ACT Education Policy
Jamie Whyte, ACT Leader
08/07/2014
Today ACT is releasing its education policy. It aims to raise standards, especially in underperforming schools, by
increasing choice and competition in primary and secondary education. It does this by giving all state and integrated
schools the option of becoming Partnership Schools Hourua Kura and by increasing the government subsidy for independent
schools.
This policy contrasts starkly with the education policies of Labour and National.
Labour’s policy of increasing teacher numbers and discouraging parents from donating money to schools reflects their
abiding philosophy – that no matter what the question, the answer is always spending more taxpayers’ money.
National’s policy, which imposes new management and teaching arrangements on schools reflects their centralising and
managerialist tendency – their unjustified confidence that things would be done better if only they were controlled from
the Beehive.
ACT is the only party that has faith in teachers and parents. Politicians should not decide how schools are run or how
students are taught. Teachers should. And politicians should not decide which schools succeed and which fail, which
expand and which contract, which open and which close. Parents should, through the choices they make about where to send
their children.
New Zealand’s education system does not need yet more governmental interference. It needs more choice and more
competition.
ENDS