PRESS RELEASE
16 May 2012

Education Isn't a Box

The Conservative Party is concerned at the National led government's plan to increase class sizes in schools.

“The government is getting carried away with its National Standards programme, and its pursuit of a centrally driven education system,” says Conservative Party leader Colin Craig.

“We are advocating for schools to have more autonomy, believing principals and teachers are the right people to make choices at the coal face” Mr Craig says.

“I am consistently being told by school principals and those doing the teaching that they want more freedom to tailor education to their students needs. No one seriously thinks bigger class sizes will result in better educational outcomes” he says.

"Increased class sizes will not assist the National led government's push to implement National Standards, and larger classes will further threaten the tail of underachievement particularly in the Year 2 and 3 areas, which it will most affect" says Mr Craig.

"The Education sector has already had to bear the botched inplementation of National Standards, and the significant cut back of teacher advisors in the likes of Science, PE and the Arts. Less one on one time for students is not going to help our situation" he says.

“This country is crying out for innovative ideas, and this is true in the education sector” Mr Craig says.

“We saw the example recently of Morewa School, who took the initiative to help their students, and it was working, but they were shut down, because their initiative was outside the National Standards box.”

“The Conservative Party supports funding following the child, and a variety of initiatives including schools having a special emphasis, for example sports or a more kinetic learning style.”

“As long as schools are able to produce credible results, the methodology for getting there should be the choice of teachers and parents”, says Mr Craig.

“Each child is unique, and they don’t all learn the same way. Let’s back teachers and principals to know what’s best for our students.”

ENDS