Chris
HIPKINS

Education Spokesperson
4 March 2016 MEDIA STATEMENT

National's failed education plans leave $120m unspent

Students are paying the cost of National's educational failure with $120 million still in the bank that should've been spent on kids’ education, Labour’s Education spokesperson Chris Hipkins says.

“The two biggest contributors to education under-spends in recent years have been the failure of National’s flagship 'expert teacher' plan (the IES) and their failure to get in top of the emerging crisis in special needs education

“It’s terrible that $120m is sitting in the Treasury mainly because National can’t sort out its own flagship policy. Schools across the country are in desperate need of upgrades and many students aren’t getting the support they need. That money needs to go to good uses, not sit in a bank account.

“National announced this policy to great fanfare at the start of 2014. Since then it’s been mired in controversy and struggled to get off the ground. Once again the big losers are students in struggling schools. National has to pick up its act.

“National’s only two new ideas in education in recent years, charter schools and IES, are now both falling off the rails. Their management of the education sector is appalling. Add these failures to Novopay and 1000 schools in deficit and you get a sense of just how badly National is managing our schools. Parents should be angry,” Chris Hipkins says.

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