3 March 2013
Media Release:
John Banks gives two-fingered salute to parliament with charter school board appointments
Act Party leader and Associate Education Minister John Banks has given a two-fingered salute to parliament with his
premature appointment of the government’s new charter school authorisation board.
He is arrogantly undermining the authority of parliament itself which has yet to pass the enabling legislation to even
allow these publicly-funded, privately-operated schools to operate.
Act Party appointment to the Charter School Working Group Catherine Isaacs did a similar thing before Xmas when she
called for expressions of interest from those wanting to run charter schools – before parliament had heard a single
submission on the charter school proposal.
In typical fashion Banks is also setting up charter schools to be an unaccountable success by making it clear the new
Board “…will have a role in the regular review and monitoring of their [charter schools] performance to ensure agreed
targets are achieved.”
So the same Board that approves school applications will monitor their success. This creates an obvious conflict of
interest as those who approve applications will typically be the last to admit failure.
Banks waited till public submissions on the bill ended before making his announcement to avoid criticism of his
appointments – none of whom have a track record of improving schooling outcomes for children from low-income
communities.
And yet these children are the very group which Act says will be the focus of charter schools.
This is not about improving education for Maori, Pacifika or children from low income communities. Instead these are
political appointments to drive a political policy which uses some of our most vulnerable students as guinea pigs for an
experiment which has already been an epic fail every country it has been implemented.
ends