Government Desperately Trying To Patch Up Charter School Model Even Before It’s Started

Changes to proposed charter school legislation, announced today, show that the Government is desperately trying to patch up a model that clearly doesn’t work, says Chris Abercrombie, PPTA Te Wehengarua president.

“Cabinet’s decision to allow charter schools to have access to the same level of teaching resources as state schools, is an acknowledgement that the charter school model of state funded private schools is unworkable.

“Charter schools are being sold on a model of bespoke, bulk funded, flexibility. However, as we know, this is not possible, especially when it comes to supporting students with additional needs. By allowing charter schools to have access to state specialist services such as resource teachers, they are admitting that the charter school system can’t work and that it needs to be able to cannibalise off the public functions of state education to provide some semblance of effective support for students.

“We saw this with allowing access to period products in schools as well. Unless charter schools are going to be charged for it, it’s an invisible increase to their cost, which is already higher than the state system. The Government is trying to patch up a model that doesn’t work, before it has even started.”

“It increasingly looks like things are being made up as this process is rushed along, to shore up failings in the model and to protect private sponsors from the actual costs of meeting student needs, instead passing these costs back to the state. This will inevitably mean less funding for the needs of students in the state school system.”

Chris Abercrombie said the Cabinet’s decision to not allow unions to negotiate multi-employer collective agreements for charter schools staff, was its second significant departure from New Zealand’s current employment law. “We will be very interested to see what the International Labor Organisation, for example, thinks of this in relation to teachers’ freedom to negotiate and to the ILO conventions to which the New Zealand government is a signatory.

“No school is an island - evidence shows that schools do better when they don’t compete. Having core terms and conditions that are consistent across charter schools would be a good thing, not a limitation.

“The Government is on one hand wanting private sponsors to take on the huge task of running a school – but not showing any faith in their ability to negotiate under the same framework as all other employers. If people want to run a charter school, then multi-employer collective agreements should be something that they can easily participate in.”

Chris Abercrombie said these last minute changes to proposed legislation showed the weaknesses of trying to introduce massive structural changes to the education sector under urgency.

“This is not how legislation should be made and the Attorney General Hon. Judith Collins has already warned the Prime Minister about the dangers of rushed legislative processes.”

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