‘Charter schools for babies’ a bad deal for Kiwi kids

green-party

Mon Jul 18 2016 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)

‘Charter schools for babies’ a bad deal for Kiwi kids

Monday, 18 July 2016, 4:08 pm
Press Release: Green Party

Correction [5pm]: An error in a press release from David Seymour indicated that the Government’s charter school programme would be expanded into education for 0-8 year olds. This is not the case. Please disregard the below media release.

18 July 2016

The Government’s plan to expand its charter-school experiment into Early Childhood Education will put children’s learning development at risk from an even earlier age, the Green Party said today.

The fourth round of applications to establish more charter schools was announced today by ACT MP David Seymour, and will prioritise funding for organisations that cater to children from the ages of 0-8 years.

“Early childhood education is critical to a child being ready for school and it is reckless for the Government to put that at risk for the sake of an ideological experiment,” Green Party education spokesperson Catherine Delahunty said today.

“Targeting toddlers and babies for educational experimentation seems extreme, even for the ACT Party.

“Having Government-funded charter schools for toddlers and babies is another business opportunity for a few, but won’t help improve the quality of early childhood education across the board.

“Funding for education is great, but it needs to be backed up with accountability and oversight. Unfortunately, existing charter schools have shown that they are unable to provide this.

“Complaints about cultural awareness for Māori students, having far fewer students than contracted for, rewarding students with KFC, and student safety concerns are just some of the issues with current charter schools.

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“It is disturbing to see that the Government is prepared to sell out more kids in order to secure the support of the sole Act MP, David Seymour.

“The state school system ends up having to pick up the pieces when these experiments go wrong, and it is children’s education that suffers.

“A greater investment needs to go into public schools that need it, not these experimental, and unproven charter schools,” said Ms Delahunty.

ends

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