Teachers to Epsom Voters: Don’t Let ACT Wreck Our Education System

7 September 2014

Epsom voters have an opportunity to protect the New Zealand education system this election.

PPTA is launching a campaign today to inform voters in the electorate about ACT’s disastrous charter school policy – with posters and leaflets being distributed (see attached sample).

“ACT’s education policies are based on an extremist ideology which has no basis in evidence,” PPTA President Angela Roberts says.

A single ACT MP brought in charter schools in 2011 and 2014 ACT Epsom electorate candidate David Seymour has boasted about his involvement in the policy and has committed to expanding it, she said.

“PPTA welcomes good education policy from whichever party advances it, but ACT’s policy is fundamentally broken.

“Its goals of expanding competition and market forces in education have been shown by international and local evidence to be worthless for raising the quality of the school system, and simply entrench social inequity,” Roberts said.

“Charter schools are an expensive and unnecessary experiment. Even the National-led government’s other single electorate support partner, Peter Dunne, voted against them and has said that they are not required,” she said.

Seymour said charter school students would get “no more or less” funding than students at public schools, Roberts said.

This year, the 350 students at charter schools are costing the taxpayer over $7million to educate, not including the start-up grants given to the schools in 2013. This would have been $2.5 million if they had stayed at public schools.

ENDS

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