Hipkins Chris: Oral Questions — Questions to MinistersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Oral Questions — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 01 July 2015. Volume:706;Page:4981. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]9.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) to the Minister of Education: Does she stand by her statement “I am satisfied that all the contract funding to partnership schools will be spent on meeting the contracted outcome for each school which is to deliver educational achievement”?Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): Yes I do stand by my full statement which I gave in this House in February last year: “I am satisfied that all the contract funding to partnership schools will be spent on meeting the contracted outcome for each school which is to deliver educational achievement. In exchange … partnership schools get greater flexibility to raise student achievement are subject to a higher degree of scrutiny … and have greater accountabilities than schools in the mainstream system.”Chris Hipkins: How can she claim that the funds being given to partnership schools are being used for education when He Puna Marama Trust received $3.9 million in Government funding to the end of last year yet its audited accounts show it spent only $1.4 million on education leaving $2.5 million unaccounted for?Hon HEKIA PARATA: I think that the member is quoting selectively from the accounts. The first distinction to make is that He Puna Marama Trust is a trust that is the sponsor of Te Rerenga Parāoa Whangariki Te Rerenga Parāoa and that is only one of the entities that it is responsible for. It also is responsible for 5 to 6 early childhood centres. It also runs an academy and it is responsible for delivering outcomes and I am happy to read to the member the 100 percent of National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 1 achievement that that school delivered. I will need to find the specific—something like 93 percent for National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 which is what it is contracted to deliver. [Interruption] To educational achievement—at nearly 100 percent on all three.Chris Hipkins: Does she think it is a good use of taxpayers’ money to provide He Puna Marama Trust with a grant of $1.8 million to set up a school given it leased premises that the accounts show is costing it only $68000 a year?Hon HEKIA PARATA: I am very happy to answer that question because the member has failed to grasp for some considerable amount of time that partnership schools are set up on a different funding basis. It is cashed up based on the inputs—[Interruption] Good are we all following along here? Yes. So it is based on the inputs that we fund—schools—and is benchmarked against decile 3. But I can see that the Opposition actually does not want the intrusion of facts on its shouting. That is what happens with partnership schools. We take the formula provided for mainstream schools. We benchmark against decile 3. We cash it up. We provide it with a contract. That contract is specific and public and then we report the outcomes and perhaps the Opposition would like to shout with glee for the number of kids who have gotten great educational qualifications that otherwise they might not have gotten.Chris Hipkins: If the partnership schools are indeed “cashed up” as the Minister explains where has the extra $2.5 million that He Puna Marama Trust was given to run a partnership school gone?Hon HEKIA PARATA: A number of the partnership schools have been leasing properties while they prepare to build. That is the case in the particular school whose accounts the member is selectively quoting.Chris Hipkins: How is it fair that charter schools are being allowed to make multimillion-dollar surpluses or have multimillion-dollar amounts unaccounted for while just down the road students and teachers are having to put up with classrooms that are increasingly covered in black mould and other schools throughout New Zealand where parents are being asked to subsidise their kids’ education that the law says is supposed to be free?Hon HEKIA PARATA: It is quite inaccurate for the member to suggest that there are funds that are unaccounted for. They are accounted for but the member just does not like the way they are using their funds. They have a long-term contract. They have cashed up inputs based on the same benchmarking. They have all made different choices that this House has heard about before. Vanguard for instance has put over 50 percent of its funding into the employment of staff. Other schools have made choices about lease versus purchase properties. In the end our interest is to ensure the well-being of the students and the education quality the schools are delivering. That is what the annual reporting represents.Chris Hipkins: How many months has it been since she gave the Whangaruru charter school 1 month’s notice and given the Prime Minister’s statement that if charter schools failed the Government would be quick to close them down why is that school still operating?Hon HEKIA PARATA: Because of both the operation of natural justice and its contract. I gave it a month’s notice during which time I commissioned a review by Deloitte and the Education Review Office—Chris Hipkins: In January.Hon HEKIA PARATA: No I gave them that in March.Grant Robertson: More than a month ago.Hon HEKIA PARATA: Yes if you will just follow along with me I will explain the process. So then I commissioned a report by Deloitte and by the Education Review Office which I have received. Now I am in a process with that school working through it.