Newsroom has reported on claims that Villa Education Trust, which opened up National’s conference singing Hallelujah, has taught creationism in science classes as a preferred theory of evolution.
The Government is moving to stop the creation of new charter schools and require existing charter schools to integrate with the public system.
Parata can believe whatever brings her comfort of course, but the fact is that this National government has made, as usual, a mess of education.
Charter schools are fiddling their results. Just another example of the way that education for profit is all about profit, with education hardly getting a look in. All of National’s ideological interventions in education are failures.
It’s not April 1st, so I’m forced to conclude that this is a genuine announcement: Students to learn online from home instead of at school under major education reform.
I/S at No Right Turn: “ACT appears to be using charter schools to channel public money to government donors and cronies”…
Charter schools are pretty nice work if you can get it, no wonder groups are lining up. But there’s no evidence that they are good for education.
Charter schools showered with even more money for missing their targets. Something to do with forests, apparently.
Yesterday the Nats confirmed the closing of a failed Northland charter school. Turns out we’ll be paying an extra $400,000 for the first quarter of this year, even though the school will not open. Brilliant.
Details of a mess in tertiary education published yesterday. On top of the mess in charter schools. National aren’t very good at this.
Julian Robertston, a US billionaire who made his money with hedge fund Tiger Management, Merryl Lynch’s largest customer when John Key was working there, is the man behind privatisation trojan horse Teach First (NZ).
Turns out the Education Minister overrode Ministry advice to protect National’s pet charter schools from being evaluated on their actual outcomes. Plus a bonus side order of hypocrisy on class sizes.
Today’s Herald has an excellent piece on charter schools – School cash flows to owners’ pockets. What a surprise!
What exactly does a charter school have to do in order to be held accountable?
Charter schools continue to hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Right-wingers continue to back them for all the wrong reasons.
A charter school banks an “operating surplus” of $2.4 million, while state schools remain chronically underfunded.
One of National’s first five charter schools is a failure, and applications for new charter schools have been cancelled. Who could have predicted such a mess? Just about everybody…
So despite the vast amount more funding (5x more per pupil) to charter schools, 1 of the 5 first, Te Kura Hourua ki Whangaruru, is failing abysmally.
The Government has previously said that all their problems were fixed, or being fixed – but they clearly aren’t.
When National set up charter schools, they promised that they would be more accountable, and that contracts were a better means of enforcing standards than the usual school system. That works only if they’re enforced. NZ First has shown that at least one school is completely in violation of at least one part of their contract. So is the National government enforcing a contract? Yeah right….
Two uncritical articles in Auckland’s local press, raise questions about the role of the NZ military, and the educational and cultural impact of a military charter school. Unstated and unquestioned, is the nature of NZ’s relationship with that of militaristic US imperialism.
Local bodies makes points about the changes in the school system over the years. The nett effect over decades has been to force the inter-generational inequality that a good school system is meant to prevent. The type of school system that this government favours appears to be designed to remove the opportunities for those whose parents aren’t lucky. Is it time to start again?
National’s charter schools are predicated on the idea that the public education system is doing a bad job. They’re (over-)funded to do things differently. So its more than a little odd that He Puna Marama Trust’s charter school is simply getting local state schools to do all their teaching for them. They just clip the ticket converting taxpayers money to private profit. Ridiculous corrupt NAct policy.
If there was a national standard in scientific method than the right wing spinsters talking up yesterday’s national standards results would all fail it.
The charter schools legislation passed its final reading last night. Labour and the Greens declare that charter schools have no future in this country…
Recently closed Christchurch schools, which according to the Nats don’t have the student base and/or are too quake damaged to keep running, are going to be sold off for purposes including – charter schools.
The PPTA has published a list of organisations that have expressed an interest in setting up charter schools, almost half of them religious groups, some of them with rather fringe beliefs. Do we really want scarce state education funding being used to teach creationism?
Peter Dunne is concerned about the use of unqualified teachers in charter schools. As well he should be – the Ministry of Education has issued a detailed warning against this daft policy.
Stand up for kids is “a campaign for parents, families, teachers and other educators who all want the best for our children”. They are holding street marches in centers all round NZ today.
Profit-driven private sector cowboys are damaging the reputation of our education system. Naturally, National wants to make matters worse by subsidising foreign owners of profit-driven charter schools. Brilliant.
I/S at No Right turn writes on the Ombudsman’s report which finds some of the Nats’ plans for charter schools to be unconstitutional and dangerous.
The chance to submit your opposition to Charter Schools closes this Thursday 24 January. An easy submission form has been set up, or you can follow how to make your own more detailed submission.
Evidence of the supposed success of charter schools in New York is doing the rounds. Unfortunately for the right-wing ideologues, charter schools shoot themselves in both feet when they use “relaxed” assessment standards and other methods of artificially “boosting” their results.
No Right Turn on the waste and divisiveness of charter schools in the UK.
My regular Sunday piece of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. This week: torture, charter schools, economics and development.
A stinging report from the Ministry of Education condemns the proposed use of unqualified teachers in charter schools. The Nats won’t listen because the Nats don’t care about the quality of education, they only care about privatising it.
How to explain National’s blatant inconsistency in not requiring national standards for charter schools? After further reflection, I think it makes sense after all…
