Salesa Jenny; Mallard TrevorEDUCATION (CHARTER SCHOOLS ABOLITION) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingJENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East) on behalf of Chris Hipkins (Labour—Rimutaka): I move That the Education (Charter Schools Abolition) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Science Committee to consider this bill. I welcome this bill proposed by my colleague Chris Hipkins which would abolish the charter school model. I would like to acknowledge and congratulate Mr Chris Hipkins and Jade on the birth of their new baby earlier on this evening as well as congratulate Chris Hipkins on all the work that he has put into this bill.Charter schools are a blight on our educational system. They bring nothing to the table that cannot be offered through our existing education system. They take out of our educational system much-needed dollars that would much better be used elsewhere as we have seen here in New Zealand as well as overseas with charter schools being unreliable and a failed experiment. We have seen in Aotearoa that at least one of our charter schools Te Pūmanawa o te Wairua at Whangaruru has been closed. It is a school where $5.2 million—at least—of taxpayers' funding has been invested and we do not know even to this day whether any of that money will be returned to the State.The charter school model is one that is profit-driven. When we look at the five charter schools in 2015—just the five—there were at least millions and millions of dollars being invested in the five schools in 2015 and as much as about $5000 profit per student was actually made in one of those schools. Overall the charter schools in terms of their sponsors in 2015 returned $1.5 million to their sponsors. This was money that would have been really well invested in the State schools.I refer to the amount of funding that is now going to be allocated to students who are at really high risk. We know looking at the calculations that the Labour Party has done looking across all the schools across New Zealand—but looking particularly at South Auckland and Manukau East—that in the schools at Manukau East an area that is full of decile 1 schools at least close to $100000 is going to be lost from many of the schools. I will give you some of the figures from those schools. Aorere College will be short by $15000. The No. 1 school which got the Prime Minister's premium award this year for being the best school in New Zealand McAuley High School will be short by $15000. And the list goes on and it adds up to close to $100000.Meanwhile we will continue to invest a whole lot more of our taxpayers' money in these charter schools. When the charter schools were introduced we were told that they were going to be partnership schools that they were going to be a model that would bring in private money—funding from outside. What we know to date though is that 100 percent of the funding going into these charter schools comes from the Government—taxpayers' funds. I do not know why these schools are still called partnership schools because it is not a partnership model that brings in private equity funding from the private sector as we were told it would do.So this bill that Chris Hipkins has introduced will abolish charter schools in their entirety in New Zealand. All students in New Zealand deserve to be taught by qualified and registered teachers and they also deserve to have access to a broad innovative locally relevant New Zealand curriculum. Charter schools do not even have to teach New Zealand's curriculum. Parents and whānau deserve to be full partners in their school communities through a democratically elected board of trustees. The best school for the vast majority of New Zealand students should be their local State school. Rather than choosing to divert resources into an experimental charter school regime the Government's focus should instead be on making sure that every State school is a great school. It is indeed the school that the majority of our students in New Zealand currently attend—State schools that is and State integrated schools.Charter schools are not as transparent as State schools or indeed integrated State schools and we deserve to ensure that we continue to provide for taxpayers' funding going in to schools that are transparent and accountable to parents as well as accountable to us as taxpayers. Charter schools are exempt from the Official Information Act of 1982 despite the fact that the majority of their funding is from taxpayer funds. Charter schools are also as I said earlier on not required to teach the New Zealand curriculum. This raises serious concerns about the quality and the direction of charter schools. The charter school scheme overlooks the widely accepted understanding that educational achievement is linked to poverty as well as increases in income inequality. Charter schools are supposed to be the solution—the answer—to ensuring that the educational outcome of Māori and Pacific students are actually addressed. However it does not actually look into some of the reasons why Māori and Pacific students are not actually achieving inside of the school—things like income inequality things like poverty things like when a lot of our students enter school they do not have the same level of skills as other children.This bill which we hope will be agreed to and passed will absolutely get rid of charter schools. We believe that ensuring that our State schools are well-funded is the way to go. Right now this Government has frozen the operational funds for the compulsory sector and it has said that instead it is looking at funding at-risk students. When we look at that funding that it proposes it is something like $92 per student. Something that one of our school leaders has said is that that would fund half a sandwich per child per day—$92 does not actually go far enough to ensure that educational outcomes for Māori and Pacific students are indeed addressed.Charter schools as of October 2015 served a total of only 680 students—680 students—and it totalled so much of our taxpayer funds in terms of millions and millions of dollars. Why is it that this National Government keeps on agreeing with the ACT Party to continue to invest so many millions of our dollars on an untested failed model—the charter school model? It is a model that has failed here as well as overseas. Charter schools are allowed to make a profit and as we know every single one of those charter schools made a profit in 2015. Education is a public good. It should not be a system where we are looking at profit making; we should just look at ensuring that all of our students when they attend schools graduate and come out with the required level of skills without profit being the ultimate driving model for a particular school. Thank you very much.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): The question is that the motion be agreed to. [Interruption] Mr Seymour you might quite like to wait until you have been called.David Seymour: Well thank you Mr Assistant Speaker.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Well Mr Seymour you have been giving your views quite long and loud. I did not intervene but I think you could follow the formalities of the House and seek a call.