Walker Holly: Education Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWalker Holly: Education Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 04 June 2013. Volume:690;Page:10691. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]HOLLY WALKER (Green): I am very pleased to be able to take a call in the third reading of the Education Amendment Bill on behalf of my colleague Catherine Delahunty. I am pleased to report for the benefit of the Hon John Banks that I am not wearing any lipstick tonight so unfortunately he will have to put his sexism aside and listen to the content of my speech.I am glad to be having my say because I have to say this is one of the most appalling bills to pass through the House in my time in Parliament so far. Basically at its heart this bill is a $19 million cup of tea. It is the result of the deal between John Banks and John Key which allows for a single member in this House to insist on an unpopular undemocratic non-transparent law change which no one publicly campaigned for before the election. That is the $19 million cup of tea that we are getting tonight in the form of this bill. It is yet another example I think of this Government governing for the benefit of its mates and in this case for its mate John Banks.What is so abhorrent about this bill? Well I have got five things and I hope I have time to talk about them all. The first is that there is no requirement for partnership schools—yes I will use the terminology—to have registered teachers in their schools. A university degree is apparently enough perhaps not even that to teach children—Hon Member: No they don’t even have to have that.HOLLY WALKER: —yes not even that—in the vital stage of their education. Teaching is a highly complex job it is vitally important and it is a job that we should value very highly. It is informed by theory pedagogy culturally appropriate knowledge and having the right skills to work with vulnerable learners none of which are going to be available to people who have not trained as teachers and who are not registered teachers. So this bill is undermining the teaching profession and with unregistered teachers it is an experiment essentially on our kids.The second reason that this bill is abhorrent is that it is not subject to the Official Information Act. So we have got $19 million of public money being spent on these schools with absolutely no level of public oversight on how that money is spent. There is no transparency there is no ability for the Ombudsman to investigate complaints about the schools of which I am sure there will be many and it is basically an inexcusable lack of accountability for the use of public money in our school system.The third reason that the bill is abhorrent is the use of public money for private profit-making businesses and it is straight-out corporate welfare. It is handing taxpayer money to private profit-driven companies to allow them to run schools for profit and to pocket public taxpayer money for profit. They can receive special funding for certain elements of that including for students with disabilities but they do not have to provide any level of accountability that that money is actually spent on what they say it is going to be spent on. They can pocket it as profit if they want to and that is taxpayer-funded public money.The fourth reason that the bill is abhorrent is what we heard today that it is rubbing salt in the wounds of schools that have been closed. Today we heard in question time that first of all the Minister of Education could not even remember signing her own Cabinet paper that suggested closed schools would be the logical first locations for the new charter or partnership schools. She did not remember signing that advice but that was her advice to Cabinet. Then when she was questioned about it she could not rule out that she might use closed school sites in Christchurch to open charter schools. After everything else that she has put the school community in Christchurch through—trying to tell them that their schools are irreparably damaged or that they do not have enough students to stay open and then closing their schools—she is now telling them that she might allow private for-profit charter schools to open up on the sites of the schools that she is about to close. Talk about adding insult to injury.The fifth and final reason why this bill is so abhorrent is that it is an ideological solution in search of a problem. We have a great public education system in this country and it delivers some of the best results in the developed world in terms of public education. There is absolutely no evidence including from the United States from where this model was imported that charter schools will actually deliver anybetter results for those most vulnerable learners whom those on the Government benches like to trumpet in this debate as though they are going to be solving the problem of inequality and education through the mechanism of charter schools. There is no evidence that that is required and that charter schools actually achieve that. It is already possible to establish special character schools to meet particular community needs under the Education Act. There is no need for this legislation. It is abhorrent and I am very proud to speak in opposition to it.