Greens bullying the vulnerable

Press Release: ACT New Zealand
March 12, 2014, 4:00pm

“Green MP Catherine Delahunty is acting as a spokesperson for the unions in her latest attack on partnership schools” said ACT leader Jamie Whyte today.

“The teachers’ unions are not concerned that five partnerships schools might fail. The unions are scared that the partnership schools will succeed and encourage the creation of dozens more partnership schools.

“The parents of nearly a thousand mainly Maori children have welcomed the chance to attend a partnership school where the pupils are likely to succeed.

“They know that at state schools their children have almost no chance of success. Those are the brutal facts of the latest international educational league table.

“All the teachers at the failing schools that Ms Delahunty wants to force the partnership pupils to attend have been approved by the Education Council - and yet the pupils still fail.

“It’s true that partnership schools don’t have to report to the same bureaucrats as public schools. They are instead directly accountable to the parents who choose to send their kids there, and can pull their kids out whenever they choose.

“Around the world partnership schools are a fast growing movement because the children succeed in them.

“As part of our coalition agreement with National, ACT will insist that more pupils have the opportunity to succeed by attending partnership schools, if their parents wish.

“If we have a Labour-Green government these children will be thrown back onto the educational scrap heap to meet the teacher union’s demand for a continuation of the present state monopoly that is serving Maori and low-income families so poorly.”

ENDS

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