Second round of charter schools exposes Government’s true agenda

The Government’s announcement of a second round of charter school applications has exposed its agenda to establish as many charter schools as possible, as quickly as possible.

NZEI Te Riu Roa President Judith Nowotarski said it was now obvious that the schools were never intended as a trial as originally claimed.

“The Minister is announcing a second round in this experiment before the first round has even got off the ground, let alone had a chance to be assessed. For ideological reasons, they want to open as many of these publicly-funded and privately run schools as possible, regardless of proven need or effectiveness.

“They don’t seem to have any funds to spare for public schools striving to raise achievement for five out of five children, but it’s a different story for their pet projects,” she said.

Today’s announcement is particularly insulting for low decile schools, as priority will be given to applications in “areas where students are not being well served by the education system”.

Ms Nowotarski challenged the Minister to name the areas that were being targeted.

“The obvious inference is that she means low decile schools, whose students suffer from inequity and disadvantage at home rather than any failing on the part of their schools or teachers. The schools in areas of high need are the real success story in the education system, getting great results from children suffering all kinds of disadvantage.”

“Considering that Minister Parata said in August that she had been impressed by the ‘broad range of applicants, not their calibre’ in the first round, I wonder how she expects to find any adequate applicants this time around,” she said.

The Government has expressed particular interest in proposals for 0-8 year-olds, which is a worrying sign that the charter school experiment is already being extended to pre-schoolers.

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