Parents Launch Private School Survey

Two parents from West Auckland are launching a national public survey today. Steve Paris and Angel Garden say the survey is to gage the knowledge and opinions of private school attendees, their parents and guardians nationwide regarding the forthcoming change in the law governing private schools.

Education Amendment Bill 2, which will update the law regarding private schools, is currently in Select Committee.

Paris and Garden maintain that their children were illegally expelled from a non-integrated private school in West Auckland in June 2009. Following this, they were alerted to the lack of parental input in the law revamp by the response to their own complaint by the Ministry of Education.

"Through Ministerial questions we discovered that our complaint hadn't registered with the Government and so they were claiming that "no evidence exists" of any problems in private schools, whereas clearly that wasn't correct." explains Paris "so if they've missed ours, how many others might have been overlooked? That's why I believe this survey is so important."

Garden agrees, "before this century old law gets updated, parents should be informed and have the opportunity to express their viewpoint on the proposed legislation before it passes into law", she says.

The survey is live online as of today and extends through to Friday the 8th of October 2010. You can find and fill-in the short survey at:

www.pss2010.net

The findings will then be presented to the Government before the Bill comes out of Select Committee on November 1st 2010. "I hope a lot of people will take the survey", says Garden. "It's an important opportunity that shouldn't be missed."

ENDS