Why didn't teachers strike when National was in? I'll tell you what we did!!

Why were teachers so quiet when National was the government?  They didn't kick up a fuss then.

Why didn't teachers go on strike when National was the government?

They've been offered heaps more that National offered.  So why are teachers being so unreasonable?

Teachers get so many holidays and only work from 9 until 3, so why are they complaining about workload?

If teachers don't pull their head in, Labour will be a one term government.  Then where will that leave them?

You know, I've seen these statements and questions a lot.  I've heard them from Labour party members.  I've seen them on the NZ Teachers Facebook page.  I've seen them on various Facebook pages.  I've seen them in the Stuff/Herald comments.  I've even seen and heard it from teachers themselves.

This blog post aims to put that to bed.  Because teachers did not sit quietly during National's tenure.  They, with the NZEI and PPTA, stood strong against #GERM neoliberal policies set up to destroy our free quality public education system.  Because of teachers, Minister of Education Chris Hipkins and the coalition government have the bones and a bit of flesh still left.

Teachers opposed National Standards - this could have evolved into a national testing system like in the UK or Australia or the US, all countries sliding down educational world rankings.  NAPLAN in Australia, Key Stage Testing in the UK and the plethora of testing across the US has dragged those countries down.  National had a national testing regime on their radar back in the 1990s and it was only a Labour led government being formed in 1999 and continued union opposition alongside quality academic information that prevented it from coming to fruition then.

We stood firm against allowing PaCT to take traction within our education system.  This tool would have been used to monitor teachers and as a gateway to introduce performance pay.

Our teachers, with the unions, stood firm against performance pay - this system does not work.  It does not promote a core value of teaching: collaboration.  It is ripe for fraud by teachers and being used by senior leaders unethically, clearly demonstrated in the US and UK.

Teachers opposed privatisation of our state schools - how many more charter schools and public private partnerships would have been established without the teachers standing firm against these measures that have devastated the English education system and the education systems of US cities like New Orleans, Chicago and Detroit?  NZEI and PPTA led the opposition to charter schools.  But really, the evidence from overseas speaks for itself.

Remember that time in 2012 when Hekia Parata had the brilliant idea of increasing class sizes?  Remember the impact that was going to have, particularly on intermediate schools and their specialist teachers?  That was a campaign led by NZEI, PPTA and AIMS (Association of Intermediate and Middle Schools) to raise public awareness and get the parents onside.  And it worked.  Poll numbers showed National losing core support from middle New Zealand, from the "Mums and Dads" John Key always blah blahhed on about.  So he made the call to Hekia from Europe, and nek minute, the back downs of all back downs saw Ms Parata back down.

Teachers, through NZEI and PPTA, vehemently opposed many of the changes to the Teachers' Council.  Hekia Parata, despite 90+% of submissions opposing, changed it to the Education Council and removed the right of teachers to vote on their own representatives to their professional bodies.  Other changes made by the new Education Council have also directly led to the issues we face with a shortage of teachers and relief teachers.  We are incredibly thrilled to see the changes go back through Parliament during September to return the democratic right of teachers to elect their own representatives to our governing body.

Us teachers not only thwarted efforts by previous Education Minister Hekia Parata to increase class sizes, but also her attempt to reintroduce the failed policy of the 1990s, bulk funding (disguised as global funding).  That took a concerted effort.  In fact we can thank Hekia for doing something no Education Minister had previously achieved: uniting NZEI and the PPTA in a common cause.  Add in E Tu, who represent cleaners and caretakers in our schools, and we ran a formidable campaign that forced Ms Parata to back down from global funding including the #betterfunding for #betterlearning bus and campervan tours.  NZEI and PPTA remain close and united while advancing their own kaupapa.

We were not quiet during the National years; we were considerate. 

Considerate that the country was suffering from the Global Financial Collapse.

Considerate of the country needing to put Christchurch first after the September 2010 earthquake and the February 2011 earthquake and all the aftershocks. 

We saw the Rockstar Economy proclaimed and received none of the benefits promised to us. 

We saw the silverware sold off and John Key's promises that the asset sales would benefit health and education.... but nothing.

The decision was made last year, well before the election and endorsed by members at our Annual Conference in early October before the new coalition government was established, that no matter the hue of the government, we would no longer be patient.  We would fight for our profession and our students because we are at crisis point. 

We've warned for several years we were in a state of a shortage of teachers. 

We've warned for many years that teachers were burning out under the workload. 

We've warned for many years that too many students are falling through the systematic cracks and teachers are powerless to prevent it.

We made the decision that now #ItsTimeNZEI #KuaTaeTeWa.  Thats why we decided to strike on Wednesday 15 August for a full day.  It's why we are now planning action geographical rolling strikes for the week beginning Monday 12 November.

Many of us worked to put this government in.  They promised to fix things. 

There's more wrong than they knew (but we knew that and have been saying it for years) and it is harder than they expected - but everyone knows Labour coming into government always has to fix a complete disastrous mess created by National. 

But when you have the country's leading economists saying, " Bugger the Budget Responsibility Rules - borrowing is currently cheap and education and health need fixing"... then don't you think that might be a good idea?

Otherwise we condemn yet another election cycle of children to not receiving the Education they are entitled to and we increase the crisis in our teacher workforce.

My little rant about what is wrong with the current direction of education policy and what needs to be done.

I've been privileged in the last few months to be a Twitter commentator for Waatea 5th Estate, a current events talk show on Face TV (Sky Channel 83) also live broadcast over the web via The Daily Blog.  The show is hosted by either Martin Bradbury, Willie Jackson or Claudia Hauiti and covers the big issues of the day with a variety of guests from the various political parties, unions or relevant interest groups (e.g. Auckland City Council, Te Puea Marae, Salvation Army, etc.)

Friday night was the last show for 2016, but the discussion continued long after in response to some of the comments and then tweets by Marama Fox, co-leader of the Máori Party.  This was my response to Marama which sparked another conversation and then this post:

It was then that @mokai77 asked me to tell them more about what I am studying... and this wee rant happened...

I have to tell you that once I get started it's hard to stop me.

Essentially I am doing my Masters of Education this year.  It isn't easy.  Study is hard.  Most other people with my level of teaching experience tend to go the Leadership route of Masters, but I decided to study Global Education Policy as I am very dissatisfied with where New Zealand education policy has been heading since 2008's election night.  I greatly fear for the viability of our quality public education system and I honestly believe that there will be very little left of the quality and public part of our education system by the 2017 election and even less if National gets a fourth term in government. 

Anyhow, I figure if I dislike the direction so much I need to attempt to make myself more desirable as a person to help fix the education system once we enact our 2017 election plan to #ChangeTheGovt.

I was at high school as a student when Tomorrow's Schools came into being (showing my age here), and fees to go to University were put in place in either the second to last or last year of me being at high school, so I ended up with a lovely big student loan, or though possibly not as big as others due to not needing it in my first year or to finish my last two papers (I took two years to finish my fourth year of my Bachelor of Education because I was working in schools teaching).

My first year of teaching as a newly qualified teacher was in 1996, so I lived the 'excitement' of bulk funding and a new Curriculum document every year.  I lived Labour coming into power in 1999 and sweeping away bulk funding and a few other undesirable aspects of education policy under National.

The 2000s to me were wonderful years to be a teacher.  Lots of professional development and the use of ICT in education was really taking off.  I had the freedom to teach pretty much what I wanted as long as I could fit it in with the achievement objectives of the curriculum and I met the needs of my learners.  I knew my learners well.  I assessed them, I talked to them, we worked side by side, and many of my classes were well oiled machines in the sense that they loved learning and took every opportunity offered.  We had bright colourful rooms full of art and projects and charts they had made.

I cried for New Zealand, education and my career on election night 2008.  I had spent two years getting a Graduate Diploma in Information Technology in Education (GDITE) with the goal of becoming an ICT Cluster facilitator.  I knew that dream was dead in the water as soon as National got in; it didn't take them long to say that 2009 was the last year for all the programmes Labour had put into action to develop teacher confidence in ICT as well as literacy and numeracy to run, because they wanted to put all that professional development money into National Standards.

In the nearly eight years since that night every prediction Paul Gaulter, National Secretary for NZEI, made has come to pass for education in some form or another, leading me to do what I am doing this year.

One of my papers focuses on the New Zealand education reform experience since 1984 under the neo-liberal theory of policy.  Every lecture and reading has been reading my history of life.  Most of it I remembered with reasonable clarity; some bits were clarifying; and a few bits were shedding light on something I hadn't realised.

For example, I didn't know that the international tests that rank countries on education performance started in the mid 1990s; that National had been planning a form of national testing for primary students in the 1990s (thank goodness Labour won in 1999); and how even the Clark government was unintentionally edging us even closer to National Standards than what we thought during the 2000s.

So let me be blunt about what I do not like about our education policy and where it is going:

• I oppose Charter Schools - overseas they have been shown to often have financial mismanagement, had money sucked out in profits, often hire unqualified 'teachers', use Teach First, their 'teachers' tend to teach to a script, high level of students expelled, unrealistic discipline, some have shut unexpectedly leaving students without a school to go to, achievement is no better than local public schools, some schools have 'fiddled the books' on their achievement statistics... just not good at all.
• National Standards have to go!!  They do not lift achievement.  They label children.  Every
  
  country which has introduced a form of national testing has gone down the international rankings.  The US and UK have had their system for years before we did and were so far below us you really had to wonder why our politicians insisted on chasing them downwards.  In the ten years or so Australia has had Naplan, their rankings have plummeted and their students are becoming more and more disengaged in education.
• League tables sprang up in our newspapers as a result of National Standards.  Make them illegal.
• Global funding is just bulk funding in drag.  It will, just like it did in the 1990s, result in Boards of Trustees being pitted against principals and principals pitted against staff.  Experienced teachers, like myself, will be deemed to expensive to hire, and to save money less experienced teachers will be hired instead of teachers like me.  Under this scheme there will be no minimum staffing ratio, so class sizes will rise, and that is not good for students or teachers and will make parents most unhappy.
• Communities of Learning aka Communities of Schools is just the IES pig with lip stick and blusher.  Any changes to it this year merely add eye shadow and mascara to the pig.  I don't agree with how they have been set up because the whole manner of the set up makes it ripe to fail.  The government has cherry picked the ideas of Michael Fullan and then come up with an idea ignoring two key ingredients: relationships and trust.  To get these going requires time which this format does not have.  The idea of executive principals and expert teachers leaves me cold.  Personally, I believe, any person who takes on these roles is doubling their workload for not much money at all.
• Initial teacher training programmes like the 8 week intensive Teach First NZ (University of Auckland) before being given your very own class and the one year Masters of Teaching and Learning (University of Waikato) displease me as much as allowing an untrained unregistered 'teacher' to teach.  This devalues the profession, my BEd and the Masters I am currently doing.  It is the complete opposite of Finland which sees teacher trainees in at least five years of study before they become teachers - that is how much the teaching profession is valued in Finland.
• The fact that so many 'teachers' in ECE are not actually teachers because they are not trained with a teaching qualification or are registered.  This is just a way of making sure that they cut costs on ECE by putting untrained staff in looking after children while charging the parents heaps as well.  We have the most amazing early childhood curriculum that untrained people are at a disadvantage because they have not had the training in that curriculum.
• Our tertiary institutions are starved of funding.  They are cutting courses left, right and centre, and staff are running around trying to keep their own jobs intact.  The voice of the academic is cut down and discredited by members of our government whenever they do their job and speak out about bad policy or dirty water or how earthquakes work.  Research commissioned by various Ministries is shelved and embargoed if it doesn't meet the brief the Minister has laid down.  This isn't the hallmark of an open democracy.
• There are concepts in the Education Act that have a lot of implications such as when children will start their primary schooling; allowing a principal to be a principal of more than one school; one BOT covering several schools; how PaCT will be used; performance pay taking a step closer...
• There is a lack of quality professional development in everything for all schools, especially in the arts, science, technology, social sciences...  And now with the advent of COLs, if you are not in a COL then your opportunity for PLD is even more limited.  ECE teachers are even more disadvantaged when it comes to PLD.
  
• Workload has made the job as a teacher too big.  Teachers are now feeling like they are data collectors.  Teachers are trying to cling onto the joy of working with students, developing the relationships and fostering a love of learning.  But the grind of too much assessment, paperwork that doesn't directly relate to learning and onerous planning to justify their classroom programmes on top of far too many meetings takes its toll on a teacher's mental and physical health as well as their relationships with their family and friends.  The rate of mental distress in the teaching sector is rising every year as a result and many are looking for a way out.  Currently, being on study, I am the healthiest I have been in years, only just getting my first cold for the year towards the end of August, when I would have normally been on my fourth or fifth cold and probably on a second lot of antibiotics by now if I was full time teaching.
  
• Support staff are the backbone of every school, and they are the forgotten education workers when it comes to the government.  They are not paid in the holidays as they are only paid for the hours they do each week.  For most, their maximum hours will be 25-30 hours, so it isn't really a full time job.  Many only work three hours a day... so 15 hours a week.... not much when the hourly rate is so poor and the majority are on a rate below the living wage.  There is often no PLD for support staff, no career track, and little job security because when the school budget gets tight often it is support staff losing hours or their position all together to make up the difference.
• Special Education funding needs to be upped.  Too many kids are missing out and a report released today shows (again) that students are being denied the right to their education due to a lack of funding, support staff, teacher education and opportunity to attend their school of choice.

So what needs to be done?

• First and foremost a change of government with a new policy direction is needed urgently.
• Get rid of National Standards and stop the obsessive testing regimes - let teachers teach.  They will still assess, but it will be to inform them, not to keep some bean counter at the MOE ticking a box.
• Get rid of Charter Schools and redirect the money to our schools.  Instead, start up some kura kaupapa and resource them properly and give the founding staff the ability to be innovative, just like the new state schools like Rototuna Junior High School and Hobsonville Secondary School have been allowed to do.
• Let's work towards that goal of having 100% of ECE teachers trained and registered.
• Let's not make PLD for teachers a contestable service - let's have knowledgeable and experienced advisors of curriculum available to be in schools and run courses that teachers need to be the best they can be.
• Let's up the wages of Support Staff to the living wage as the starting rate, provide job security and a career pathway for them.  These people are often working with our most vulnerable students who need the security Support Staff provide.  Our office staff are the welcoming committee of our school, so they should be valued as such.
• Improve the Special Education funding pool and make accessing it easier and more transparent for the children who need it.
• Give education back to teachers.  You want innovation, flexibility and inclusion... well politicians won't deliver that.  The other week I went to the #edchatNZ Conference at Rototuna Junior High School in Hamilton and I came away convinced that if you put education in the hands of those people who attended it would be a revolution.  Finland doesn't have politicians messing with their education system.  They trust their principals and teachers to get on with the job, and they are top of the pops when it comes to education rankings.
• For a more in depth look at how I think we can make the education system better, go to this post I did in 2013 that still stacks up today.

While we continue down the current track we are failing our students.  Our politicians are failing us as educators and parents by following this current policy.  Our education policy really just fails to meet the standard it really should be.

David Seymour - wet behind the ears, but a worthy opponent

Yesterday I listened to the Prime Minister's Statement for the opening day of Parliament.  I also listened to most of the responses.  Here is a quick overview:

 

Can you tell if he dyes his hair or not?

John Key:  shouty John demonstrated everything that is wrong about the debating chamber with his kindergarten like behaviour and loose version of the facts.  His name calling of Andrew Little was pathetic at best, but to claim that National is the best manager of the economy was a joke considering Bill English has not posted one surplus and our overseas debt has ballooned since National occupied the Treasury Benches in November 2008.  He did go on to outline his intended work for 2015, specifically mentioning the RMA, ISIS, housing, social welfare and education.

 



This guy is not going to let John Key off anything
this year!  It will be death by a thousand cuts by
the time the 2017 election wheels around for Mr
Key - do you think he will last?

Andrew Little: some critics like to call him "Angry Andy", but I saw passion yesterday afternoon.  His use of repetition to drive home points was was evident, especially continually referring to Mr Key and Steven Joyce as the "Masters of the Universe" due to their negotiations of the Sky City Convention Centre.  His attack over the Sabin issue was marred by the interruptions of David Carter, the most inept Speaker ever, who kept warning parliament of his ruling despite Andrew sticking to the ruling.  When this issue came up with other MPs speaking, the stand in Speakers were not so jumpy.  Andrew spoke of the difficulties first home buyers face, that small business needs to be focused on and the fact that many of middle NZ do not find themselves better off under this government.

 

Russel Norman: he spoke in even tones.  His speech was sensible and stacked with statistics, focused firstly on climate change and then inequity and child poverty.  I'm disappointed he has decided to leave parliament during this term. He has added to the texture of the place that made it a better place.

 



He may be 70, but you can't count Winston out yet.

Winston Peters: the newspapers focused on Winston accusing Mr Key of losing and dying his hair, but failed to mention all the other points of his speech in regards to ISIS, the RMA, or the really funny taunting of Gerry Brownlee.  Can anyone explain what's going on between Winston and Gerry currently?

 

Marama Fox: as Te Ururoa Flavell was paying his respects to Ngati Porou elder and scholar Apirana Mahuika, the job fell to Marama, the new co-leader.  While the Maori Party is a part of the Key led government, Marama was not above pointing out where the government was failing in regards to social policy, housing, child poverty and health for low socioeconomic families, Maori and Pacific Islanders in particular.

 

Peter Dunne: this was interesting because there were three key issues that this member of the Key led government also differed greatly with his Prime Minister.  The RMA, approach towards dealing with ISIS and the review of our security departments (GCSB/SIS) all were shown to be issues where they will differ.  Then later in the night he went onto vote in favour of the disastrous Education Act amendments (which blotted his copy book in my opinion).

 



So young.  What will parliament do to him?

Despite David Seymour speaking before Dunne, I've saved him for last because he is the subject of my ire today.

 

Firstly he made a few digs about Winston Peters' age and attempted to rebutt Winston-Salem question "Is the country heading in the right direction? "  Then David explained why ACT would be supporting the government's plans to change the RMA.  He warbled on about how it should all be based on science - physics, biology and chemistry to be precise.  I think he was inferring that taniwha, history and spiritual connections to the land should be ignored.

 

Now let's get some perspective about David and the RMA.  David was born in 1983, the RMA came into service in 1991, so David was 8 years old.  Just to put it in perspective as far as I fit in, I was in 7th form.  I know David is an educated man because he has a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical and Electronic) and a Bachelor of Arts (Philosophy) which are not easy degrees to get, so he is rather a smart cookie, and David has worked in policy analysis before becoming John Bank's right hand man to get charter schools (aka partnership schools) installed in New Zealand. 

 

But my point here is, all the theory in the world means diddly squat when you put that up against people's real lives and the impact of these RMA changes.  David doesn't get the history, the ethos behind Simon Upton's original philosophy behind the RMA and what it was like trying to build or develop prior to 1991.  He doesn't get how this legislation has protected many aspects of our society and environment in the last 23 years.

 

While I was still at school myself at the time, my dad has stories about how easy it was to do things in one county council, but impossible to do in the next, a mere few kilometres away.  One thing the RMA did was level things out no matter where you were.

 

David thinks that by focusing on science the RMA will open up land for development to build houses.  What he fails to realize is one of the biggest issues blocking houses being built is land banking and I believe any changes to the RMA will increase that issue.

 

But let's move on to what really got my goat - David's comments on education.

 

First he started talking about the establishment of charter - sorry - partnership schools.  He claimed that they were performing off the charts (what about that one outside of Whangarei David?) and that student numbers were up (I'm picking that's only because more schools opened this year).  He then went onto bash the PPTA for their opposition along with Tracey Martin from New Zealand First.  He claimed that there was a momentum building for these schools, that it is diverse.  And then David said that the ACT party was doing what Labour wasn't, carrying on Peter Fraser's vision from 1949 - but I'm pretty sure his vision was about quality public education, not a separatist system!

 

Now yesterday I accused David of dissing teachers, of saying that we were not innovative or risk takers in order to get the best from our students.  He refuted me naturally.  So I've gone back to listen again.  I'm going to try and transcribe the part that offended me most:

 

David: "...if the member really cares about delivering the promise that every the child will be developed to the full extent of their powers of our education system then we must be able to let in new methods.  And I actually agree with one of the things that Eleanor Catton said.  She said that when you have success too many people are there to beat up on you unless they can collectivise it for themselves.  Imagine a world in which the approach of the teacher unions, in which the approach of the opposition, in which the approach of even Tracey Martin, was such that we admired people who have taken risks, gone out on a limb, been creative, enrolled their kids in order to find ways to adrdress one of New Zealand's most urgent problems.  Wouldn't it be nice, wouldn't it be nice to live in a country where Eleanor Catton's concern of tall poppy syndrome was addressed and we could actually try new things to make kids lives better without such negative wailing from all over the chamber."

 

I did find this on the ACT website, and I'm assuming these are the notes which David was speaking from and which have been released on their site:

 

Imagine a world where the education establishment and political opposition are focused on what is best for our kids and actually welcome this policy as an opportunity for New Zealand’s children.  They have every right to question the details of the policy in a constructive way.  But imagine them celebrating the schools’ successes, admiring the men and woman going out on a limb to operate the schools, and respecting the choices of the families and children who enrol at them. Sad that we have to imagine it.

 

So this was the interaction between David and myself yesterday:

 

 

I concede that he didn't actually say that teachers are not innovative, that we don't take risks, that we don't care. 

 

But I stand by the insinuations I could hear made as he attacked the motives of the teacher unions, NZEI and PPTA, because these organisation's are member driven, so when you out attack them, you attack teachers and principals of all the sectors and support staff too.  This was something Dr Nick Smith found to his detriment at the 1999 NZEI Annual Meeting when he insulted the then NZEI President, Daryl Ward, in front of the whole meeting.  Anne Tolley and Hekia Parata a have also found the same (Hekia hasn't attended the last two years).

And nothing screams more that he as an ACT MP, as well as all those National party MPs, voted later that night (along with Peter Dunne) to pass the third reading of the Education Act amendments - the same amendments where more than 90% of submissions opposed the abolition of the Teachers Council to found EDUCANZ and the changes to the make up of governing bodies of universities.

 

So if you read the above tweets, you will see I put out a challenge to David Seymour.  I challenged him to repeat his statements in any school staff room in the country.  I told him I'd like to be there when he does it.  I would hope he would do it in a staff room for each education sector: ECE, primary, secondary and tertiary to see the response.  I also invited him to participate in and #edchatNZ session on Twitter.

I wonder what will happen.  I do quite enjoy the engagement of debate with him, but I know I should be wary because he is a smart cookie after all!

But I leave you with this in response David:

 

Labour's Education Policy - An antidote to the GERM infection of the last six years.

The first weekend of July saw the Labour Party well and truly launch its 2014 election campaign.  They had a three day Congress in Wellington, and I attended the Sunday when David Cunliffe made his keynote speech and laid out the bones of some very important policy Labour wants to base its campaign on.  And education was at the core of it.

I was very far away from the middle, coughing my germs I had to the empty space on the edge of the auditorium, hence this terrible photograph I took.

As a teacher, any announcements on education are of great interest to me, particularly if they are going to get rid of what I think is detrimental in education (GERM policies, National Standards, Charter Schools, performance pay, IES roles, no teacher representation on EDUCANZ) and will promote and/or improve what teachers know to be valuable in education (teacher education pre-service and for those in practice, special education, class sizes, work load, New Zealand Curriculum, and so on).

I was not disappointed.

But please do not think that I am merely basing who I will vote for on education.  Education will be the first thing I think about though because I work in it, I'm passionate for learning and children, and it pays for the important things I do like eating and shopping and the internet - the priorities in life.

However, I do also consider other things like the following:

• the economy - will they balance the books and be responsible?
• employment - will their policies create jobs or put people out of jobs?  Will they make it fairer to the employee so they have job security?  Will the Living Wage happen so that we don't have the working poor living in poverty?
• housing - will I be able to buy a house before I truly get wrinkles?  Will rental houses be warm and dry and healthy?  Will all those families living in cars and garages get a state house?
• environment - will they improve the health of our waterways so I can swim in the Waikato and Waihou Rivers with confidence?  Will the kauri survive the kauri die back disease?  Will our native birds be protected?  Will 1080 be used in the bush?  Will the Maui dolphin be protected?  Will oil drilling and fracking be placed under much tougher regulations?
• Christchurch - will those poor people get a fair deal from their insurance companies?  Will the rebuild meet what a modern city should/could be?
• manufacturing - will there will be manufacturing in New Zealand?  Will people be encouraged to invest in improving our primary goods (e.g. milk, wood, wool, etc) before exporting rather than sending off the raw product?
• the regions - will the people of the regions be able to stay and have a good standard of living with a job close to home, or will they have to move to Auckland?
• health - will they make the waiting list process more transparent rather than the lie it currently is?  Will more people get their operations sooner so they can become productive members of society again?  Will more get put into addiction services?  Will nurses get paid better and get more nurses in wards to reduce their workload and improve patient care?  Will care in our rest homes be upgraded for the elderly?
• welfare - will we see children of beneficiaries taken care of?  Will solo parents get a fair shake of the stick when it comes to improving their education and work prospects?  Will WINZ go back to having caseworkers who know what's going on with each client so they don't waste time?
• TPPA - will they give away our rights and freedoms to run our lives and our country free from foreign companies dictating what should happen in New Zealand?

So as you can see, I have a few issues to consider.  They may not be the same as yours, or we may have some in common, but it is our responsibility as voters in a democracy to consider who we will vote for and why.

So on Sunday as I listened to David Cunliffe's speech (you can watch his speech here, along with other speeches from other Labour MPs), I did have cause to be happy about a number of things.  Consequently I tweeted and retweeted things, and then I put it all together with Storify (please excuse the places where my fingers and the smartphone disagreed on what letter I pushed).  So here is what I heard and saw:

You can now see why I was a happy teacher.  And now I want to go and look more in depth at the education policy.

Early Childhood Education and Families:

You may remember back in the end of January David Cunliffe did his own State of the Nation speech and he announced some key policy for families and pre-schoolers, the Best Start for Our Kids policy:

• All families earning under $150,000 per year will receive $60 per week for a baby’s first year of life. For parents who are eligible for paid parental leave, the payment will kick in once this comes to an end. Low and modest income families will also receive $60 per week between the child’s first and third birthdays.
• Free early childhood education for three, four and five year old children will be extended from 20 to 25 hours a week
• Paid parental leave will be extended from 14 to 26 weeks as set out in Sue Moroney’s Member’s Bill.
• Free antenatal classes for all parents who want them and extra visits from organisations like Plunket for those who need it most.

This caught people's attention and the paid parental leave bill promoted by Sue Moroney is a particularly popular policy.  This bill has received support across the House - except from National who want to veto it and put up their own half-baked 18 week scheme in Budget 2014.  Hopefully after 20 September, Sue's Bill will be passed and enacted.

Labour will also do the following for pre-schoolers:

• From July 2017 (the tenth anniversary of 20 Hours Free), Labour will extend the Free ECE policy to 25 hours for three and four year old children. The policy will also apply to those five year olds still in early childhood education services. (Extending Free ECE to 25 Hours)
• Labour will restore over time National’s funding for highly qualified ECE centres. We will work with the sector to reinstate the policy of 100 percent qualified staff in all teacher-led services.  The first phase of restoring funding for 100 percent qualified ECEC centres will be provided in Labour’s first Budget in 2015 and come into effect from January 2016.
• We will build more ECE centres in high-need areas so there are enough places for kids who need them.

And Labour has committed to the following by establishing a Ministry for Children:

• We will do away with the Families Commission and focus funding on an independent Children’s Commissioner.
• We will also implement a plan to measure and set targets to reduce child poverty that would be backed up by legislation, and report on progress every budget.

These are important steps in the early years.  For every $1 spent on children in the first five years of their lives, we save $11 later on for each child.  Getting in early saves money and creates a healthier individual in all ways as a citizen, and a healthier community.  I think that it is important that ECE services are teacher led and employ fully trained and registered teachers who understand how young children develop and to ensure their learning needs are meet alongside the growth of their social skills and physical development.

Schools - Years 0-13:

Now this was the part that was especially important to me, being a teacher of primary aged students.

Labour will back quality education and invest in 21st Century Schools by:

• Hire 2,000 more teachers
• Reduce the average size of secondary school classes from 26+ down to 23.
• Reduce the size of senior primary school classes (Years 4-8) from 29+ down to 26.
• Invest $104 million in new classrooms.
• Support professional development for our teachers.
• Put in place a programme that provides an affordable option, available to all schools, for Year 5-13 students to have access to a portable digital device, in the classroom and at home.
• Commit $25 million to provide teachers with professional development during the 2016 and 2017 school years to assist them to make the most effective use of digital devices in the classroom.
• Partner with schools, local government and communities to put in place infrastructure that will allow students, particularly those from low-decile schools, who do not currently have internet connections to use their portable devices to access the internet at home.
• Develop a comprehensive plan for rebuilding out-dated and worn-out school buildings, so that every school has access to modern learning environments by 2030.

So far so good.  Every teacher will tell you that a few less kids in their class means more time for the remaining students, a relief from some paperwork those few more kids create.  It can mean the difference between teaching and crowd control.  And when you consider how big a 12 year old is, a few less bodies in the room creates space.

Teachers have been left in the wilderness since the Advisory Services were dismantled in 2009.  Professional Development for many teachers became a distant memory as the new arrangement has often been too expensive, so only selected people get to attend PD courses.  Also, it means that if you have a weakness in science, there were no advisors to come and advise you anymore.  Consequently teachers and principals are welcoming the long waited proposed return of the Advisory Service so schools can again access quality advice and cost-effective PD.

A digital device for all Year 5-13 students is music to my ears, probably because it would make what I want to do as a teacher who loves teaching digitally more of a reality in more schools.  It is good that Labour are also planning on backing this with PD for teachers (because plenty will need it) and internet access in the home.  The internet access solution will be interesting to put into practise as I can see there may be many pitfalls to overcome and it won't happen overnight.

And just this weekend I was with a friend who teaches in a decile one school in Porirua.  She told me her classroom was straight out of the 70s.  So an upgrade of her and her student's working/learning conditions is desperately in need.

Labour will also:

• Fund schools $100 per student per year if they don’t demand donations from parents.
• Scrap National Standards and return schools’ focus back to teaching the full breadth of New Zealand’s internationally acclaimed curriculum.
• Require schools to report student progress to parents in all areas of their learning.
• Ensure every child develops the basic foundations for further learning by extending Reading Recovery so kids falling behind can catch-up.
• Re-direct resources spent forcing ‘National Standards’ on schools into teacher professional development programmes to assist students who are underachieving.
• We will repeal charter school legislation and no more charter schools will be created under Labour. 

Donations have always been a bone of contention, and I can see many schools will be winning with this piece of policy.  I can see how schools like Auckland Boys' Grammar and the like will not be keen on this policy, but parents will like it.  For many schools the funding created by the donations system is the difference between having sports gear for the kids at lunch time to play with or not having any sports gear at lunch time; the difference between having a digital camera in each syndicate or not having a digital camera at all; the difference between having a school production or not having a school production.  Different schools rely on that money for many things that the Ops Grant does not pay for.

 

You many have noticed that I have bolded and highlighted in red two very important policies: getting rid of National Standards and Charter Schools.  These represent the cornerstone of GERM philosophy, of creating a crisis in education and then privatising our quality public education system.  Prior to National enacting National Standards, New Zealand was ranked in the top five of the questionable PISA rankings.  Since National Standards were introduced we have slid down the ranks.  Infact each country which has introduced policies like National Standards (i.e. Common Core in the US, Naplan in Australia, Key Stage Testing in the UK) and consequently Charter Schools, have slid down the international rankings in more that just PISA. 

 

Labour will require teachers to focus on our world leading and much acclaimed New Zealand Curriculum, on all learning areas, and to report to parents on all the learning areas.  This is great for children, because it means we can celebrate those children who also excel in art, physical education, science, music, drama, dance.... not just reading, writing and maths.

 

And I am really pleased to see that Reading Recovery will get a boost and that the National Standards budget will be redirected to help those kids that don't receive ORS funding but need extra help.  Reading Recovery funding has been tightly squeezed each year, and definitely there was less money for the end of 2012.  The earlier we can get in and help students with their learning, the sooner they will be able to become independent and confident learners.  One way the Professional Development could help is teaching teachers how to recognise dyslexia and help children with dyslexia overcome the obstacles that dyslexia likes to create.

 

"Every week 40,000 kids turn up to school without breakfast or without lunch and are fed by charities. But there a more kids who need help. The last nationwide survey of children’s nutrition undertaken by the Ministry of Health found 83,000 children aged 5 to 14, sometimes or often went to school without breakfast.
"Labour will partner with community and voluntary organisations, incorporating the most cost-effective approaches currently operating, to provide free food in every decile 1-3 primary, intermediate school that needs and wants it."

There are schools that see kids turning up day after day without having had breakfast and a poor lunch if any.  I recently read of a teacher who brings bread, butter and spreads to school to feed the kids without lunch - until her principal told her to stop doing it (so she had to get sneakier at feeding these kids).  I have a friend who teaches at a decile 6 high school.  She has a toaster, bread, butter, spreads, jug, milk and milo ready for any kid who needs it in her class.  And it is well used, and she gets better work out of the kids who ate than the kids who came hungry and did not use the food and facilities she provided.

 

Tertiary Education:

 

"The National Party is removing the right of students, staff and other community groups to be represented on university councils. It follows the Government’s introduction of voluntary student association membership and is a further silencing of students.
"Labour is making a commitment to students that when we are elected to government we will ensure they are represented on university councils and have strong student associations.
"We believe having those who are involved in learning and teaching on the governing bodies of universities is a good thing and adds value to the decisions being made."

This is not a good move for universities as it takes their accountability to students, staff and the community away.

There will be more tertiary education policy announced in the lead up to the election.

 

Adult Education:

Labour has committed to reinstating adult education:

• Restore $13m per year for Adult and Community Education
• Another $9m per year on top of that from 2018
• $1m per year of extra funding for ACE English for speakers of other languages (ESOL)

"It’s a cornerstone of New Zealand communities and offers pathways for New Zealanders looking to retrain and reengage with education, and for new New Zealanders to gain the skills and community connections to grow and establish their new lives in New Zealand.  Labour recognises that a lot has changed since the National Government cut ACE funding, which is why the allocation of this funding will be made in close consultation with the adult education sector. We believe that to get the best results for all New Zealanders who want to access ACE we need to work alongside the sector."

I think that reinstating Adult Community Education is a win:win.  It was a conduit for people to get skills and further their education.  But not just for those people, I have taken my fair share of night classes: te reo Maori (excellent for increasing my te reo use in the classroom) and Spanish (I had two Uruguayan students whose English wasn't flash, and learning Spanish helped build my relationship with them and understand their frustrations).

These are the policies that have been released so far to do with education at the time of publishing this post (14/07/14).

I personally am pleased with the direction Labour is taking with education.  It is clear that it has consulted and actually listened to stakeholders and intends on being collaborative in the true sense once it takes over the government benches (fingers crossed) in late September.

I think Labour is meeting the standard when it comes to education policy.  I will endeavour to update when future education policy is released, and when Labour becomes the lead partner in government I will be reminding them of their policy promises and monitoring their follow through.

Kids at the Heart of Education Nationwide Tour - Hamilton Public Library

I think that it is pretty much not a secret that I am in no way of fan of this National led government and the choices they have made and the policies they have followed.  Some of you may have detected a rather obvious leaning towards Labour.  However, they too do not have all of the answers. 

I've always liked the Greens in some areas because they have a real social conscious and a lot of what they talk about when it comes to the environment makes sense.  I've been disappointed that during Helen Clark's time as Prime Minister with Labour the Greens were not inside the tent, but I respect their reasons for why and why not.

But I think 2014 is the year that the Greens and Labour can work it out.  They have a lot they agree on.  I think they have lots of areas they can work together and compromise on either side on.  I think there will be some big areas where they may have to agree to disagree, but I think, on the whole, these two parties have the talent, expertise and determination to form a very effective government with a social conscious.

I've seen Catherine Delahunty speak previously at NZEI's Annual Meetings and I love her enthusiasm.  She and Metiria Turei have been vocal in their opposition to National Standards, Charter Schools and the GERM infestation of our education system, so I was excited to hear they were doing a tour of the country to discuss education and their policy of Schools as Community Hubs.  I was even more excited to know Professor Martin Thrupp, a leading academic on education from the University of Waikato, would also be speaking.

As a teacher I am stoked to know that the Green Party would not have performance pay for teachers, can National Standards and Charter Schools, and reinstate our quality public education system to be the best it can be.

Martin Thrupp was very clear that our quality public education system is on the precipice.  This election will either be the death of it under a third term National led government, or it will be saved by a government from the Left.

Below is the Storify of the tweets I tweeted and received that night (by the way, I apologise for my fingers and the smartphone keyboard not always agreeing on the letter I actually wanted to type):

Reflecting back on this evening, I remember thinking that Catherine and Metiria really understand how important the school is in every community, that it is not just about the relationships teachers have with the children, but with the families and extended families - and the actual school itself as a focal point for all.

I have mostly taught in rural schools, where the school really is the focal point.  It disseminates the news for all the community - when tennis is starting, when the Anzac service is, when the community church will have a service, when the local clay bird shoot competition is, when the rugby muster is, what's happening at the play centre and so on.  It means that not only the families with students at school are in the know, but the wider community also knows.

And that is the beauty of the Schools as Community Hubs - it draws the community together even more.  By bringing early childhood services, health and social services onto the school site, a tighter community unit can be established earlier on.  The idea of it takes a village to raise a child will be reinstated in the public consciousness.

Victory School in Nelson have been doing this concept for a decade already.  They are in a low socio economic area, but have seen community relationships build, family health improve and educational outcomes exceed schools with similar demographics.

Metiria said that each school community would have to mould what they wanted their Hub to look like, that you just can not take the Victory model and implant it as the solution for each and every community.  The Hubs are all about making local solutions for local challenges.

The election on the 20 of September is an important election.  It is a choice we all have to make as voters about whether or not we want to continue with National's no social consciousness or do we want to make New Zealand the fair and better society we aspire for our children of now and the future.

What I saw and heard: Sue Moroney and Chris Hipkins host a chat on education in Hamilton

Last night I went to a discussion held at Pukete School in Hamilton, hosted by local Labour list MP Sue Moroney (ECE and Social Development spokeswoman and party whip) and the Labour Education Spokesman Chris Hipkins.

Below is my Storify of my tweets and retweets, and below that was what I consider the highlights and important messages to be of the discussion.

Also at the meeting were most of the Labour candidates for the greater Waikato.

Back:  Hamilton East candidate Cliff Allen and Taupo candidate Jamie Strange.
Front: Waikato candidate (to be confirmed) Christine Greer, List MP and Hamilton West candidate Sue Moroney, and Coromandel candidate Korbinian Poschl. 

These were the big things that stood out for me tonight:

Education is an investment and not everything can be measured:

• Chris Hipkins and Labour believe that any money spent on education is an investment.
• School is not just about what can be measured for literacy and numeracy - it is also just as important for the interpersonal skills, the skills that are very difficult to measure, but are vital.
• Not everything can be measured.
• Visiting education professionals love the New Zealand Curriculum.
• But they can not understand why we are not teaching with the Curriculum, but rather letting National Standards take over.
• Chris said National Standards do not recognise that children develop and learn at different rates.
• National Standards are not a fair way to assess a school's performance.
• Chris accurately explained why National Standards are harder to achieve for students at low decile schools than those at higher decile schools - simply the kids at the lower decile school have more to learn than the kids at the higher decile school to meet the standard, in general.
• Chris is unimpressed with using National Standards to allocate funding to schools; he thinks the schools that will need the money most will end up with the least.
• Chris believes that despite Hekia Parata's back track on using National Standards data to allocate funding, that there are Treasury documents advocating doing this, and plans are well advanced.
• Chris says we don't need National Standards to tell us which kids have problems.
• Not one extra dollar has been put towards the kids that need the most help.
• National Standards tries to do 4 or 5 things but achieves nothing.
• We need parents talking directly to teachers to find out how their children are doing.
• National Standards will be gone-burgers under a Labour-led government.

Teacher training, qualifications and workforce planning:

• Chris believes we should set high expectations and standards for potential trainee teachers to get into teacher training.
• He believes that teacher training should have a post graduate qualification required to be teacher.
• Chris finds it incredible that the government talks about being more rigorous in expectations for teachers and then does the opposite for Charter Schools by allowing them to have unqualified, untrained, unregistered teachers.
• Chris believes that there should be better workforce planning for teaching due to the number of newly qualified teachers unable to secure positions.
• We have too many PE teachers being trained, but not enough maths teachers.
• 50% of our current teaching workforce is over the age of 50.  We have to ensure we train the right number of teachers to have the overlap of experience in schools as teachers retire and new teachers enter into the teaching workforce.

What Labour commits to funding:

• Labour will fully fund Reading Recovery for all schools.
• Labour will fund special needs education.
• Labour will fund quality teacher professional learning development (PLD) to ensure a confident, quality teaching force.

Novopay:

• Novopay is a disaster.
• Steven Joyce is living in a parallel reality with his statistics, because every school which Chris Hipkins has visited has at least one Novopay issue that is not resolved. 
• Labour will get a new payroll system that actually works.

Charter Schools and Public Private Partnerships:

• Labour will repeal the Charter Schools legislation.
• Existing schools will be offered the opportunity to be independent private schools, or to become intergrated schools when the legislation is changed.
• Labour is not happy about schools being built amongst Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) being used to build/rebuild schools in Christchurch and elsewhere.  It has a lot of potential sticking points for schools.

Teachers' Council and changes:

• Chris believes that teachers should have democratic representation on the new body replacing the Teachers' Council.
• Chris believes that the new teachers' council should be setting the standard for enters teacher training.

Early Childhood Education:

• Chris believes that the challenges in ECE are similar to those in the primary and secondary sectors.
• He wants to get the funding in ECE back up to achieve the goals of 100% fully trained, qualified, registered ECE teaching force and more engagement in early childhood education in low income areas by creating more community based centres, due to the fact that commercial ECE centres are not opened in lower socio economic areas because they are not seen as profitable.

Independent/Private Schools:

• Chris said Labour will not be increasing funding to private/independent schools.
• The Aspire Scholarships to private schools are widely known as a rort as the private schools are cherry picking from the public schools.

Feed the Kids:

• Labour considers Feeding the Kids to be very much on the agenda.
• As Hone Harawira's bill was drawn first, they have to wait for that bill to be advanced first before their own bill can be addressed.
• Chris will reintroduce the healthy food guidelines to schools that National dumped.  He believes initiatives such as school gardens that teach students skills for their own families should be supported with government policy and funding.

Support Staff:

• Labour is investigating solutions to the variety of issues for Support Staff funding and career pathways.
• First a funding system has to be sorted.  David Cunnilife has already committed to centrally funded Support Staff funding at the Living Wage and Inequity protest march on Saturday in Auckland.

Community Hubs:

• Chris is very supportive of schools becoming a community hub, but sited the MOE as the biggest barrier to this, as the footprint of school buildings is controlled by the MOE, and the extra space that could be used to create a community hub is often removed by the MOE as it is deemed in excess of what the school needs to deliver to the students they have.
• He wanted to align the government agencies better to help the schools have an easier pathway to help the students and families they are already doing a great job of helping.
• Sue talked about how Melville High School in Hamilton (my old high school) is having perfectly good buildings demolished by the MOE because they are above their footprint, and how these buildings would be great to use as a community hub.  Chris talked about a school in his electorate that to keep a building had to remove the roof and reclad the building inside just to keep it as an 'outdoor facility', costing way more than any other options, just so the school stayed within the MOE deemed footprint.
• Chris does support the Greens' policy of nurses in schools.

Special Needs Education:

• Labour believes in inclusive education for special needs students.
• He supports the rights of parents to choose the education setting for their special needs child.
• Chris likes the idea of special units attached to schools so special needs students can get a mainstream education, but can also access intensive special needs education expertise more readily - the best of both worlds.
• Chris is very concerned that the needs of children with moderate learning needs are not being met with the assistance they need due to funding.

School governance and BOTs and reorganisations and funding:

• Chris said that Labour's stance on governance of schools is still be developed.
• He said that the Tomorrow's Schools model is being unsystematically eroded and chipped at with no clear direction or philosophy.
• He did agree that a review is likely and needs to allow for strong and robust community consultation and good research.
• Chris does agree with Hekia Parata that the decile funding system is a blunt tool to determine funding to schools.
• We have to get rid of the decile tarnish on schools but ensure that funding is targeted to schools that need it.
• In regards to school reorganisations, if anyone has got any bright ideas on how to do school reorganisations with less pain to communities, please talk to Chris.  This is always messy.

The task ahead:

• Sue then talked about how we have a project ahead of us this year to address in inequality and inequity and the best way to do this is to change the government.

I found the meeting to be a great way to clarify the vision Labour has for education in New Zealand under a Labour led government.

The one thing I think that was unclear and needs further discussion is the future of pre-service education for teachers and how that will look, and what the ultimate minimum qualification for new teachers will be.  The current National government policy is piecemeal and all over the place, and I would like to see Labour set a clear course on what they would expect.

Chris Hipkins and Sue Moroney met my standard for what education policy should be in New Zealand.

If you know of any other political parties coming to Hamilton to discuss their education policies please let me know.  In fairness, and for my own education, I would like to engage and feedback with as many parties as possible on their education visions.

Who will go to these Charter/Partnership Schools? And other questions...

We were told that we would know in July who the successful organisations were that would "win"
the right to start a Charter/Partnership  School/Kura Hourua.  Then we were told it would be in August.  We're close to half way through September and the lucky winners still have not been announced.

But with the timeline being somewhat dragged out and a bit secretive until an official information request was enforced by the Ombudsman, I started considering the following questions:

• Who will go to these Charter/Partnership Schools?  It seems they are only being opened in Auckland.  We have yet to see which parts of Auckland. 
• Will they be where the so called "failing" kids are?  
• What if the kids don't want to go? 
• Who's going to make them? 
• What if their parents really don't give a rats that their kid is "failing" or that a Charter School is available to apparently improve their lot?
• Where are the rights of the parents in all this?
• Will kids, who were never at risk of failing in the first place, enrol and dominate the schools?
• How will untrained/unregistered teachers succeed where trained/registered teachers have "failed"?  (Looking forward to the answer to this one!)
• What are these schools going to teach these kids?
• What if on day one not one kid enrolled in one of these Charter Schools?  (Wouldn't that be a crack up!!)

So here is a little timeline of links of the last few months that have teased the left and the right wings of the political and educational spectrums:

New charter schools to be announced 'in weeks'  -  TVNZ  -  5 June 2013 8:03am  -  Gee, that was over three months ago and they still aren't announced.  I guess they are still going through that "a thorough and robust evaluation process".
Charter school applicants turned down  -  Radio New Zealand  -  25 July 2013 5:44pm (updated)  -  this was when we found out that  the Destiny Church, Nga Kakano, a private Maori Christian school in the Auckland suburb of Te Atatu, and digital learning company SchoolSims had all been turned down to open a charter school in 2014.  It really would have been political suicide to grant a charter school to Destiny Church, so that one makes sense at least.
Charter schools: Govt negotiates with final four  -  New Zealand Herald  -  31 July 2013 7:03pm  -  the Herald reported that the military prep school, Advance Training Centres Ltd, which John Banks' son attended was one of the schools in negotiation to set up a Charter School.  The other three in negotiations are  C-Me Mentoring Foundation Trust, Rise Up Trust and Villa Education Trust.  Many names were released for those organisations who had at least expressed an interest as well as those which applied because the Ombudsman ordered that these names should be released.
Just who are the NZ charter school hopefuls?  -  Save Our Schools NZ blog  -  31 July 2013  -  A list of the organisations in full.  And then we find out that only five actually applied, and we know for sure that Destiny Church was turned down.
List of organisations interested in charter schools released  -  Newstalk ZB  -  1 August 2013 9:45am  -  comments that the list of interested parties has been released, quotes NZEI president Judith Nowotarski "welcoming the publication of the list - but says it should have been done months ago.  She says New Zealanders and communities should have been able to have some discussion before final decisions were made."  Provides some links to related stories.
First Charter Schools Likely in Auckland Only  -  The Press (Stuff)  -  5 August 2013 5:00am  -  The Press reveal that no Christchurch/Canterbury Charter Schools will open in 2014.  Although two Canterbury organisations expressed interest, neither took it to the application stage.  PPTA president Angela Roberts expressed relief as the implementation of Charter Schools on hurricane devastated New Orleans had been horrendous.  She indicated that putting Charter Schools into damaged Christchurch communities currently would have been political suicide, and I'm guessing that's why Hekia and her friends haven't pushed it there.
Charter School Applicants Lack 'Calibre'  -  Stuff  -  20 August 2013 5:00am  -  and here we strike gold!!  Apparently at a meeting in May the Partnership Schools Authorisation Board said it was disappointed by the standard of applications and "work needed to be done to lift the calibre".  Yet in June Education Minister Hekia Parata was hailing the "impressive" range of charter school applications.  Then on 19 August Hekia defended her comments, saying they were related to the "broad range of applicants, not their calibre".  Yeah.  Right.  Tui anyone?  Just love how this one has played out.
Charter Schools To Be Unveiled  -  Stuff  -  9 September 2013 5:00am  -  the opening line says that details about the opening of controversial charter schools will be announced by the end of this month.  Well excuse me, I won't be holding my breath. 

Apparently since those organisations, who expressed interest in starting a Charter School and/or applied, have received so called threatening letters from teacher unions stating that they were undermining state schools by making their applications.  Now I have not been able to find a credible news source to confirm this, only two blog sites, one being an oily one, and since these blog sites tend to lean to the right I'm inclined to think it is scare mongering.  It wouldn't surprise me if one of the unions has written to the applicants to argue their case.  But that is quite normal and healthy in a democracy to encourage free speech, exchange of views and to engage in a debate with those on the opposite end of the spectrum (hence we blog).

And reflecting on the four organisations that are currently in negotiations with the MOE to open their Charter Schools in 2014:
Advance Training Centres Ltd  -  a military prep school  -  John Banks' son went there... ok, I'm picking right wing and staunch.  Some kids might respond well, but the hard core will give these guys the finger and be out the door before lunch time.
C-Me Mentoring Foundation Trust  -  these guys seem to have built up a good thing with young people leaving school.  That's great.  But there are many schools already doing a similar thing through Gateway programmes, and the Otorohanga District Council has a successful programme that gets alongside young people before they leave school and helps focus them on their training and employment goals (after achieving zero youth unemployment in Otorohanga, the government took away their funding for being too successful).
Rise Up Trust  -  started after the death of the founder's cousin during a turbulent time in Otara, this trust aims to improve outcomes for Maori and Pasifica youth in education and their parents in their role as parents.  This has included a home schooling initiative set up in 2006 and they are still doing great things in their community.  But I'm sure that these successes are because there are young people participating with family support behind them as well as the trust.
Villa Education Trust  -  have read a bit about this organisation already they do have a great model set up that is working for their students.  However, I suspect their existing students come from homes with great parental/family support (even if they are not financially buoyant) and this will contrast starkly with the kids the MOE and Hekia and John Banks talk about with they talk about Charter Schools.

And for those of you who do not know much about the history or the debate of Charter Schools click here to go to the "Research on Charter Schools QPEC Inc".

To be frank, I consider that the whole process has lacked robustness, clarity and purpose.  I declare that Charter Schools so far have not met the standard, and I'll be surprised if they do met the standard of our existing quality public education system at all.