The Government bringing back 50 charter schools will not increase achievement and is a distraction from the core mission of the education system, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said.

“Charter schools were driven by ideology rather than evidence. There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories,” Jan Tinetti said.

“Charter schools are part of the Coalition Government’s drive to dismantle our public school system and promote a privatised, competitive system that puts profits before kids. Under the last National-Act Government charter schools received preferential funding, they didn’t have to teach the NZ Curriculum, and didn’t have to employ registered teachers.

“When we came into Government, kids were being turfed out of the public school system because they didn’t fit or were too difficult. That’s not good enough. Our public education system should serve every child and converting 35 state schools to be charter schools will take desperately needed resources from the state system.

“The Government is going too hard too fast. Cutting more than 750 jobs at the Ministry of Education, scrapping the Reading Recovery Programme, cost cutting the school lunch programme and now bringing back David Seymour’s charter schools.

“The $153 million for charter schools would’ve more than covered the costs to provide healthy school lunches to the years seven and up students that David Seymour has cut. A programme that teachers and principals say improves learning and engagement at school.

“In six years we upgraded every school in the country, added 2,250 more classrooms, introduced healthy lunches in schools, employed 3,800 more teachers, improved the curriculum, introduced learning New Zealand Histories, removed school donations and the decile system and the stigma attached to those, and improved access to things like period products which removes barriers for kids going to school,” Jan Tinetti said.

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