Cross-Party Panel Provides Hope For Education

3 October 2012

Cross-Party Panel Provides Hope For Education

After being thoroughly disappointed with the minister of education’s speech this morning, PPTA annual conference delegates were given a political ray of hope.

Education spokespeople from four parties and Finnish education expert Pasi Sahlberg took part in a panel on the possibilities for political consensus in New Zealand education, with heartening results.

“After this government’s numerous attacks on public education it is fantastic to see a way forward come from politicians with a wide range of political views,” PPTA president Robin Duff said.

Panel members were Labour’s Nanaia Mahuta, New Zealand First’s Tracey Martin, Catherine Delahunty from the Green Party and John Minto from the Mana party.

All panellists agreed inequity in education was a serious problem and that tackling poverty, health and mental health issues was necessary to support our education system. All four agreed privatisation was not the answer to lifting student achievement and nor was mindlessly focussing on test results. They also all agreed on the importance of working with teachers, unions and the community rather than against them.

Labour education spokesperson Nanaia Mahuta spoke passionately about the growing levels of poverty and inequality in New Zealand, advocating integrating and coordinating social services with schools. “If we continue to go down the road we are on now how can we support what you (teachers) do inside the school gates?”

She said collaboration with the sector needed to last longer than a three-year election cycle and criticised the government’s “quick fix mentality” particularly when it came to charter schools in Christchurch.

At the beginning of this morning’s speech, education minister Hekia Parata told PPTA disagreement was the heart of democracy, but New Zealand First education spokesperson Tracey Martin felt differently.

“Disagreement is not the heart of democracy, debate is the heart of democracy and frank and honest debate is not what is happening at the moment,” she said.

She felt the notions of choice and competition were dangerous to education. “The word has been taken and manipulated into something else…I would like to see all public funding taken from private schools and given as a tax rebate to parents of public school students,” she said.

Green Party education spokesperson Catherine Delahunty criticised the government’s “assessment fetish” and penchant for making decisions without a public mandate.

“We could spend forever trying to convince the government that consultation and consensus is the way forward, but I would rather get rid of the government, I think it’s quicker,” she said.

Mana education spokesperson John Minto said teacher unions were the first line of defence for public education and that supporting them was vital in this “torrid time of ideological warfare”. He said there was little public appetite for the educational direction the government was going which he described as “policy for the 1%”

PPTA annual conference is webstreamed live from www.ppta.org.nz

You can follow us on Twitter using the hashtag #pptaconf and the full conference timetable can be found at: http://www.ppta.org.nz/index.php/events/annual-conference

ENDS

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