School Is Out.

Step aside teachers, this is a job for corporations and consultants.

School is out
And I walk the empty hallways
I walk alone
Alone as always
There's so many lucky pennies
Lying on the floor
But where the hell are all the lucky people
I can't see them any more

Yesterday morning, I’d just sent out my newsletter on Tama Potaka, and I was struggling to make the coffee.

Normally this is a task I can manage at least semi adequately, although the coffee art leaves an awful lot to be desired. Or at least guessed at. Is it a splodge? But someone had poured ground coffee into the grinder so there was much whining and whirring, but little in the way of results.

Kind of like a coalition education announcement, but more on that in a bit.

While I was struggling with the machine, as if to enhance my enjoyment of the situation, the Prime Minister was on RNZ telling us what he didn’t know. As he usually does on a Tuesday.

Yesterday he didn’t know that some of the people being laid off by the Ministry of Education, to save money, are being re-hired as consultants. Turns out their skills were of value after all.

So the lucky old taxpayer gets to pick up the bill for the redundancies, and also pay contractor rates, which presumably greatly exceed what these same people cost in the first place, for them to come back.

And we’re supposed to believe these people are good at business?

I’m sure it all makes sense to a bean counter, according to the laws of accounting, but I struggle to see how going through the cost of redundancies and then hiring people back, actually saves money.

Perhaps life would’ve been easier if I’d believed in the magic beans?

To be fair this is hardly unprecedented from a “cost cutting” government. The old adage was that when big government departments were restructured you’d get laid off on the Friday and then start back as a contractor on the following Monday.

All with a nice fat redundancy pay out in your back pocket. Although somehow I doubt that this lot have been so generous.

Illustration - Daron Parton/NZ Herald.

The RNZ report indicated that the ministry was preparing to have consultants do the work of those being laid off, with 755 positions being cut. But the Prime Minister didn’t know anything about it, that was an operational matter he said.

Ministry staff said that, “consulting firms were already asking some of the staff being made redundant to work for them, meaning they would be doing the same work, but for firms that would charge double what they were being paid.”

Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver.

Of course there are ways that you can get cheaper, perhaps less qualified, staff into schools. As the Assoc. Minister of Education announced yesterday.

Remember just days ago when David Seymour said he would save school lunches, and $107m, by cutting the amount spent per lunch to less that half? Well it turns out he’s spent it already. Said he met some blokes down the pub who wanted him to invest in charter schools so he blew the lot. Plus quite a bit more besides.

That isn’t exactly what happened. This is:

So a massive investment in Seymour’s pet project of privatising education for profit. Sorry, that should’ve read providing flexible education solutions for different needs, or some other bollocks that you know damn well David himself doesn’t believe.

Oh, and a nice, barely veiled, threat that if schools don’t buck up their ideas they might find themselves becoming a charter school, non voluntarily.

The article from the Herald quotes Seymour as saying, “There may well be state schools that are not performing that are turned into charter schools.” He was asked whether they would be forced to become charter schools and he responded obliquely, “you’re thinking about the school, I’m thinking about the community and the students around it.”

Assoc. Education Minister, David Seymour. Image: NZ Herald.

I think we’ll take that as a yes.

Hmm can you guess which communities will find their schools converted, without having a say so? Quite probably the same ones where poverty causes major additional challenges for teachers. Or to put it another way, places where ACT voters don’t typically live.

This funding will provide 50 charter schools, 15 new ones, and 35 repurposed, non performing ones. I wonder if they’ve already selected the non-performers? Unofficially, of course.

So what’s the problem with Charter Schools anyway?

When the government changes we see some things tweaked a bit, and others completely change. Charter Schools are one of those philosophical impasses, between the left and right in New Zealand, where depending on who’s in power they are all on, or all off.

They were made legal in New Zealand by the Key government, with agreement from ACT. In October 2012, the Education Amendment Bill, creating charter schools, passed with a five-vote majority.

In 2017 the new Labour led government announced they would be abolishing Charter Schools. By September 2018 all had converted to be either “special character schools” or had become state-integrated schools.

Late last year the new government announced it’s coalition agreement, which contained the following provisions:

• Reintroduce partnership schools and introduce a policy to allow state schools to become partnership schools.

• Explore further options to increase school choice and expand access to integrated and independent schools including reviewing the independent school funding formula to reflect student numbers.

So here we are again, and there’s no reason to think that when the government changes again Charter Schools won’t be out once more.

Labour’s education spokeswoman Jan Tinetti said of yesterday’s announcement, “Charter schools are part of the coalition Government’s drive to dismantle our public school system and promote a privatised, competitive system that puts profits before kids.”

PPTA President Chris Abercrombie said, “Strengthening the state system and not siphoning money out of it - I think that would be the biggest benefit to the vast majority of students in this country.”

Charter Schools have been used overseas for many years. In the US, where they’ve long had profit making on things the rest of the world considers to be public goods, they’re very popular. Especially with politicians.

These schools are funded by you and I through our taxes, but instead of the Ministry of Education being in charge they’re run by private companies.

In the Herald Audrey Young said, “Charter schools can set their own curricula, hours and governance structures and will operate on a 10-year contract. Seymour describes them as a means to ‘free educators from state and union interference’.”

No doubt some Charter Schools will be run in order to help children who may have different needs. However I’m sure there will also be those which are primarily driven by making money and my concern is whether there will be sufficient safeguards in place to monitor and ensure the quality of the education they’re providing.

Then of course there are people that we don’t want anywhere near teaching our tamariki. Like Destiny Church. We’ve enough problems with Brian Tamaki brainwashing his adult flock without allowing him to indoctrinate kids too.

This investment feels like the start of a very slippery slope in which more and more services are privatised or outsourced. Keeping the government comfortably at arm’s length from delivery. You already see that with Luxon indicating that when any detail arises it’s the responsibility of the CEO, not his government.

This model suits politicians and business. There’s guaranteed revenue for businesses, courtesy of the taxpayers, while the government outsources delivery and accountability. A win/win situation.

Unless you’re a taxpayer of course, receiving lower quality services because profits have to be creamed off the top, and having less ability to hold politicians to account, as they shrug and say it’s that other guy. The one you don’t vote for.

But do we have to make money out of everything?

Even our children learning? What does it say about us that we would sacrifice the potential of our children so someone can make a buck?

Chris Perley, a kindred spirit if he doesn’t mind me saying so, recently compared the coalition to putting fourth form commerce students in charge of a school. An excellent comparison I think.

A bunch of over confident clowns, intoxicated with their own testosterone, who greatly overestimate their own abilities. The fourth formers that is. Year 10s, they’re the worst.

But this isn’t a joke, and it’s not like having to pay for prescriptions, or the myriad of other cuts the coalition has made to people’s lives.

This is willingly delivering a poorer education, sacrificing the development of some of our young people, so a few snake oil educators can make some money.

It’s unconscionable.

On top of that it’s also bloody insulting to our incredibly hardworking, dedicated, and underpaid teachers. Re-hiring people as consultants to teach teachers how to teach kids to read, or outsourcing education to people with lesser qualifications so that they can deliver a cut price service and maximise profits.

Nicola Willis might argue that a second hand corolla solution will do for our Cook Strait ferries, but I’m not buying that argument for our children’s education. Quality should be non negotiable.

Personally I don’t think education should be run for profit. No matter how you dress it up some of the money from the government is going to end up in the back pockets of business people, and that’s not what we pay our taxes for.

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Sometimes I suggest that even if you don’t usually listen to the end track you might like to try it. Today is one of those days. 🙂