PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Early Childhood Education Disaster: "I Told You So!"
"Donna Awatere Huata correctly chides Trevor Mallard for ‘the record 2210 primary and early childhood school teachers
[who have] left New Zealand in the past twelve months to February this year," agrees Libertarianz Leader Peter
Cresswell, pointing the finger at Mallard’s forced retraining of early childhood teachers as a major culprit.
Cresswell, his party’s spokesman to deregulate early childhood education, says: "This is an entirely predicable
disaster, one that that this Minister is almost solely responsible for; and one I predicted a year ago."
Writing in The Free Radical magazine last year, Cresswell noted: "Challenged at an Auckland public meeting to explain
what will happen to a small school whose owner & head teacher must leave to undergo three years of forced re-training – after twenty years of successful teaching --
Dullard admitted, ‘I don’t know.’ I do, & so too did that teacher - so probably do the parents of children at her school, & so do the many others being herded into retraining: It will be a disaster. Many early childhood teachers will simply
leave the profession, or will leave the country for saner pastures abroad."
Continuing, he said: "I predict in two years time that the number of early childhood centres will have markedly
diminished, & those remaining will be struggling to find teachers with significant experience."
One year on from those words the forced retraining chickens are beginning to roost. I challenge the Minister to pull
back from forced retraining, before he really lays an egg.
ENDS
The article ‘Athens v Sparta’ from which the above quote comes can be found at:
www.freeradical.co.nz/content/42/42editorial.shtml
For more information contact:
Peter Cresswell LIBERTARIANZ SPOKESMAN FOR DEREGULATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION (025) 861 927, organon@ihug.co.nz
www.libertarianz.org.nz