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

Education_Policy.pdf

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