School communities take to the streets to save our quality public education

Educators and school communities will be out on the streets this weekend as part of the battle to save New Zealand’s quality public education.

Marches and rallies are planned all around the country to try to get the Government to backdown on policies that will be disastrous for public education in this country.

NZEI Te Riu Roa Vice President, Frances Guy says the Government’s policies represent the biggest threat to quality public education that we have seen in many years.

“These policies are extremely dangerous and will severely undermine our world-leading public education system.”

She says the Government’s GERM (global education reform movement) agenda of privatising public education, setting up competition and creating winner and losers schools will be disastrous for our children and our communities.

“We’ve already seen the way the Government is prepared to use Christchurch children as guinea pigs in its hasty merger and closure programme as well as the impending introduction of charter schools that won’t have to employ qualified teachers. All this is on top of the implementation of flawed and dodgy National Standards that have led to the publication of rudimentary and unfair league tables.

“We need the Government to stop going down this dangerous and divisive path and to instead focus on enhancing our public education system to ensure that all children get a quality education.

“The Government needs to provide better support for teachers to help struggling students to achieve instead of the current policies that will lead to greater inequality.”

It’s expected that thousands of people will be joining in this Day of Action on Saturday 13th April.

Go to http://www.standupforkids.org.nz/ to see the full list of marches and rallies around the country.

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