Media Release
5 December 2011
Charter schools are a failed experiment
Charter schools failed when introduced in countries such as the US and the UK and they will fail here too, says PPTA
president Robin Duff.
“A proposed school charter system outlined in National and ACT’s confidence and supply agreement today is simply an
attempt to replicate a failed experiment on the children of the poor,” he said.
“The proposal’s targeting of low-decile areas places our most at-risk at greater risk.”
A study of charter schools conducted by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) in 2009
showed that 37% of charter schools reported that their students were struggling academically compared to their
counterparts in the public education system, 46% did just as well, and only 17% reported having students doing
significantly better.
“Placing the responsibility of delivering a curriculum to young people in the hands of businesses and organisations with
little or no experience of education isn’t a recipe for success,” said Duff.
“Promoting charter schools would only become a source of embarrassment for the government and a betrayal of our most
vulnerable children.”
“Why would anyone propose to sell state assets only to pump the proceeds into a wasteful educational experiment that
failed everywhere it was introduced?”