16 December 2015

Kids trapped in charter school failure

The students of Whangaruru are the ultimate victims in the National-ACT Government’s failed charter school experiment which has resulted in a proposal to close their school, Labour’s Acting Education spokesperson Jenny Salesa says.

“The losers are the taxpayers, as are the kids at schools down the road who receive about a quarter of the funding that went into Whangaruru.

“Will the neighbouring state schools get this additional funding when they have to re-enrol students from this failed charter school?

“Much of the taxpayer funding used to establish this school was spent buying an 81-hectare farm. It’s now up to Hekia Parata to recoup this money and put it back into educating kids.

“It is devastating for the students of Whangaruru who are to lose their school and have been part of an ideological experiment which led to an environment of bullying, drug use and absenteeism.

“Questions now need to be asked about the next round of charter schools the Government is poised to approve and whether this money would be better spent investing in the state system.

“This is National’s second privatisation failure in a week,” Jenny Salesa says.

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