be anyone involved in the business community who might like to make money. That is fine. 
So in summary I fear that we are looking at a giant Ponzi scheme that is going to fail our kids. We have a positive view of public education and we will be fighting this bill to the end.