Education (Charter Schools Curriculum) Amendment Bill

I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this bill. We in this House have great privileges and a great deal of time and opportunity to use them, with the ultimate product supposedly being better public policy for all New Zealanders. I am afraid to say that this bill and the speech by the member sponsoring it, Phil Goff, last time we met for a members’ day, fails dismally on that test.

If I was to try to characterise the argument made by the member and also in the explanatory note of the bill, it would be, No. 1, partnership schools kura hourua are not succeeding as a public policy. No. 2 is the premise that the reason for that failure is the lack of a requirement to follow the New Zealand Curriculum. In conclusion, the passage of this bill may improve the policy of partnerships schools kura hourua by forcing partnership schools to adopt the New Zealand Curriculum.

In order to make this argument, the member gave a large amount of energy—I think it was a vein-popping speech, which might have been aided by a little bit more brain and a little less heart, not to put too fine a point on it. He tried to argue that there are litanies of failings—most of them imagined in his own mind—and these were a consequence, as his argument goes, of partnership schools kura hourua not being required to follow the New Zealand Curriculum.

If I could introduce just one piece of information to this debate that shows how wrong that argument is, it would be this: every one of the nine partnership schools kura hourua currently in operation is voluntarily following Te Marautanga o Aotearoa or the New Zealand Curriculum. So if it is true that there are terrible problems with the partnership school model and terrible failings occurring, then it cannot also be true that the member’s bill would help to alleviate those problems, because the remedy that the bill brings is already in place.

The logic of the bill’s introductory statement and also the argument made by the member in its introduction fails the very first and most basic test of logic. But let us suppose it was true that there were partnership schools not using the New Zealand Curriculum or Te Marautanga o Aotearoa. What, specifically, would this bill do? Well, primarily, it would alter section 158G, “Sponsor’s duties”, of the Education Act 1989, and, specifically, section 158G(b), which says: “A sponsor of a partnership school kura hourua must— … (b) ensure that the school delivers a curriculum that is in line with any foundation curriculum policy statements published under section 60A(1)(aa);”. We go to section 60A(1)(aa) and we find that partnership schools kura hourua, funnily enough, are required to follow “ ‘foundation curriculum policy statements’, which are statements of policy concerning teaching, learning, and assessment that are made for the purposes of underpinning and giving direction …”.

And so we look to the latest edition of these statements, and what we find is that there are parts of the New Zealand Curriculum, the highest-level parts—the vision, the values, the key competencies—and the principles of the New Zealand Curriculum, or the Māori equivalent, Te Marautanga o Aotearoa, that partnership schools are already required to follow.

What, for instance, is that vision? Well, young people who will be confident, connected, and actively involved lifelong learners. What are those values? Excellence, innovation, inquiry and curiosity, diversity, equity, community participation, ecological sustainability, integrity, and respect. They are the key competencies that partnership schools are already required to follow under the legislation this bill seeks to amend—thinking, using language symbols and text, managing self and relating to others, and participating and contributing. Finally, the principles are high expectations, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, cultural diversity inclusion, learning to learn, community engagement, coherence, and future focus.

These are the principles of the New Zealand Curriculum—the vision, the values, and the key competencies that the schools are already required to follow. That might lead one to ask what exactly this bill would achieve. It tells us that it would ask for “that is in line with any foundation curriculum policy statements published under section 60A(1)(aa)”—i.e., what I have just discovered—to be replaced with “… any applicable national education guidelines published under section 60A(1)”. In other words, there would be a wider range of education goals applied.

What would be the practical effect of that? All it would mean is that it would reduce the flexibility that partnership schools kura hourua have to develop either their own curriculum that fulfils all of the criteria that I have already mentioned, as the current law puts it, or it would reduce the ability for partnership schools kura hourua to adopt a different curriculum that none the less—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! Excuse me, Annette King, could you sit down? It is not particularly polite.

All it would allow them to do is it would prevent partnership schools from adapting to a new curriculum and would reduce flexibility.

Given that the public interest and the interests of the students are already well protected under the law by the requirements that the existing Act puts on it, we find ourselves with two possible hypotheses as to why the member brought this bill to the House and why he is so keen to make such a trivial change that would marginally reduce the flexibility that partnership schools kura hourua enjoy. One is that he simply does not appreciate the creativity, the diversity, the innovation, the “ertia”, the alacrity, and the energy that people in the New Zealand education system bring to innovate and create new opportunities for their students. He perhaps simply does not appreciate the value of a decentralised education model such as partnership schools kura hourua, and such as the Tomorrow’s Schools model, I might add, which the member had something to do with once upon a time. He does not appreciate what those things can do for the education of New Zealand students.

Perhaps he does not understand exactly how well partnership schools are currently doing. Perhaps he is not aware that with one exception—which follows the New Zealand Curriculum and whose operation would not be changed one bit by this bill, which has been canvassed—every single partnership school kura hourua is performing at least slightly above average and, in some cases, well above the expectations that New Zealand generally has for kids who are at those schools. They are an outstanding success, and it is a pause for reflection that we consider another possible hypothesis for why the member brought this bill to the House. It is that it was simply a stunt—and I tend to believe this version because I watched the member shuffling his notes, trying to work out what to say next when he made his introduction of the bill.

I tend to believe that it is a stunt designed to create the impression that partnership schools need this bill—need to be forced to follow a curriculum that they are not succeeding in—when I have shown in this speech that none of those things are actually true. It is an insight into New Zealand, and a very sad one, that a pilot of an educational model that seeks to do new things to engage kids who have not been well engaged in the system elsewhere—instead of looking at it as something that uses 0.1 percent of the education budget, that is trying something new, and that is having overwhelmingly positive results, and instead of celebrating that and embracing it, or at least giving it a chance, we choose to bring out the great Kiwi knocking machine and knock it down. I think that is a shame. I oppose this bill. Thank you.

Having listened carefully to that contribution, I can say that there was nothing in that speech that explained what it is about the New Zealand Curriculum that the Government does not think charter schools should have to comply with and should have to follow. What is the problem with asking charter schools to teach to the same curriculum as every other school in the country? We did not hear that from David Seymour. What we heard from him was that because the current charter schools, the first ones to be established, are teaching the curriculum, we do not, in fact, need to require charter schools to teach the curriculum. The same argument could be made of any number of Government rules and regulations—the fact that people voluntarily do it means that maybe we could just do away with them altogether, which, of course, is the typical libertarian philosophy of the ACT Party. But, actually, if the taxpayer is sinking significant amounts of money into these charter schools—and bear in mind that they are funded significantly more than State schools are funded on a per-student basis—then they should be required to meet the same standards that existing State schools need to meet.

Many of the claims that have been made about charter schools simply do not stack up. I will deal first of all with the one that most directly relates to the curriculum, and that is their achievement statistics—the achievement statistics the Government requires of them. Hekia Parata has been regularly boasting in the House that the teaching at charter schools, and one charter school in particular, is leading to a 100 percent pass rate. What she neglects to mention is that that 100 percent pass rate is only of the students who have entered for National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). It is not based on their whole roll. Those figures have been doctored, because in order to get the 100 percent pass rate, they can simply dissuade the students from participating in NCEA altogether, and NCEA is based on the curriculum. That is one of the reasons that we have a curriculum—to ensure that as students progress through their schooling, they are going to land up in the right place. We have a curriculum so we can ensure that they are going to land up with the skills and knowledge they need to achieve NCEA and to move off into the job market and into tertiary education with the skills and knowledge they need.

Why is it that charter school students should be treated differently? Why is it that they do not need to know the things that every other school in the country is required to teach their students? There is no argument for that being put forward by the Government. It is simply continuing to run the line that it is about creativity, diversity, and innovation, as David Seymour said. Well, every school in the country should be encouraged to do those things, and every school in the country is. But State schools are subject to a level of regulation—and it is an increasing level of regulation under this Government—that charter schools are not. In fact, many of the regulations that are positive, that are designed to ensure that students are progressing in their education—like following the New Zealand Curriculum—do not apply to charter schools, and yet the increasing regulation in the State school sector is distracting away from the New Zealand Curriculum and preventing schools from teaching to its full depth and breadth, which is what we should be encouraging.

The Government has not yet put forward a good reason why this bill should not be passed. It is important in the overall scheme of things that every New Zealander, every employer, and every tertiary education provider should be able to know that New Zealand students are being taught a wide range of skills and knowledge, the depth of the curriculum, and they do not get that with charter schools because charter schools are not required to teach to that curriculum.

Another one of the arguments that David Seymour put forward was that charter schools are seeking to do new things. State schools are seeking to do new things as well, and they are seeking to do them within the bounds of the New Zealand Curriculum, which is internationally recognised as one of the most dynamic and flexible in the world. I have been recently doing some travelling and people have been asking me about the New Zealand Curriculum. They have been incredibly impressed by the focus on competencies that exists within the curriculum now. The fact is that it is not knowledge-specific—it is not basically defining that students should learn a particular fact or a particular piece of factual information at a given time—it is about the types of learning that should be taking place. Our curriculum is brilliant, and everybody else around the world whom I speak to says: “This is great.” They either want to copy it or they are trying to copy it.

Why is it that charter schools should not be part of that equation? The New Zealand Curriculum is already flexible. The New Zealand Curriculum already encourages creativity, diversity, and innovation. Those are all essential ingredients in it. Charter schools should be required to do that as well. They should not be held to a different standard. That brings me to the next point, as I—[Interruption] Has the bell gone already?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): No, the bell has not gone—the bell does not go in a 5-minute speech.

Oh, right. I was not aware of that. That appears to be a new rule.

This bill goes beyond the stated purpose of requiring partnership schools to teach either the New Zealand Curriculum or Te Marautanga o Aotearoa. Clause 5 would apply section 60A of the Education Act 1989 in its entirety to partnership schools. This would include the National Administration Guidelines. This bill thus runs against the purpose of the partnership schools. I will elaborate on this later on, but firstly I would like to put the discussion of partnership schools into perspective.

We have over 2,500 schools in New Zealand, and we are opening only a very small number of partnership schools—nine at the moment. We already have a number of different types of schools in New Zealand. I have been working on a New Zealand education handbook. I was surprised by the large number of types of schools we have in New Zealand. There is a strong rationale for having partnership schools. I understand the previous speaker, Chris Hipkins, mentioned why we have partnership schools. In New Zealand, we have the best education system in the world, but about 20 percent of the students are still failing in the State education system. We need to help these students. Partnership schools are just one of many ways to help these students. For those who cannot or who do not fit in the mainstream public school system and whose parents cannot afford to send them to private schools, partnership schools could be an option.

Partnership schools are just one of a number of new initiatives targeted towards addressing the issue of educational underachievement. Partnership schools bring together the education, business, and community sectors to provide new opportunities for students to succeed in education. Partnership schools are targeted at lifting education achievement in low-decile areas and disadvantaged communities that have been underserved by the education system. No one is suggesting that the State education system should be dismantled. It provides a mostly excellent service. Partnership schools are just one alternative for a small minority of students who are unable to perform in the State system. To make these students successful will, of course, benefit not only these students but all of us. Internationally there are many successful stories, such as Success Academy Charter Schools in New York.

Although current partnership schools have chosen to use either the New Zealand Curriculum or Te Marautanga o Aotearoa, this does not mean that the ability to offer an alternative curriculum should be removed from the Education Act 1989. Preventing that would prevent new partnership schools from having the freedom of choice. This would also reduce the ability of parents to make the best choice in schooling for their child. The bill expresses concerns that students will be delivered narrow and low-quality curricula. It also comments that subjects such as science may be distorted to fit the beliefs of school owners. There are safeguards in place regarding quality in both the Education Act 1989 and the partnership school contract. Given that the nine partnership schools are using the New Zealand Curriculum or Te Marautanga o Aotearoa, these concerns do not seem to have any merit. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare Pāremata. I am delighted to support this excellent bill. If we are going to talk about freedom of choice, let us talk about a genuine choice for all, which is a quality, locally based, public education system. It is not giving double the money per student to failed experiments that are not accountable and are not required to focus on the excellent curriculum that has, as a previous speaker Chris Hipkins said, worldwide recognition.

In only the last 2 weeks we have seen why this bill is important. This bill is important because we have just had the evaluation of the first round of charter schools by Martin, Jenkins, and Associates. I do not know a lot about its people. They do not seem to be educational experts. They certainly were not assisted by the Government refusing to allow them to do a comparison between charter schools and State schools. But Martin, Jenkins, and Associates said that in terms of curriculum, which is what this bill is about, one of the weakest areas in the first round of charter schools was the lack of innovation in the curriculum.

The whole modus operandi, the whole rationale, for this failed international gambit called charter schools was innovation. If we read the rather narrow evaluation on innovation, we will find that the only way in which they innovated was around putting so-called experts on their school boards instead of parents. So there is no accountability to parents. There are people who may or may not have expertise. They have been put on these boards—that is the big innovation. But there was acknowledgment by the evaluators that there was a lack of innovation around the curriculum.

So that makes it pretty clear that the stated objective of offering some new, wonderful choice to marginalised students in the education system is not being met in the first round. The evaluation does not even talk about achievement and it will not allow comparison between schools. So bills like this come to the House because—[Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! Can I ask members on both sides to stop the cross talk and let the member get on with her speech.

Fortunately, Mr Assistant Speaker, I have an ear infection, and I cannot hear what is being said to me on my left here, but it does make it difficult—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): The member is not missing much, but it is disruptive.

I can hear white noise, and I use that term advisedly. But what I do want to talk about is the fact that the curriculum is important because of its breadth. When you get schools that are now experts in preparing for the army and marching, there is a very good reason to worry about breadth and to want the full weight of the New Zealand Curriculum to be offered to these students, because we are hearing stories that there is a lack of breadth.

Putting aside this evaluation that focused on the lack of curriculum innovation, there are also plenty of interesting stories coming out of the existing experience of charter schools. Nobody—nobody—can say that the curriculum was a success at Whangaruru School. Nobody can say that. It is a tragic story. Having spent time in the north and having talked to people who are intimately involved, it is a sad story of a school, because the authorisation board for this failed experiment allowed it to open when it was clearly not ready—not ready in curriculum terms and not ready in many other terms. The children were the guinea pigs for a failed experiment. That is an inexcusable use of public money for children who are already struggling.

I would never be romantic enough to say that the education system is perfect, for Māori students in particular. I am passionate about Māori students getting access to things like Te Kotahitanga, which challenges the Pākehā view of teaching education. But I am getting the message that it is time to go—I have got 1 minute. So what I will say about this bill is that this bill is part of a number of efforts by many Opposition members to try to make sure that we uphold what is good in our system, we protect what is valuable, and that we do not allow failed experiments to undermine the New Zealand Curriculum.

Actually, our kids deserve better than what is happening. They deserve better than what we are hearing from the charter schools. If the Government’s own evaluation tells you there is no innovation and the curriculum has not been innovated, what was this all about? What was the point of doubling the money per student only to find that kids are missing out on the breadth of the curriculum and learning how to do marching, missing out on cultural responsiveness that should be a given in schools, and missing out on the genuine education that we need to fight for, which is quality and public? Kia ora tātou katoa.

I think there can be no area of public policy where the difference between the left and the right is so exacerbated than that of the delivery of education. From the left’s point of view, the trade unions, the New Zealand Educational Institute, and the Post Primary Teachers’ Association should have control of what goes on. There should be one model of delivery, and that is how all kids should live.

From the right of the political spectrum, where I come from, we believe there should be quite a variation in the delivery mechanism. We already had a huge variation, even within the current system, before charter schools came along. If anyone who is in this room believes that some of the expensive private schools deliver anything like the same as some of the poorer decile 10 rural and provincial schools deliver for their kids, they are dreaming. Right across the range of the schools, even in my electorate—and I am sure other members have got the same thing—there will be various public schools that have a different emphasis on what they deliver and how they deliver it.

When it comes to charter schools, it is quite clear that there is a very, very bottom-of-the-heap cohort who is missing out altogether. These kids were actually never attending any school, and if they were, they were failing miserably and probably being expelled or excluded from the school, and so on. So what I do not understand is why the left does not at least get behind a trial. Let us see whether there can be a mechanism quite different to the current one, because the current one has failed these kids badly, or they have failed within it—whichever way you look at it. How about we look at a new mechanism and see whether it works?

I actually like the idea of saying to a unit of people who want to bring some children into a new environment: “Have a go at this. Let’s see how it works.” But the first thing I want to ask, as a question to the other side, is: is any child compelled to attend a charter school? No. OK? They are not. Right? They do not have to. It is not compulsory; they choose to. Well, that is a phenomenal starting point already, because I believe in the inherent goodness of most parents to want to have a better outcome for their kids.

The second thing about these partnership schools is to say: “Let us see whether they can deliver some outcomes.” I actually think they will. I think they already have. I think they are performing well. Then we get all of the nonsense metrics about how it is so much more expensive per child. Well, actually, there is a variation in the cost per child across the current State system, anyway. But, actually, if you are setting up a brand new partnership school, there are all the capital costs of new buildings, new property, and somewhere to house them. And so you are not comparing apples with apples when you only look at an existing school and you look at its per capita for funding just the operation of an already existing property.

Then it comes down to Mr Goff’s bill about: “Let’s have some forced rigidity so that they must stick to this New Zealand Curriculum.” I ask why. Why would you not allow a charter school to say: “We actually believe there is an alternative curriculum, an alternative way of learning, an alternative mechanism for kids at the bottom of the heap to learn, and we would like to try that.”? It may work or it may not, and you might say “Well, you shouldn’t be experimenting with kids.”, but actually, we have experimented with these kids for too long and they have got nowhere.

If you think that all the children who are in partnership schools are going to do the top-of-scholarship passing that everyone in the best schools in the country does, you are so wrong. This is a cohort of kids whom we need to put some real energy and effort into. Why would you want to put a restriction of “You must have the same structure as the State schools.”, and so on? Why would you want to do that? It may be—it just may be—that a particular partnership school has got a particular view of the world that it wants to deliver, and the parents can choose it voluntarily and want to go into it.

I understand that the current partnership schools have all pretty much stuck to the New Zealand Curriculum, as I guess you would expect, as a starting point. But what sort of a Parliament are we, what sort of a bill do we think we have to have, until we go to the bottom end of the delivery mechanism, to the kids who are struggling to even stay within the schooling system, and then say to the deliverers of a chance of getting those kids in: “You’re going to stick to the straitjacket of the State school, which did not work for these kids at any rate.”? This is why this bill is an absolutely ridiculous attempt to try to put an extra bit of a straitjacket around these schools, rather than allow them to have that flexibility, rather than allow them to have that freedom. I oppose the bill totally.

I almost feel sorry for charter schools, actually. After the contribution from that side of the House, I almost feel sorry for them. First of all, Mr Williamson just stood up and made it very clear that he knows so little about education that he thought that a decile 10 school was the lowest-decile school. How sad, sad, sad. He also just stood up and suggested that every child in a charter school is a low-achieving child who is going to fail in a State school. That does a disservice—a disservice—to the children in, let us say, the Whangarei kura. The Whangarei kura actually came out of the trust to do with the Māori Battalion, with the Māori Battalion special character provision.

💬 David Seymour: How come this member can just make things up?

So what it shows—Mr Seymour stood up and gave the greatest show of ignorance, which is how we ended up with charter schools in the first place. It was because Mr Seymour was so ignorant of these curriculum documents, was so ignorant about what was actually happening and the changes going on in the New Zealand education system, that he brought charter schools as his blackmail piece to the Government. That was the cost of the ACT Party’s vote.

These are the curriculum documents for New Zealand that I have here. These are the curriculum documents. They are world recognised—world recognised. Here is the bit that charter schools have to follow. If ever we needed to know why we needed to have these curriculum documents in this piece of legislation—I am referring to Whangaruru charter school and the non-existent Ngāti Wai curriculum they were supposed to be delivering. The Ngāti Wai curriculum that Natasha Sadler was supposed to be writing—when the school opened, the writing of it had not been finished. Children were out getting sea eggs—kina—and so on and so forth. Delivering them to elders was somehow part of the Ngāti Wai curriculum. But we could not measure it. We could not give them a qualification in it, but, apparently, Mr Seymour argues for that sort of leeway for charter schools. He does, and this Government does those children a disservice.

At the same time those members suggest that a school such as Vanguard Military School, which they laud, saying it has a 100 percent pass rate, certainly uses pieces of the New Zealand Curriculum, for example, maths and English—because it has to, because the Government has set those subjects at an 85 percent pass rate, exactly the same as it is for State schools. It is exactly the same at State schools. Vanguard pupils pick up a science: biology. When I visited Vanguard, the principal there—actually, I am not even sure he is a principal; he is not a trained teacher. The gentleman in charge of the Vanguard charter school said to me: “Well, we only offer that science because, actually, our kids can’t really reach for the other stuff.” How aspirational is that—how aspirational is that?

This is also the school that has a 100 percent National Certificate of Educational Achievement level 2 pass rate and has as one of its other subjects—not in this State curriculum—defence force studies. I cannot for the life of me find anywhere in any country an outline of what defence force studies are. That subject goes along with physical education. So what we have got at Vanguard, because it does not follow the New Zealand Curriculum documents in any way, shape, or form, is maths, we have got English, we have got biology, we have got physical education, and we have got defence force studies. That is it. That is what you are offered when you go to Vanguard.

Mr Williamson stands and says “No child is forced into it. No child is forced into it.”, but the continued suggestion to parents is that actually they are going to get this amazing standard of education. It is not happening. It is not happening in those schools. Charter schools actually have the same academic outcomes as the majority of current New Zealand schools.

💬 David Seymour: Not true.

I just want to make this clear—and Mr Seymour would not know, because Mr Seymour does not bother to actually go and visit New Zealand State schools. He does not bother to go and see innovation in New Zealand State schools. He is fixated on privatising and breaking down the New Zealand education system, but he has no desire to go and actually have a look at a real State school doing its job.

I want to make this very clear: New Zealand First will support this bill, not because we believe charter schools should be here—this bill needs to go through for the 6 years of the contracts that are currently in place, so that we can save those children from what happened at Whangaruru. But believe you me, when New Zealand First gets into a place of influence those contracts will not be renewed.

Fakaalofa lahi atu, Mr Assistant Speaker, and warm Pacific greetings to you in this Niue Language Week. In speaking in the first reading debate on the Education (Charter Schools Curriculum) Amendment Bill, introduced by the member Phil Goff, I am going to—unfortunately for Mr Goff—be opposing this measure. I appreciate that he probably brings it with very good intentions to this House, but it does not do what it says on the label: introduce “a broad and balanced curriculum” into the New Zealand educational system.

We are proud in this country to have one of the most permissive curriculum systems in the world. I should pay credit to previous Ministers of Education from both sides of the House who have done a very fine job in ensuring that the New Zealand national curriculum is of a good standard and provides appropriate settings for the training and courses that are offered in New Zealand schools, but it is appropriate that these decisions are made at a community level. I think that having people in this House deciding what is appropriate and what is not appropriate to be taught in New Zealand schools—be they partnership schools, be they State schools, be they other schools with special character—would not produce a particularly desirable outcome.

I had the privilege of attending the Conservative Party conference in the United Kingdom, in Manchester, last week. I was interested to hear the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, announce as one of his set piece policies during his keynote speech at that conference the addition of a further 500 free schools—what we would call partnership schools or charter schools here in New Zealand. The United Kingdom public returned Mr Cameron’s party with an unprecedented majority at the election they had in May. Mr Cameron’s party campaigned on the policies of having better choice in education and of improving quality.

When a country like the United Kingdom is leading the way with this, it is appropriate that New Zealand does look to those international models of good practice. We are not only seeking to emulate what others are doing but we are innovating in our own ways here, particularly around offering Māori students, Pasifika students, and other students from ethnic minorities the choices that are appropriate to their needs. So for that reason, I think it is a good thing that there are genuine choices in New Zealand and that we are freeing some schools from the administrative rigmarole that is imposed upon them by the Ministry of Education.

This bill amends the Education Act 1989, and one particular aspect of this bill, clause 5—which amends section 158U of the principal Act by applying section 60A, “National education guidelines”, of the Act to partnership schools—would impose the administrative guidelines promulgated by the ministry on partnership schools. I think it is actually a good thing that we have schools now that are free from having their opening hours set centrally. It might be appropriate in a Marxist country—if we go back to 1980s Romania—to have people in this House deciding what hours the schools should open their doors. But, actually, there may well be children who would benefit—learners who would benefit—from going to school for an early morning class and then having trades training in the afternoon. There might be others who would be better off taking computer graphics classes at the local polytech in the mornings and then having the schooling component offered in the afternoon.

This legislation would actually be a significant step backwards in terms of the level of flexibility we have in partnership schools. The success of these schools relies on the freedoms they have been given, and this legislation would restrict them and tie them back to those old-fashioned, old-style Soviet-era, central, command-and-control education diktats coming out of Wellington.

There is one more point that I would like to make, Mr Assistant Speaker. I should have raised a point of order at the time. There was a scurrilous word used by the member Tracey Martin. I usually like Mrs Martin—she is a very good member and a well-intentioned member—but there are certain words that are unparliamentary, and I was wondering whether you picked it up. It was a word beginning with “b”. I am not going to repeat it.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): No, I did not. But I also did not interrupt the member when—

No. You are a very generous Assistant Speaker for that reason. But I thought that was a ridiculous allegation from a party where a member once accepted the other “b” word—the “baubles” of office—in exchange for policy concessions. So I think that member should really have a look at her own party before slinging words like that across the House.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to vote and speak in support of the Hon Phil Goff’s member’s bill. We think it is a good bill, and that is why the Green Party is supporting it, but let me just respond to the member speaking previously, Mr Foster-Bell.

Talk about jumping the shark, talk about exaggerating, and talk about someone being out of touch, to describe a bill that is literally two pages and an explanatory statement as an administrative rigmarole. To describe it as Marxist State control—I do not know what planet that member lives on or what schools he has ever visited, but the fact is that all this bill requires is that those schools teach the New Zealand Curriculum. Is the member saying that the current curriculum is State control and is Soviet-planned economy? Is that member calling the current curriculum, which has the values of excellence, innovation, inquiry, diversity, equality, community, ecological sustainability, integrity, and respect—is that member seriously saying that is Marxist and that is communist? He looks completely out of touch. I feel, and I believe, it is entirely appropriate, entirely legitimate, and, in fact, good for our country for every New Zealand student to have access to the New Zealand Curriculum. Calling the curriculum Marxist I think does a disservice to the educators and the world-renowned curricula that we teach our kids.

It is hackneyed phrase in politics, “Won’t someone think of the children?”, but in this case Parliament has an opportunity to think of those children. What the Hon Phil Goff’s bill is, is a simple, effective bill trying to bring public trust and accountability to what the Government has foisted upon the New Zealand education system, which is a failed experiment when it comes to charter schools.

The background for anyone listening to the debate is that charter schools, which receive 100 percent public funding—some of them receiving five times the amount of funding that an equivalent student would receive in a State school—are not required to teach the New Zealand Curriculum. I believe that it is entirely appropriate and legitimate when public money is being spent on these students that the curriculum—which is world renowned, which is non-controversial—is provided to these kids. We have heard in the debate of the fears around it. I would also point out that it was not just the Labour Party, the Green Party, or New Zealand First; it was Treasury that came out opposed to not allowing the curriculum to be provided to charter school students. What this debate should be around is our kids getting a quality education, because the risk is that—and we have seen it in some of the failed examples—the reason to bypass the curriculum is to teach a different view of scientific reality.

I was a failed teacher trainee. I got a job to sail on the Rainbow Warrior so I got only halfway through my teacher-training course, but I got to learn about the curriculum. I was actually shocked when I met a bunch of biology teachers from fundamentalist Christian backgrounds who were studying only biology, hoping to teach only biology, so that they could propagate their creationist beliefs. As someone who believes in science—believes in the scientific method—I was deeply shocked when I learnt this. This background of allowing charter schools not to teach the curricula risks this, which is one of the risks identified by the member Phil Goff.

What we fear are a narrow curricula described by these corporate entities that are teaching for profit, that are teaching to a certain ideology or philosophical background—an area where corporations or non-profits are teaching with limited accountabilities in terms of the Office of the Ombudsmen and in terms of the Official Information Act, and are teaching with untrained and unqualified teachers. It is a failed experiment. We have seen that at the Whangaruru school, where only one out of 49 kids received a formal qualification. We have seen incredibly tragic outcomes from that school. I think we should also learn, perhaps, the lesson of the United Kingdom. I note that in the first speech on this debate, Phil Goff described that the UK Government, which had gone down this path, subsequently changed it in 2007.

So let us not have a debate just around the politics. Sure, it is a failed political deal that we saw with the charter schools, but let us not jump the shark and describe it as Marxist to simply be giving those kids who are in charter schools the New Zealand Curriculum—absolutely ridiculous. This should be a common-sense, reasonable vote, and I urge other parties to support it.

What a depressing and distressing contribution from the Green Party member Gareth Hughes, who has just resumed his seat.

There I was, all excited to be coming to the House to speak on a bill put forward by my good friend the Hon Phil Goff, a new, independent candidate for the mayoralty of Auckland, and I thought “Well, Phil and I, we often do TV together.”—not as much as Annette King and me, but Phil and I do. And I thought “Well, this will be good.”, and then I read it, and I thought: “Oh, for goodness’ sake! Come on, really? Where is the harm that we are trying to fix?”. And I looked at it and thought “Well, all the charter schools”—or partnership schools, as they are called here in New Zealand—“at the moment, they are teaching to the New Zealand Curriculum. So where is the great harm?”.

Well, the great harm is, apparently, that they might want to be teaching creation theories rather than scientific theories of evolution. Oh dear, well, so does the Bible. Should we ban that too? So does the Koran. Should we ban that too? So do all sorts of other things. Should we ban them too? Should we not, in fact, be a Parliament where ideas can flourish, even if we disagree with them and even if they are wrong? We should be able to do that, and so our schools should be able to teach the children whom they need to teach in the best way that they can.

When I look at charter schools—and I have one in my electorate, South Auckland Middle School—the only complaint I have heard in my electorate, Papakura, about partnership schools is that we do not have enough of them.

💬 Tracey Martin: What about special-needs children?

That is the only complaint that I have heard. I know that there are entities working with young people who are really struggling in our schooling system, for whom the curriculum does not hold much joy, actually, and who want to be able to do something to get some skills so that they can, in fact, become positively contributing members of New Zealand society, rather than, say, members of New Zealand First—you would not want them to become that. And when I look at some of those young people, many of them come from homes that are pretty dysfunctional. But also, some come from homes that I would not describe like that at all, with caring parents, or grandparents, or whānau who are trying to do their very best for their children and who, somehow, for some reason—whether it is their fault, whether it is a disability, whether it is a teaching fault—something has happened, or something is not happening, so that these children are not getting the very best that they can from our education system.

One of the reasons that I am someone who is in favour of this diversity in the provision of educational service is that I know that our prisons and our Child, Youth and Family residences are full of people for whom our current education system—the way in which we teach, the way that we do things, which works for the vast majority of young people, and which I fully support—has failed, for these very few young people. And I do not want to see more people going into our prisons, or, particularly, more people going into Child, Youth and Family justice services, because what we see in those is that it tends to be a one-way track through to a life of crime and misery. I want to see young people succeed in education, and I think everyone in this House does; we just sometimes disagree as to how to achieve that.

As a parent, I can tell this House with all honesty that I was a complete expert in parenting until I became a parent, and then I suddenly realised that all the things I thought my parents had done wrong, they had done right. I did not understand that parents try so hard for their children and, as children, I think we are so often ungrateful for what our parents are trying to do, or do not even understand the opportunities available to us to learn. These young people need something. They certainly do not need us getting all ideological and deciding what they need to learn. We need them to learn something. We need them to care, we need them to get passionate about something, we need them to learn, and we need to keep some freedom of choice in the provision of education.

I support the provisions that David Seymour has brought to this Parliament. I do not support the contribution of the bill by my dear, dear friend the Hon Phil Goff.

Speaking of her dear friend, the Hon Phil Goff.

Where do I start? Well, let us start with: “Let’s not get all ideological.” There is one reason why we are before this House debating charter schools. It is that that party over there, the ACT Party, with its 0.4 percent support in the polls, according to the last Colmar Brunton poll, made that a condition of its supply and confidence agreement with National. It is ideological.

Now let us pick up the other point that the National members have made. You would think, listening to those National members, that charter schools were the best thing since sliced bread. How many National parents over there intend to send their children to a charter school? Come on, let us have a show of hands. You know the answer—not one. Not one, because what National MP in their right mind would send their kids to a school that did not have to have qualified teachers, that did not have to teach to the New Zealand Curriculum, that did not have to follow the National Education Guidelines in terms of the administration of the school, and that did not have any role for the parents in the way that the school was run? That is why they will not send their precious children to a charter school, but they are happy to see kids from disadvantaged backgrounds go to those schools.

Then Judith Collins said—my very good friend Judith Collins—“What on earth are we trying to fix?”. Well, let us start with the Middle School West Auckland. The Middle School West Auckland has had three reports from the Ministry of Education and three reports from the Education Review Office saying that the school is failing—saying that the school is failing. Then we have got Whangaruru School, which had 49 students last year. How many of them gained a national qualification? Let me ask Judith Collins. How many of those 49 at the Whangaruru charter school got a qualification last year? Do you know the answer? One—one out of 49. That is not even 2 percent of the kids. These schools are failing, and that is why we are having this debate.

Paul Foster-Bell said that he turned up at the Conservative Party conference and that the delegates thought charter schools were absolutely wonderful and that there would be more of them. What he did not tell us was that 8 years ago the Government of the United Kingdom at that time actually said, retrospectively: “We made a mistake. All charter schools now have to follow the national curriculum.” So there is Paul Foster-Bell saying: “Look at the example of Britain.” Well, look at the example of Britain. It said: “We got it wrong. Of course those schools should follow the national curriculum.”

Why should kids learn the New Zealand Curriculum? Because New Zealanders, as a whole, agree that that document gives kids the skills and the areas of knowledge that they need in order to go out and succeed in the community. So why would we have a situation where the law says that kids who go to charter schools—the disadvantaged kids—do not have to learn what every other kid in our country needs to know? It is a shocker.

It is a shocker, and I waited and waited for Mr Seymour or Mr Williamson to give us the justification. What I heard from Mr Seymour was that this was all a plot by the education unions and that we were their stool pigeons. Well, let me read from the Treasury paper. The New Zealand Treasury—hardly a radical or a left-wing institution—said that teacher registration is an indication of a minimum level of quality. It should have been in for the charter schools. It said that it was opposed to allowing the charter schools to hire unregistered teachers. It said that the benefits of introducing these schools would not outweigh the costs and the risks. It was not in favour. The Maxim Institute, which is hardly a radical, left-wing organisation, said that all the charter schools would do is rob the kids and the funding off the public schools that they were competing with.

This bill remedies one outstanding flaw. What we should really be doing in this House is scrapping the charter schools, and that is what we will do when we get the chance.