PPTA standing firm against charter schools

PPTA standing firm against charter schools

3 October, 2013

PPTA is standing firm to face down the “ultimate asset sale”.

Members voted to support a paper presented at today’s PPTA annual conference that will give them the strength to see off the charter school threat.

The paper demands the $19 million set aside for charter schools be returned to the state school sector to fund programmes that raise achievement for at-risk students, and states that PPTA will continue to fight for the abolition of the charter school legislation.

Members will also refrain from all professional, sporting and cultural liaison with the sponsors, managers and employees of charter schools.

During his seconding speech for the paper PPTA executive member Austen Pageau described the introduction of charter schools as the ultimate asset sale.

“You think asset sales are bad? This is the sale of our public education system to the highest bidder,” he said.

Austen explained how the impact of the first charter schools to be introduced to New Zealand was already being felt.

“They say it’s just five schools to begin with, well I have already heard from my colleagues how that is affecting their teaching practices. In my school alone we have already been given a letter that says to expect to lose a percentage of our roll – it may cost us a teacher,” he said.

Austen explained how a law change in the United Kingdom meant the number of academies or free schools – their version charter schools – jumped from 200 to 2000.

“200 to 2000 in a few years – exponential growth of charter schools, that is what is coming our way.”

“The Act Party, which is where this policy comes from, want us to think that this is the beginning of the end for us, for public education as we know it. We need to show them that this is the beginning of the end for their invasion of public education,” he said.

“We know how bad these things are. We know how they work. They use ‘selective retention’ – we are told they won’t pick and choose their students, they will use a lottery, but then they kick out the students who have learning difficulties or behavioural issues. In Washington DC charter schools have an expulsion rate 28 times as high as local public schools.”

Austen also spoke of the corruption rife in charter schools in the United States, with millions of dollars being spent on them through political campaigns. “In the US now there’s a programme called ‘race to the top’ – $4.4 billion offered to the state that can expand its charter schools the most, lower the regulations on them, let them have more ‘independence’. This is what is coming down the track for us.

“One American principal was found to be paying himself $5million dollars. In New Zealand we will never know because what the CEOs are paying themselves will never be known,” he said.

Austen predicted an expansion of foreign businesses wanting to come into New Zealand to make money out of education. ‘They’re waiting. They’re waiting for us to take the pressure off, for the political pressure to drop and then they are going to come in here and run for-profit schools in our country.

“Yes what we are going to face will be difficult, but the alternative is much worse. We need to stay strong and take a hard line now, while we still have the chance,” he said.

ENDS

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