The Ministry has now failed to prove its position against paying family members to the Human Rights Tribunal, the High Court and Court of Appeal which has cost us all at least $1.4 million. The Ministry need to decide it is time to stop the legal circus and start talking to affected people.

The first people the Ministry needs to engage with are people with disabilities who want to pay a family member to care for them at home. These are the people at the centre of the issue. They must also talk to the carers who have done this work free while others have been paid for it.

The Ministry needs to talk to the disability activists and carers groups. They need to start working on the complex issues of fairness for disabled people and their families in a way that recognises power and what real options exist for the diversity of disabled people in our society.

The Minister of Health has always claimed a floodgate will be opened if the whanau or family member living in the home will be paid.

He talks as if this is attractive, high status and well paid work and people are lining up to do it. My experience with the families who took these cases to court is the opposite.

The work is hard and they have been coordinating paid carers or caring for adult children for free for years. Many disabled people want to leave home and live independently and there are some great options in some communities.

In other places respite care means young people suffering in residential units for the elderly. We need to listen to their experiences and respond positively. We need to audit and protect their rights and pay family if that is the choice the disabled person makes.

The conversation on the value of care and the experience of the disabled at home is long overdue. We also have to get real about the value of work that has never been counted.

Families have been exploited as a cheap option in the health system. There is a cost to making change. However if we prioritise carers over bankers and if we weren’t paying for tax cuts for the wealthy the changes become affordable.

It has been interesting to work on this issue and have nil support from other political parties. Yes its complex and challenging but the central issues of fairness and justice have been ruled on by the courts. It is time to listen and negotiate a fair solution.

These ACE programmes operate in a context which is at the heart of Green educational policy. We believe that schools need to be community hubs where there is an open door to many kinds of activities associated with lifelong learning and community building. We don’t want schools privatised so that community access becomes unaffordable. The positive vision of lifelong learning needs to be valued and nurtured by Government instead of the current League tables and Charter Schools competitive model.

The ACE sector have done an amazing job of working with schools and community groups to sustain adult education and promote the diversity of opportunities for lifelong learning despite the lack of money. I hope the Government will not use the ACE resilience as an excuse to keep a sinking lid on any funds for adult and community education. The greatest way to excite children about learning is for them to see their families engaged in education. When adults are participating in adult education children see the benefits and gain inspiration and purpose.

Hence it was disturbing to hear last week that the ACE sector is still under pressure from the Tertiary Education Commission.

Normally ACE is on a two year funding cycle and has planned accordingly but they have now been told they have to return any unspent funds after one year. This was not written into their 2011 agreement with TEC but is now required. The effect is that of the 23 schools left who deliver ACE possibly half will have to opt out from lack of funds.

Unfortunately the Government has shown that it doesn’t understand either the value or practices of ACE education in the community and is continuing to undermine it.

I have no doubt that ACE will carry on creatively but people miss out every time a programme is cut and the flow on effects of ACE becomes muted. A small state investment as has been negotiated for Enviroschools pays huge dividends for communities and the country. Let’s join the dots and support ACE, we are all lifelong learners.

The audiences were quick to recognise that this is a national issue. The Government is working closely with the oil, gas and mining industries to facilitate extraction of New Zealand’s finite resources. As well as the issues of ocean, water and soil pollution there were overarching concerns about mining’s contribution to climate change and foreign control of our resources. People were upset with our low tax and royalties rates for the mining industry, and Government subsidies for industry such as the $25 million of taxpayer money which has paid for seismic surveys and the analysis of seismic data.

Each meeting was different but in each place people were using the events to build networks and share the many strategies they have to stop destructive mining in New Zealand. As was discussed, there are particular opportunities to challenge the dirty mining technologies in urban areas. The Bathurst Mining protest in support of Denniston plateau was a great urban success in the heart of Wellington.

Everywhere people were supporting the Greens stand against assets sales and wanted Solid Energy to stay a state asset. We talked about alternatives to the “drill it, mine, it, sell it off” strategy including the promotion of green energy technology, clean food production and valuing the environment as the real economy.

Highlights of the tour included hearing from the Coordinator of Coromandel Watchdog at the Auckland meeting, working with tangata whenua and campus Greens to plan awareness work in the Waikato, sharing the Wellington stage with Caleb Behn from the Salteaux First Nation in Canada about the impacts of fracking on his territory, meeting the Kaikōura anti frackers who had just achieved a ban on fracking alongside the Christchurch ban, and meeting the Southland lignite crew who drove all the way to our Dunedin meeting.

Gareth and I were inspired by the creativity and commitment of communities and we will tour again later this year with more information on creating sustainable jobs and protecting the environment as a positive future for Aotearoa.

The clear message from the people to the Government on these issues “when you are in a hole stop digging!”

I agree with Tim Groser that learning Te Reo should be available to all children and it’s great to hear the message from an unexpected quarter. The earlier children learn languages, the better. And as Tim Groser said, it’s about more than learning kupu hou (new words), its about learning to see through new eyes and understand another culture. His comments are a clear recognition that many people who are Pakeha or Tauiwi do not understand the First People’s culture or language. It is a good idea. It is a Te Tiriti o Waitangi issue. We need to protect Te Reo Maori as a taonga.

Alex Barnes, a Pakeha who was educated in kohanga reo, was on Radio New Zealand on Sunday talking about his experience of Te Reo and how it assisted him to also learn German as an AFS student. Being multi-lingual is normal in so many parts of the world but we have lagged behind.

Learning Te Reo gives us the opportunity to build a greater understanding and respect for tangata whenua. Learing Te Reo doesn’t automatically result in a shift in the heart, but the opportunity is created by being exposed to the values expressed in the language. We can also encourage our children to understand why the indigenous language is precious and how ignoring it or mispronouncing it creates hurt.

However, before this vision can be realised, we must build the capacity. Our colleges of education need political support and resources so that quality Te Reo teaching can be a priority for the next cohort of trainees.

We can also ensure that Te Reo is first and foremost available to those from whom it was stolen. A friend from my school days was beaten on her first day of school for speaking Te Reo. Thankfully, those direct assaults on language and culture are now unacceptable, but a malign culture of neglect is very real. I want all political parties to support the goal of Te Reo for all children, and I tautoko (support) everyone who stands up for Te Reo, not as an elite option, but as the cornerstone of our Te Tiriti based identity in Aotearoa.

Catherine

Massey University’s Education Policy Response Group have investigated the Charter Schools policies for the Aotearoa/New Zealand context. Their report came out this month and is a thorough analysis of the overseas experiences and models as well as our own situation.

It is interesting to note that educational inequalities cannot be proven to have significantly reduced anywhere this model (which is really a range of different models or experiments) have been developed.

It is however apparent that in places like Sweden where the “for profit” is an intrinsic part of the Charter schools framework educational has become a trade-able commodity. If you believe with the ACT party that education is not so much a public good but a trade-able commodity then you will be excited by this business opportunity. It is important to note that in some countries the Charter schools are all not for profits but the New Zealand version includes “for profit” opportunities.

If we align this initiative with public private partnerships for school buildings the dots are easy to join.

Much of the recent Government rhetoric is predicates around “failing schools” and there has been no serious engagement round supporting and improving public schools to meet all students learning needs. Nationals Standards are about measuring the tree, but measuring doesn’t create growth or health in any tree.

Check out the Massey report on Charter Schools and engage with this debate!

West Papuans arrested and tortured by Indonesian police and military

The messaging around John Key’s trip to Indonesia has not inspired confidence around the dirty little secret of West Papuan human rights and self-determination.

One positive though has been the ability to raise some awareness around the human rights abuses that are currently occurring in West Papua.

I hope that the Prime Minister will be braver in advancing human rights concerns than his officials at MFAT, who in their briefing to journalists last week indicated little support for raising the human rights abuses issue in any meaningful way.

We need the leaders in the region to talk with Indonesia about the list of abuses from torture of political prisoners and the lack of international media access in West Papua.

We need the leaders to speak up for the “Jayapura 5” who were given 3 years jail for heading a peaceful Congress that discussed issues of self-determination.

A vague mention of human rights being a good thing is not a strong message that Indonesia will respect or respond to in a positive way.

In a country where you can get a jail term of 15 years for raising a flag there is little chance of a fair hearing so we need to speak up.

We applaud those working within Indonesia to advance democracy and human rights since the massacres in East Timor and the struggles in Aceh.

To assist those within Indonesia it is vital our leaders keep raising human rights abuses.

We need to keep advancing human rights issues with Indonesia if we are to have a peaceful and stable Aotearoa/New Zealand and region.

West Papua must be on the agenda this week or we fail our neighbours and we betray our own freedom of speech.

This may be good, or it may be bad. On the general evidence available, it is likely bad. PPPs tend to privatise profits, but socialise losses. As the Green Party’s Education spokesperson, I want to know whether a particular PPP deal such as the one Craig Foss has signed off on will be good or bad for education in New Zealand. Unfortunately, we are not allowed to know – we are told, in an unconvincing interview by Foss, we just have to trust him (MP3).

The problem is section 9 of the Official Information Act:

9.  Other reasons for withholding official information:

(1) Where this section applies, good reason for withholding official information exists, for the purpose of section 5, unless, in the circumstances of the particular case, the withholding of that information is outweighed by other considerations which render it desirable, in the public interest, to make that information available.

(2) Subject to sections 6, 7, 10, and 18, this section applies if, and only if, the withholding of the information is necessary to—

…

(b) protect information where the making available of the information—

(i) would disclose a trade secret; or

(ii) would be likely unreasonably to prejudice the commercial position of the person who supplied or who is the subject of the information; or

…

(i) enable a Minister of the Crown or any department or organisation holding the information to carry out, without prejudice or disadvantage, commercial activities; or

(j) enable a Minister of the Crown or any department or organisation holding the information to carry on, without prejudice or disadvantage, negotiations (including commercial and industrial negotiations)

Those provisions allow a Government to decline to reveal almost every detail about the economic case for or against a proposed PPP.  That is totally anti-democratic. It subverts the ability of New Zealanders to submit and lobby on PPP proposals, and it undermines the ability of MPs such as me who are sceptical about the cost-effectiveness of PPPs to adequately scrutinise them.

I would rather we don’t go down the PPP path, because the overseas experience shows they favour the corporate partner’s interests over those of the people. But if we are going to go down that path, as National seems determined to do, surely the Official Information Act needs to be amended to prevent “commercial sensitivity” being used as an excuse for Ministers to hide behind in their refusal to be accountable to those they govern.

Both National and Labour might like to consider the reasons for Finland’s consistent success as a society which actually values learning for its own sake and gets great results. The core ideas behind the Finnish system are virtually the opposite of National’s privatisation and assessment plan. Perhaps David Shearer was trying to lift the status of teachers in his comments but there seems no coherent set of educational values in either man’s sound bites.

The Finnish education system is based on something truly interesting, the goal of creating more equality for all students. It has refused to see education as a business and has maintained a staunch commitment to educational innovation and high trust between the Government and teachers.

Some of their ideas include:

• No standardised testing
• All teachers qualified to MA level
• A conscious attention to diversity
• No streaming in high school classes
• Free ECE plus school meals for all
• All learners access to remedial help
• Local public schools expected to be high quality
• Only best students accepted as teachers
• No homework at primary school

There is much more and I recommend the book “Finnish Lessons” by Pasi Sahlberg.

Sahlberg is quick to point out that a school in Helsinki can have up to 40 languages spoken  and that the national child poverty rate is  4%.

The key transformation occurred through a political party consensus that the goal of greater equality in education was fundamental. How sad its is to hear the rhetoric of market models, standardised testing, charter schools and bad teachers without a vision that will work to inspire learners. We are far from a consensus that will lead to equality or equity in education. .

Speaking for myself I found much of high school dull and authoritarian and believe we need change. I am excited by the Finnish models and also by the voices of our young people. Who’s listening to either of them?

The major reason for opposing the proposed 200 turbines at the mouth of the Kaipara relates to the ability of the Northland Regional Council to monitor the impact of the initial three turbines. The council lacks substantial baseline data on the state of the harbour, so it can’t measure the changes to the environment that the turbines might create. Furthermore, the Northland Regional Council is supposed to monitor the impact of the initial three turbines without extra staffing and resources. The Green Party doesn’t believe that the capacity to monitor development is sufficient to protect the range of values which are at risk.

The Kaipara Harbour is a very significant ecosystem. The mouth of the Kaipara is an area where snapper breed. These fish then stock the west coast of the North Island. The extremely endangered Maui’s dolphin also passes the harbour and there is some evidence to say they enter the harbour mouth. Marine mammal scientist Liz Slooten gave evidence in support of Te Uri o Hau’s concerns for the dolphin habitat at the Environment Court.

There is also the issue of kaitiakitanga. The manawhenua are not opposed to renewable energy and do in fact support the wind farm proposed for Poutu. However they want their relationship with a harbour that is already suffering from pollution and over fishing to be recognised and upheld.

Tidal energy could have a major role in clean energy production but we always have to ask where and at what price? And we always have to listen to the people who live with the consequences of decision makers far away. When they speak for the voiceless ecosystem they need to be heard.

The “tenure to taxicab” phenomena in the US means that 75% of US academic staff are now non-permanent and they rush from job to job trying to supplement part time work with contracts from several institutions. There is downward pressure on salaries especially in the public sector and attacks on academic freedom and collective bargaining. Education sector people have seen pay cuts across Europe including of 15% in Ireland. Meanwhile “cross border” franchising of courses and e learning coincide with large classes and a lack of qualified teachers. There is now a virtual marking service for teachers as education becomes just another product on a global chain of consumerism.

The graphs David Robinson showed us these trends are very marked and are combined with an increase in control over teaching and research, managerialism and “academic productivity”. The endless assessment culture is being challenged by educators like Dian Ravitch who once championed. Charter Schools for George Bush but now calls for a recognition of educational integrity and what cannot be counted!

We are struggling with the league table dimension of National Standards but the horse has long bolted in USA where country and world rankings of schools become a proxy for quality.

One of the fascinating comparisons David made was with the subprime mortgage meltdown as universities in the US are now enrolling homeless people who never attend school to bring in more cash. However the United Kingdom is way ahead with student vouchers replacing teaching grants.

The United Kingdom model is based on ideology not results and the ideology is that direct Government funding of education is wrong! The public benefits of a fair public education system have been replaced by political incorrect gone mad!

However on a note of hope David Robinson spoke of the need to listen to voices such as that of Drew Faust of Harvard University who said recently that education was extremely valuable “for its own sake”!

Our hosts the Australian Green Party led by Senator Richard di Natale also invited Australian Senators from across the parties to join the launch. The Acting Foreign Minister for the Labour Government tried to dissuade them from participating but fortunately they ignored him and several parties were represented. Presumably the Australian Foreign Minister cares more for placating Indonesia than the human rights of West Papuans.

The point of the launch was to build the Australian commitment to justice for West Papua and the regional solidarity between countries such as Vanuatu, Australia, and Aotearoa New Zealand.

The key issues are stark. There is no other country in the region where the penalty for raising the flag of self-determination will result in 15 years imprisonment. There are at least 130 political prisoners as a result of flag rising. There is no other place close to home where the Red Cross has been expelled and human rights monitors fail to get access. International journalists are prevented by Indonesia  from reporting inside West Papua.

There are cases of torture and other human rights abuses, many refugees and some people who have starved to death as a result of the current situation. I learned about these issues from Papuans who came to Canberra and spoke about their commitment to non violent resistance and a desire for their people to choose their own future without a gun to their heads.

The so called Special Autonomy that was supposed to assist West Papuans is an acknowledged failure and now the trial of the Jayapura 5 is underway.

The Jayapura 5 are west Papuan leaders who were arrested for leading a Congress in October 2011 to discuss issues of self-determination, The Congress was basically attacked by the military and several people were killed. The 5 leaders have been in prison ever since and many of us are very concerned about their access to a fair trial. The trial has allegedly started but we have no confidence in their rights as citizens being upheld. The Greens in Australia and Aotearoa and the other Pacific MPs who support freedom and human rights will be calling for justice to be seen to be done for the Jayapura 5!

Note: Link to Catherine Delahunty’s General Debate Speech on West Papua

Backbenches: Link to Catherine Delahunty with the West Papuan Morning Star flag around 49 minutes in

The trip has to be subsidised, with moneys taken from Northland ratepayers who haven’t been asked and with subsidies from the Ministry of Economic Development; that is all taxpayers. He will be touting a spin doctor’s masterpiece that itself was subsidised by those same tax and rate payers, while giving away screeds of geological research and data that was also subsidised by the taxpayer. He will be inviting those mining companies to come and exploit a country who’s environmental, safety and royalty regimes are so lax that it ranks second in the world for mining company friendliness. But don’t take my word for it, the Mayor freely admits in today’s Bay Chronicle that it’s all subsidised and that New Zealand is ‘business-friendly’.

All Mayor Brown can talk about is the money this will generate, and the jobs. He is simply parroting the spin of the mining companies, who want you to believe that mining brings lots of jobs, pays lots of taxes, contributes to savings and superannuation and leads exports.

The truth is a lot less comforting. What they don’t want to talk about is the super profits, the history and magnitude of foreign ownership, and the amount of subsidies they squeeze out of local councils. They never want to talk about the legacy of abandoned mines, tailing damns and lifeless rivers that they leave behind, all of which those rate payers will have to pay to clean up. They never want to talk about how few workers are needed to operate a mine or how many of them will be foreigners with special skills. They only want to talk about how much those lucky few will get paid.

Do the people of the North have all the facts about the low tax rates and low bonds that the mining industry pay in exchange for their right to risk water pollution and dump toxic tailings? You can bet that information is not in the prospectus. Do the people of the North know that when foreigners own the mine and the goods are exported, that the deal is done in US dollars transferred between foreign banks, and that the only money that ever arrives in NZ is the wage bill?

Mayor Brown’s claim that Northland could earn $354 million per year from increased mining activity and that tourism is of low value to the region ignores the experience of other mining regions. Even in purely economic terms this invitation to plunder doesn’t stack up.

My home in Coromandel is a clear example of how mining development has not led to wealthier communities but has destroyed parts of the environment forever. The third largest mine in New Zealand is sited in the town of Waihi, where the measures of social well being are consistently the lowest for the region and the 40 million tonnes of toxic waste from the mine cover prime farm land, forever posing a risk.

Waihi is plagued by vibration, noise and dust with the associated mental and physical effects and the resulting drop in property values. Locals will pay for maintaining this time bomb after the gold company heads back to USA.

Tourism and food production remain the sustainable base of beautiful and fertile regions not holes in the ground.

The Green Party is not opposing all forms of mining and we understand the practical need for road metal and clay quarrying in the right places. However we are horrified that tangata whenua, Te Tiriti rights, citizens consultation and sustainable planning for real prosperity are about to be sold out for the false glitter of industrial scale mining.

In the US there is increasing evidence that No Child Left Behind is a failure:

Over the years, the law became increasingly unpopular, itself blamed for many ills in schools. Teachers and parents complained it led to “teaching to the test”. Parents didn’t like the stigma of sending their kids to a school labeled a failure when requirements weren’t met. States, districts and schools said the law was too rigid and that they could do a better job coming up with strategies to turn around poor performance.

A common complaint was that the 2014 deadline was simply unrealistic.

As the deadline approaches, more schools are failing to meet requirements under the law, with nearly half not doing so last year, according to the Center on Education Policy.  Center officials said that’s because some states today have harder tests or have high numbers of immigrant and low-income children, but it’s also because the law requires states to raise the bar each year for how many children must pass.

The increasing dissatisfaction with No Child Left Behind came to a head last Thursday, when President Obama exempted 10 States from their compliance requirements.  Schools in those States will be free to assess students with methods other than test scores and will be able to factor in subjects beyond reading and mathematics.

There are another 29 States, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, also in the process of applying for exemptions.  I expect most of them will be granted, and that we are seeing the beginning of the end of the failed ideological experiment that is No Child Left Behind.

New Zealand’s new Education Minister, Hekia Parata, could do well to heed the lessons from the United States. The concerns that school principals, the NZ Educational Institute, Boards of Trustees and educational academics, as well as the Green Party, have been expressing about National Standards here are exactly the same concerns that have led to the discrediting, and now the impending demise, of No Child Left Behind in the US.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) to the Minister of Education: Will she rule out implementing Treasury’s advice to increase class sizes in schools?

I was expecting a similar rejection to those we have grown used to from John Key in response to some of the wackier far right suggestions that come out of Treasury. Instead, I got this:

Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education) : Tēnā koe. No, because Treasury’s independent observation was actually, quote, that “Student achievement can be raised by improving the quality of teaching, … Increasing student/teacher ratios, and consolidation of the school network, can free up funding that could be used to support initiatives to enhance the quality of teaching, …” (full transcript here).

The Minister went on to cite Professor John Hattie, whose research published in his book Visible Learnings suggests class size has only a small effect on student achievement, and that teaching quality is a far more significant factor.

This is research cherry-picking of the worst sort by the Minister.  Hattie’s findings on this issue are not unchallenged.  A team of academic educationalists led by Emeritus Professor Ivan Snook and Professor John O’Neill have expressed concern at the validity of Hattie’s findings on class size.

Research conducted by Michael Boozer and Tim Maloney, ironically for Treasury itself, based on the Christchurch Health and Development Study finds statistically and economically significant positive effects of children being assigned to persistently smaller classes on both childhood test score growth as well as on early adult outcomes such as completed education and unemployment experiences.

It is also highly ironic that Minister Parata now purports to rely on Professor Hattie to justify increasing class sizes, while her predecessor Anne Tolley rammed through the Government’s National Standards programme despite Hattie’s deep concerns about its implementation and his suggestion that it could set back education 50 years.

I fear the Government’s real agenda in considering increasing class sizes is about cutting costs rather than quality of education and that Hattie’s research is being misused by the Minister in an attempt to give the appearance of evidential credibility.

There weren’t as many people this year. Some were feisty but unlike the Rugby Sevens, there were not multiple arrests. No one was drunk or rude to no purpose, and there was a level of debate on many political issues which I am yet to hear in Parliament.

For me the most inspiring part of Waitangi this year was a roopu reporting back to the people about their work on constitutional transformation. This roopu consists of some of the most dedicated, experienced and wise leaders of the tino rangatiratanga movement in Aotearoa.

The first speaker Huirangi Waikerepuru, a kaumatua from Taranaki, is a beloved taonga for iwi katoa. He was also the wood work teacher at my high school and we had no idea then of his mana and knowledge. He spoke about the deeper foundations of Maori tikanga and kawa that’s essential for any discussion of Te Tiriti-based transformation.

Professor Makere Mutu spoke about Te Hakaputanga o Nu Tireni and Te Tiriti o Waitangi to set the scene for the constitutional discussion. She brought alive the wisdom of her tipuna in asserting their requirements for the relationships with the manuhiri.

Moana Jackson spoke with his classical eloquence, precision and power about the meaning of lore/law and constitutions and the plan to extend the kawa of the marae to a kawa for the nation through flaxroots korero on questions about “how should we be governed?”. The challenge for Pakeha and tauiwi katoa is what grassroots parallel-process are we capable of running

Mereana Pitman made us laugh but also brought home to us the jewels and gems that come from asking people in the hapu and marae what kind of governance arrangements they believe would benefit themselves and also Aotearoa.

Annette Sykes, whose analysis is of legendary sharpness, brought the focus onto the need to properly resource the process of dialogue with flaxroots people who don’t get to stay in flash hotels.

Veronica Tawhai who is a younger academic/activist inspired me when she spoke about the work on a Waitangi claim about loss of political decision making which was rejected as an issue the Waitangi Tribunal could usefully address.

I was inspired by the oil and mining protestors, the work of Mike Smith and the calm resolute aura of Tame Iti who faces down the court in the next two weeks for supposed “criminal gang” activity.

I was left with a challenge – how will Tangata Te Tiriti respond? How will we contribute to these issues in right relationship with tangata whenua? Te Tiriti belongs to all of us and as Kingi Taurua said, “not to celebrate or to commemorate but to honour”.

Before final sign off and maybe as a way to keep the pressure on, John announced that Catherine Isaac (number 3 on the ACT list and rumoured to be a possible new leader of the Party) had been appointed as Chair of the Charter Schools pilot. This announcement was premature but still looks likely as John Key also seems to think Ms Isaac is qualified for the task.

From their point of view, what could be more appropriate for the job than a free market business person with no qualifications except being on a Board of Trustees? What do Charter Schools have to do with knowledge of education if they are in fact a business opportunity? No one knows for sure which model of Charter School is being implemented but we do know that the ACT Party education agenda is simple – privatisation, preferably with a voucher system.

The overseas experience of Charter Schools is very conflicted. Where these schools have cherry-picked children from low socioeconomic areas and poured resources into their education, those schools get good or comparable results with public schools. However, this does little to lift the educational opportunities for the majority of children in the state system where the issues of inequality and poverty are endemic. The Green Party thinks all children deserve the best via a state system that is innovative, consistent and equitable and that special character schools are also provided for already.

The other ghastly news on education this week includes the Minister of Education Hekia Parata’s announcement that league tables of National Standards results will be compiled by the Ministry of Education.

This is even worse than National’s former Education Minister Anne Tolley saying that league tables of Nationals Standards cannot be kept from the media.  Minister Parata seems to think that publicising results which schools say are neither national nor standard will benefit parents in their choices of schools. She is proposing the Australian model which compares schools within the same decile.  There is real concern from educationalists about this because the diversity within deciles is still very wide. Crude comparisons don’t help anyone.

On top of all this, Treasury is recommending in a briefing paper that class sizes could be increased to cut costs. The argument from some is that class size doesn’t matter. I can only speak as a person who has taught in Polytechnics and communities and in my experience the difference between a class of 35 and 20 is astronomical if you are teaching with real student participation.

Everyone agrees the teacher/ student relationship is critical but Treasury say that teachers can manage more relationships if they’re good enough. I say get real. It works in lecture rooms but what about schools?

Lastly there are threats of more small school closures even as they pilot charter schools. What will happen next week to education? Anything is possible.

Schools must protect this information from publication because once it is centralised, there is no guarantee it can be kept out of the media.

The Ministry of Education not only requires schools to report how pupils are progressing in relation to the standards, but it also requires “the numbers and proportions of students at, above, below or well below the standards, including by Māori and Pasifika”.

This might be useful information for school boards planning the following year but providing detailed data to the Ministry in the annual report is a different story. We see a real risk of individual students being identified and schools being inappropriately ranked.

The Minister calls this “transparency” but league tables of student achievement across the country will be damaging to many students and their schools. There are major privacy issues for small rural schools and for ethnicity-related data.

Almost 1000, or about 45 percent, of New Zealand’s primary and area schools have less than 150 children. Another 567 schools — another 25 percent — have only 150-300 students.

Many of the children at these schools are at risk of having their personal level of achievement exposed to the public through simply deduction.

Furthermore, National Standards are not the best measures to help students progress at their own rate.

Publishing results of this flawed and confused system of narrow measures will unfairly rank schools. This ranking of the public school system would lead to odious comparisons and pressure on teachers to teach a narrow curriculum to make their school look good on the league tables.

Considering schools already have a range of tools to measure achievement, the Minister of Education’s enthusiasm for this form of accountability is misguided and fails to recognise how it’s failed to improve educational outcomes where implemented in other countries.

League tables are for sports teams not children’s learning.

Rumours about such a significant proposal should not be swirling around in the media without a confirmation or denial from the Ministry. School boards and parents should be formally notified if this change is really on the table.

Prior to the election the National Party gave no signal that the Ministry would be taking over this role. It wasn’t mentioned in their policy.

The Government’s rhetoric around education is extremely contradictory at the moment. One minute National says parents need more choice via charter schools and the next it’s taking away choice from communities by removing the power of boards of trustees to appoint their own principal.

Giving local communities a degree of control over their school was central to the Tomorrow’s Schools reforms. I haven’t seen any evidence that the hiring of principals is too difficult a task for schools. It is more likely that the Government wants to make principals answer directly to them rather than the kids and parents in their local community.

National seem to be making up policy which suits their mistrust of schools and helps to impose their unpopular policies. Principals have been a fantastic voice for children in the recent debate over national standards. They are experts who know what they are talking about. Silencing principals is Nationals way of shutting down that important debate.

The Government has no mandate to undermine boards of trustees powers and to continue to operate in a contradictory and hostile manner towards the education sector.

It is time for National so show principals, teachers, parents and children some respect, and listen to their important contribution of ideas that really would improve our education system.

The human rights of West Papuan people are at extreme risk and this latest incident highlights their total vulnerability. Last month, they held a congress to discuss self determination issues which was violently disrupted by the Indonesians, with 300 people arrested and 6 key leaders imprisoned without trial. Reports from West Papua trickle out into the New Zealand media which largely ignores them with the honourable exceptions of Radio New Zealand International and the Pacific Media Centre.

Last month I wrote to the Minister of Foreign Affairs asking him to review the role of the police training project New Zealand has been carrying out in West Papua. The role of the West Papua police force in connection with human rights abuses has deteriorated and our police trainers cannot claim to be enhancing citizens’ rights. I have read the 2010 reports from our police trainers which showed that the road to hell can be paved with good intentions. These policemen appeared to have no context for operating in West Päpua, their focus was on crimes like robbery and alcohol and they made no comment on the lack of democratic freedoms or the need for the West Papuan police to stop colluding with the military in the human rights abuses. Mr McCully has yet to reply beyond the acknowledgement of my letter.

Silence surrounds the tragedies in West Papua. Silence at every level is a shameful matter, so why is New Zealand supporting the Indonesia Government in their ban on foreign journalists, MP delegation visits and human rights scrutiny? The Australian Government is no better but I commend Richard di Natale MP of the Australian Green Party for his principled promotion of justice and human rights for West Papua. We must use our voices on behalf of the silenced people.

I haven’t seen any parents marching for the right to set up a Charter school or demanding more “freedom”. I have seen some of the overseas literature on the failure of the Charter model and it’s a sad and sorry tale about reinforcing inequality.

So ACT as in John Banks has persuaded the Government that Charter schools (a model of privatisation of the public good) will somehow make education work better for all. How this is supposed to happen via performance pay, cheery picking and lack of accountability is anybody’s guess. Undermining the public education system will not fix poverty and inequality but then not everybody really wants to. A low wage economy needs to keep some of its population unskilled and unemployed to keep those wages in their place.

If the Government really cared about education we might have discussed learning models at the Education and Science Select Committee. In the last three years we spent a tiny percentage of our time talking about learning let alone “reforms” like National Standards. We might have seen some mention from the Government of the Charter Schools option during the election campaign. However there was no public signal that privatisation of the public education system was going to be part of the new regime.

Without being melodramatic (or not very) I do find it an evil use of language. They are pushing the idea that low income communities would have more “choice” if the public system was competing with a privatised model of schooling funded from the public purse.

During the election campaign I launched our education policy at a primary school in Manurewa East which celebrates its cultural diversity and has wonderful support for its students. It was a happy place with music, colour, vegetable gardens and a passion for education.

Over the last two years I have been a regular visitor at a low-decile school in South Wellington which has just had a fantastic ERO report and has a very high standard of parental involvement. I could also wax lyrical about the Victory school community hub in Nelson and the incredible achievement record of Te Waiu o Ngati Porou kura in Ruatoria.  These are quality public schools and kura kaupapa. They are flexible and meet students needs without business rhetoric or models. Their secrets include dedicated teachers, community support and cultural respect

The Green Party is not saying the public system has no issues. Schools manifest our society with all its inequalities and challenges, but cannot of themselves fix the growing inequality. We know there are numerous issues that need work and resources. But we know what the word “public” means and what values and benefits it protects, and we are ashamed of what this Government is proposing to do.