Hipkins Fails On Comprehension

Associate Education Minister John Banks today gave Labour’s Chris Hipkins an F for comprehension due to his poor understanding of the Government’s Partnership School draft contract.

“Mr Hipkins made a number of claims about Partnership Schools and got his facts wrong on every count,” Mr Banks said.

Claim: The Government is preparing to throw large sums of taxpayer cash at Partnership Schools even before legislation allowing for them has been passed into law.

Fact: No funding will be given until the contract is signed. No contract will be signed unless the legislation is passed. Partnership Schools will receive approximately the same funding as state schools - no more, no less.

Claim: Not only will Partnership Schools get money for setup costs, they will get property funding that their sponsors will be able to keep should the school fold.

Fact: Set up costs and property funding are not for property purchases. The set up and property funding for Partnership schools is the same as State schools.

Claim: Partnership schools will also get their hands on funding for additional student support that public schools don’t get to control.

Fact: Partnership Schools will not get any more funding than State schools. They will have greater flexibility in how they use their funding - that is the entire point of Partnership Schools. However, this is coupled with higher accountability for results.

Claim: Partnership schools are going to be funded as if they are a low decile school regardless of where their students actually come from.

Fact: Funding will be based on need and will depend on a number of factors such as year level, size and decile.

Claim: The Government has decided to ignore submitters’ concerns before the Select Committee has considered submissions.

Fact: Any changes made by the Select Committee can be incorporated into the final contracts agreed with sponsors if the legislation is passed.

“I give Mr Hipkins a ‘must try harder’ on his Partnership School efforts to date,” Mr Banks said.

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Public Address Link:
A (Sweary) Analysis Of Urgency Abuse And
The Consititution

Keith Ng: You’re looking at the Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) for the Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill. Basically, the courts said that the Government had to pay family members who looked after people with disabilities (because not doing so was discriminatory), so the Government passed this law to say: “Yeah nah.”

The RIS isn’t just redacted for the public – it was redacted for MPs. *Parliament* voted on this, with all the relevant facts blacked out.

Sure, it’s understandable, right? If you’re passing a law that’s really dodgy, you don’t want advice from civil servants saying “uh, this is pretty illegal” to be public. But actually, that’s not really a problem here, because in the same piece of legislation, THEY SAID THEY CAN’T BE TAKEN TO COURT. More>>